Comments | scottdp: 'Dollhouse' call signs

scottdp

'Dollhouse' call signs

Apr 05, 2009 16:52

The forced amnesiacs in Dollhouse seem to be assigned military phonetic alphabet codewords as their 'names'.

( Some of these are more amusing than others. )

Comments 4

sidbyrd April 5 2009, 23:31:02 UTC

About half of those are terrible as names. A few (Yankee, India, Zulu) would have racist overtones as well.

scottdp April 6 2009, 04:52:00 UTC

Don't know that I'd say racist, but there's some possible offense to be had. Calling a British active 'Yankee' could be interesting...

cowboyzydeco April 6 2009, 16:08:06 UTC

Yeah, I don't see any politically correct combination of race or gender that works for "Zulu." Someone would surely be upset if, for example, they chose a large African-American man. Best you could hope for is ironic mis-labeling. Perhaps a tiny Irish woman or something. As it stands, I guess we're just lucky that BBW (at least by comparison, although she's still quite attractive) November wasn't given the monicker "Kilo." Given many of their assigned missions, Hotel and Romeo are strangely appropriate, though ( ... )

cowboyzydeco April 6 2009, 16:17:55 UTC

Now that I think about it, if they have the gumption to do it, the best thing they could do would be to make sure there was no possible connection to the actor's attributes. Make Zulu an ordinary guy (ie white) with no particular standout attributes off the norm. Have everyone just say names like Golf and Tango with completely straight faces, and refuse to notice. They're blank puppets/machines, afterall, not people. As long as there's no "just happens to" matches (ie don't make Zulu Black, don't make India Middle-Eastern) for anyone to latch onto, it would fit the low-end creepy dehumanization riff they're playing. And, of course, make sure Zulu and Yankee don't end up as notable characters ( ... )