Zoic's work on Dollhouse is fairly minimal, except for the dramatic "wipe" scenes where characters' memories are wiped clean. All images courtesy of Zoic Studios. © Twentieth Century Fox Television.

For episodic drama aficionados, Joss Whedon's recent return to the television fray with his new series Dollhouse is a real reason to rejoice. For close to a decade, Whedon was responsible for some of the most unique, genre-defying series to ever appear on broadcast television. With Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and then Firefly, Whedon earned his reputation in the industry as one of the most respected creators of contemporary television drama.

A third-generation screenwriter, Whedon got his big break as a staff writer for the sitcom Roseanne and only five years later was one of the seven Toy Story writers nominated for an Academy Award. Since then, he's hopped back and forth between film and television, but he's achieved his greatest professional successes, not to mention a very devoted fanbase, for his work on the small screen.

After a five-year, self-imposed break from episodic work, Whedon was lured back by Fox, his old collaborating studio, to explore his latest idea -- that of identity and how it defines and controls us in a myriad of ethical and moralistic ways -- in the show Dollhouse. Actress Eliza Dusku (Buffy, Bring It On) plays the young woman known as Echo. She resides in a secret, luxurious underground compound in Los Angeles where an omnipotent group of handlers employ her and others, called "Actives," to fulfill the role of whatever a wealthy client requires them to be. Be it hostage negotiator, perfect date, or assassin, at the end of the services the "Active's" memory is wiped, never to remember the play they were paid to act out.

In order to create the many lives of Echo and others, Whedon turned to frequent visual effects collaborator Zoic Studios to undertake that aspect of the production. Rocco Passionino, Dollhouse's visual effects supervisor at Zoic, won an Emmy working with Whedon on Firefly and he says their long, successful relationship brought them together again.

A greenscreen was used to heighten the danger level in a rock climbing scene.

Yet unlike Whedon's other, more sci-fi series, Dollhouse has a much more naturalistic tone that belies a more subtle approach with the visual effects. "They wanted to keep it very grounded," Passionino explains. "They wanted to keep most of the effects that we were doing fairly invisible. They didn't want it to be in-your-face effects outside of the mind wipe. Most of our work is used to augment the show and make it look fairly seamless.

"Overall, we've done some set enhancements and environment adjustments," Passionino continues. "It is very grounded and not a show with fanciful worlds, so mainly the effects have been helping whatever being an "Active" means. In some episodes, Echo had to do some stunts that were over the top. Like in the second episode ("Target"), Eliza had to do some rock climbing so we had to give the sequence the sense that there is more danger than originally intended."

The one consistent visual effects trope in Dollhouse is the mind wipe process, in which an "Active" is put in a chair that literally zaps their memories into a recorder that's archived by the Dollhouse proprietors. Audiences get to see what that process looks at from Echo's perspective.