Wrapped Up Like a Blog

Christopher Moore's has been writing humorous, mostly fantasy-based novels for decades now. His work is evocative of Douglas Adams, though grounded more firmly in the fantastic world of demons, tricksters and vampires than spaceships and aliens. Moore's ability to comment on society by skewering the fantastic is reminiscent of Terry Pratchett, though Moore's works are more solidly set on planet Earth, though an interconnected, magical version.

After a brief stop in the world of Shakespeare with his most recent book, Fool, a story centered around the Fool character from King Lear, Moore is back in more familiar territory, penning the third novel about the vampire Jody and her boyfriend, Tommy Flood.

These characters were introduced in Moore's third novel, Bloodsucking Fiends, which told the story of an ordinary 20 something woman living in San Fransisco, who suddenly finds her life turned upside down when she is changed into a vampire and forced to learn to deal with her new existence. She finds a minion and then a lover, in Tommy Flood, writer by day, turkey bowling Safeway Employee by night. Their story continued in the recent novel, You Suck, one of Moore's funniest works, including a homeless man with a huge, soon to be shaved, cat.

Tommy and Jody were left in a precarious position, and this book picks up soon afterward. For those not familiar with the previous installments, a quick recap is provided by one of the book's narrators, Abby Von Normal, a goth teenager who wants more than anything to be the minion of a dark lord. Her narration is one of the drawbacks of the novel, however, as Moore tries hard to give her a unique voice, but her narrative style becomes grating at times, and even clouds the story on occasion.

The story itself is not as strong as the previous installments. The major antagonists in the tale are an odd choice, and seem alternately creepy and boring. In addition, the two lovers don't interact as much in this tale as much as the reader would like, so the developments in their relationship seem rushed and forced.

There are a few truly funny moments in the story, but overall it is not one of Moore's strongest works, not on the level of Lamb or The Stupidest Angel. Moore has many good novels in his storied career and, while it is nice to revisit favorite characters, one would hope that he would put Jody and Tommy to bed for now and move on to other creative works that are surely churning around in his brain.

“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
-J. Robert Oppenheimer

“In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Dollhouse is a show about change. The actives change their identities, skills and personality on a weekly or daily basis. Caroline Farrell changes from terrorist to blank slate to she-who-contained-multitudes. But, over the course of the series, perhaps the most profound changes- for the better and for the worse- occur in the character of the Los Angeles Dollhouse’s resident genius, Topher Brink. But who is Topher Brink? Is he a scientific pioneer, an amoral madman, or a lost soul looking for redemption? Or is he, perhaps, all three.
In “Epitaph One,” the final episode of the first season of Dollhouse, we see Topher Brink, the once giddy, brilliant in-house scientist of the Los Angeles Dollhouse ten years into the future. He is no longer a vibrant young genius, but rather a shattered wreck of a man, living in a hole and clinging to his final shreds of sanity. He is a man who has realized that his technology, much like that of Oppenheimer before him, has been used to wreak untold havoc on the world at large. He feels, and perhaps justifiably so, responsible for the Apocalypse. But is he deserving of the guilt he has rained down upon himself, or is he yet another innocent corrupted by the evil reach of the Rossum Corporation?
The head of the Los Angeles Dollhouse, Adelle DeWitt, once claimed that Topher was selected to be their head scientist because he was completely amoral. But over the course of the series, we see perhaps that this judgment was made prematurely. At times, he seems to be merely a man of science, content to tinker in his lab, oblivious to the consequences of his pure science put to terrible use. In other moments, he appears to be a lonely, awkward man, searching for his place in the world, not unlike many of us. So, while he seems to be a somewhat one-dimensional hyperactive mad scientist at first, the layers of Topher’s personality begin to unpeel throughout the course of the series revealing surprising depth underneath.
Evil scientist or awkward nerd? At first, those seem to be the extent of Topher’s personality, but when his mind is tempered by the fires of adversity, a third option presents itself. And that option, it seems, is found in the name of the character himself. The name Topher, surely, is a diminutive form of Christopher, utilizing the second part of the given forename. Not nearly as common as “Chris,” it deliberately echoes another Joss Whedon character who also uses the less-common, second half nickname. Alexander ‘Xander’ Harris is the stalwart sidekick to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When we first meet him, Xander is a geeky, immature fellow, insecure in his own skin and awkward in his interactions with others, much like Topher himself. But over the course of seven seasons, Xander learns to be loyal, brave and trustworthy, and becomes a valuable soldier in the fight against darkness. Perhaps, then, the name Topher is meant to indicate immaturity and a distance from the social norm/.
But far more interesting than his first name is the surname of the character. What, then, is Topher on the Brink of? A scientific revolution? A mental breakdown? Or, before he encounters either one, is he, in fact, on the brink of becoming what his second-named counterpart Xander eventually became- a man? Or is it possible that, in the course of 26 short episodes, Topher arrives at the brink of all three?
Topher is, for many viewers of Dollhouse, a gateway character. During the past decade, Joss Whedon and his Mutant Enemy production company have gathered quite a flock of loyal fans, many of whom share common traits, at least superficially, with Topher Brink. Many Joss Whedon fans would self-describe as somewhere on the ‘geek’ spectrum. Fans at a Dollhouse convention would likely prove to be intelligent, talkative, filled with nervous energy, at times socially awkward (especially among the opposite sex), show a predilection for energy drinks and sugary snacks, loving gaming, computers, movies and television, and even dress in a manner that is contrary to current fashion. In short, they are far more likely to have share a connection with Topher Brink than, say, a strong, confident FBI agent, a successful and powerful businesswoman, or a mind-wiped active.
So, if Topher Brink embodies so many qualities that a Dollhouse fan might lay claim to, how does one reconcile these reflective traits with his supposed amorality and his role in the downfall of modern civilization? This conundrum serves as the crux of the most interesting character study in the entire Dollhouse universe. Just what is Topher Brink? Harmless geek? Visionary Genius? Repulsive criminal? Or is he some combination of all of these and more? Perhaps that, in addition to a fine and frenzied portrayal by Fran Kranz (and twice, memorably, but Enver Gjokaj) is why he is so fascinating.
What, then, do we know about Topher Brink’s existence before he came to the Los Angeles Dollhouse? From the flashbacks in “Epitaph One,” we know that Topher came to the LA Dollhouse a cocky kid who was bound and determined to make the imprinting process faster and more efficient, despite warnings that such technology could easily get out of control. In addition to his vast computer and engineering knowledge, Topher has also been trained as a medical doctor. Clearly, the man is a genius, and adept in more than one scientific discipline. So, then, does Topher’s genius set him above the moral code of an average person, or does it give him a greater responsibility to mankind, knowing just how revolutionary his inventions can be?
In analyzing the questions of power and responsibility, it is important to take a closer look at Topher Brink as a human being. In most episodes, the character of Topher is usually seen in ‘Scotty’ mode, performing technological miracles to save- or complicate- the day, all the while spouting technobabble. This character archetype was made famous by one Mr. Montgomery Scott on a well-known starship which traveled on a five-year mission. A character like this has the potential to be little more than a plot device to get the characters out of a jam with literal Deus Ex Machina. But throughout the series, there are times when the audience is afforded more than a peek into the mind and life of Topher, above and beyond his work as the resident scientist in Adelle DeWitt’s Dollhouse.
Most frequently, especially in the early episodes of the series, we see Topher at his most innocent and child-like. Nowhere is this overriding personality trait more evident than during his birthday celebration. Topher, a man who has unfettered access to a dozen beautiful women who he could literally program to attend to his basest needs, chooses to make himself an altogether different kind of Doll for his birthday. As his gift to himself, Topher chooses Sierra, a Doll with exotic good looks, to be programmed as his birthday plaything. But, despite his freedom to make her anything and everything a man could desire, the socially-awkward genius geek does not create for himself a depraved sexual toy, but rather a buddy, a fellow geek. He fashions Sierra in his own image, perhaps foreshadowing a time when Topher would need an ally as smart and capable as himself, and therefore duplicate his own mind in the body of Victor. But in this case, he is looking not for an intellectual equal, but for a playmate. And he and Sierra spend the bulk of his birthday engaging in activities that one might consider juvenile. They play with guns and computers, they eat junk food and drink soda, and generally regress to the level of adolescents for the duration of his celebration.
But of course, this is not the only time Topher felt the need to create a doll in his image. In fact, he found it necessary to implant his own mind into Victor’s body on two separate occasions. When Topher required a brain that was an equal to his own to solve problems at the LA Dollhouse when he was physically in Washington, DC, his enormous ego could fathom no greater mind than his own, and utilized the resources at his disposal to duplicate himself in order to solve the problem. And again, when Topher needed to leave a spy in the house of the dolls, he leaves a wedge containing his backup personality, convinced that only his intellect can piece together the clues and solve the mystery of the traitor within. Clearly, Topher has the requisite ego required to be an evil scientist- that is, perhaps, until he met his intellectual equal and fell in love with him, er, her, as it turns out. But his relationship with Bennett Halverson occurred at a later stage in his journey through the Dollhouse, at a time when he was already on the path to greater emotional maturity.
Though he would eventually meet his intellectual equal in Bennett, it was noted by Boyd Langdon, among others, that there was little doubt that Topher’s Brink had a remarkable mind. He proved his genius many times over by developing a constant stream of newer and even more revolutionary breakthroughs in Dollhouse technology- even though some of those breakthroughs were based on work done by a madman with multiple personalities- Alpha. Nonetheless, Topher was able to stand on the shoulders of other geniuses and improve technology that would wirelessly and rapidly transfer memories and skills into human minds in ways that were far superior than the Dollhouse norms, and then surpass even that technology by developing a remote wipe device, the device that would ultimately lead to the end of the world as we knew it. So Topher’s drive for invention and scientific innovation, unfettered by concerns with how it might impact the world at large, would tend to indicate the evil scientist gene was prominent in his DNA. But was he evil, or perhaps merely naïve?
Topher Brink was chosen by the shadow leader of the Rossum Corporation to be the head of technology in the Los Angeles Dollhouse. In order to work at a Dollhouse, though, one must have, at the very least, the moral flexibility to look the other way when men and women are stripped of their personalities, remade to the specifications of their new masters, then sent off into the wild to fulfill the greatest desires of the rich and powerful. So Topher goes about his daily business blissfully unhampered by the weight of a conscience- at least for a little while. Eventually, however, the darkness of the Dollhouse encroaches on Topher’s world and he has no choice but to deal with it. When the truth about Sierra is revealed and heinous acts perpetrated on her by a scorned lover, Topher is forced to realign his moral compass for perhaps the first time since joining the Dollhouse. It is during this crisis that Adelle DeWitt accuses Topher of having no morals whatsoever, and it is shortly thereafter Topher finds himself disposing of a dead body. For the first time, perhaps, Topher is forced to deal with the reality, and sees how his scientific advances have an effect on the world around him. He learns how, no matter how much he wants to believe he is helping people, each engagement brings down enormous negative consequences on both the clients and the Dolls themselves. The evidence of the potential evil inherent in his job flows red on his hands in a visceral loss of innocence.
In the final arcs of season 2, Topher’s transformation from selfish introvert to full-fledged human being nears completion. He learns responsibility when faced with cleaning up a job gone horribly wrong, and he learns the value of human connections by falling in love with Bennett Halverson. It is at the climax of this nascent relationship that the Whedon-led writing crew pulls a classic maneuver from its bag of tricks- visiting tragedy on someone who has just acquired a taste of happiness.
The one person he truly loves is murder right in front of- and on- him.
It is up until this very moment that Topher has undergone the most significant character evolution in the series- with the possible exception of Caroline/Echo, of course. Topher has begun to show traits of a mature, adult human. He feels remorse for his role in creating a dangerous weapon, he feels connections to other human beings, seeing them as valuable for their own sakes, and not just as subjects for his experiments but as friends and compatriots. He feels camaraderie with Ballard, respect (though unwarranted) for Boyd, and affection for Ivy. But most of all, he has come to care for Bennett in ways that he never could have imagined. As Topher and his new love desperately attempt to recreate the Caroline wedge, Topher Brink stands on the brink of becoming a real boy. That is, until the blood of his one true love is splattered all over his face.
So Topher’s journey to personhood comes to a screeching halt, as his regression back toward infancy begins, and accelerates past the point where he was at the beginning of the series. He begins to unravel, unable to deal with the loss of someone close to him- perhaps the first person he has truly and honestly loved. After all, one cannot feel a sense of loss if one does not care about anything, and it is his ability to care for someone other than himself that leaves Topher vulnerable for the devastation to come. For Topher, it is more than the end of the world. For him, it’s personal.
While Topher demonstrates his immaturity in the earliest episodes, the boy scientist seemed to be moving in the direction of personal growth as the series progressed. But after the death of Bennett, Topher is on a slippery slope back toward a child-like state, and his regression is only accelerated by the events of the final story arc. When faced with the fact that, despite his best efforts, his technology has been corrupted into a form that could wipe any mind on the planet, Topher utilizes his enormous powers of intellect to develop a clever nickname for the coming tragedy. Sitting in the lair of his arch-enemy, betrayed by a man who was both a friend and a father figure, the memory of his true love’s murder fresh in his mind, Topher faces a crisis point. Instead of attempting to think of a solution to the problem before him, he instead waffles between the terms ‘Thoughtpocalypse’ and ‘Brainpocalypse. ’ The infantile portions of his mind can do nothing more productive than make a game out of the terror he feels. He is incapable of facing this kind of adversity like a mature adult. He has lost the emotional maturity forced upon him by dismembering a corpse and falling in love, and has returned to the mindset of a callow youth, surpassing even the immaturity he evidenced in the early episodes of the series.
This loss of innocence swells and threatens to take over Topher’s once brilliant mind during the ten year gap between the destruction of the Rossum headquarters and the events shown in the Epitaph episodes. When we see the world of the near future in “Epitaph One,” for example, we learn that Topher’s victory over Boyd at Rossum’s headquarters was a pyrrhic victory at best. Despite his best efforts, his flash of genius, the wireless innovation of mindwipe technology, has been harnessed by a group of selfish and unscrupulous men and weaponized, wreaking havoc on the world at large, plunging humanity into a dark, post-apocalyptic period where mind-wiped zombies wander the streets and no one is necessarily whom they appear to be. Topher, whose technology made it possible for the mindwipes to be sent over phone lines, ends up in a near-catatonic state due to the guilt he feels over his part in this global catastrophe. He reverts to a child-like state, burying himself in a womb-like sleeping chamber and surrounding himself with comfort objects. Topher has placed the entire weight of the world on himself and cracked under the pressure.
This extreme guilt hardly seems like the type of behavior that an amoral man would engage in. A truly evil scientist would revel in the destruction of society, or do everything in his power to ally himself with the corrupt men who control the mindwipe technology and rule the remnants of society. But Topher does neither, instead crawling even further into despair as the world falls to pieces. So, then, did Mr. Brink grow a conscience during his tenure with the largely amoral Dollhouse? Did he become a complete person in spite of his immersion in a world of sin and degradation? Or, are his reactions to the moral ambiguity of his chosen lifestyle merely those of an inner child in arrested development?
Of course, Topher’s infantile state of mind was only encouraged in the intervening ten years by his surrogate mother figure, Adelle, who is clearly dealing with guilt issues of her own (even though, as Topher rightly points out, all she did was hand someone a piece of paper). The former director of the LA Dollhouse coddles the broken genius, allowing him to live his life first in the artificial womb of the bed chamber in the Dollhouse, surrounded by his comfort objects, then on the idyllic farm where he continues to hold a position roughly equal to that of the young child, ‘T.’ Topher’s vestigial maturity proves to be no match for what his massive intellect had wrought, and he could only able to make sense of the world when returned to his comfort zone, small and enclosed, in the Dollhouse, where he makes his final calculations to restore sanity to the world, if not to himself.
Topher’s coping strategies come straight out of a child’s playbook. Reverting to a simpler personality, using humor to cover the emotional wounds, and then becoming near catatonic as the weight of the world literally descends on his shoulders. In the end, though, Topher’s intellect trumps his emotion. When placed in the warm, familiar environment, he is finally able to get his faculties together and solve the problem that he himself created almost a decade earlier. And he knows that it must be his penance to give his very life to make the world right again. But, as he is about to blow the bomb that will reboot humanity, he sees the memorial wall of photographs in Adelle’s old office, with images of people from the time before the ‘Thoughtpocalypse.’ In one final moment of clarity, Topher sees a pattern on the wall, his superior intellect making one final leap of insight before the end comes. But he must bring this revelation with him to the grave, as he dies before he can share it. He does, however, leave the world a slightly better place than it was moments before, but still a far cry from what he had known a decade earlier.
It could be, then, only Topher who was fit to activate the bomb that would set right what once went wrong. He finally willed himself to create a long-delayed chance to make up for his past sins- a chance delayed by almost a decade by forces of evil- namely, the writers of Dollhouse, under the direction of one Mr. Joss Whedon. Topher- the man most responsible for the evils of the new world, a naïve scientist who allowed his mind to be manipulated by corrupt and amoral men is finally given a chance at redemption. But Topher, whose brain has caused so much chaos, can only save the world by obliterating that very mind, and taking with it the pain of the previous decade. He has carried the burden of his actions for a ten long years and has gone beyond the point where any other outcome will be satisfying for him- or the audience.
In the end, then, what are the viewers meant to make of Topher Brink? As with every character on Dollhouse, he defies placement into a pigeonhole of characterization. Paul, the noble hero, becomes obsessed with Echo and loses his own mind in the process. Boyd, the loyal and brave soldier, turns out to have been the evil mastermind all along. And Topher Brink, the amoral evil scientist, is really nothing more than a child trapped in the body of a sweater-vested genius. And the viewers are able to follow his growth for nearly two seasons, as he develops into a man, only to witness his plummet back to infancy and his final, fiery penance. Topher is, simply put, the character with the longest, hardest journey, and, in the end, he is neither a force of evil nor good, but a scared little boy playing at being a grown up. Neither a man nor a monster, Topher is a boy caught between the burden of his intelligence and the responsibility that comes with it. In the end, he could not reconcile his overdeveloped brain and his underdeveloped maturity and both he and the world suffered the consequences. Perhaps he found peace in his fiery redemption, and perhaps he at last understood that he was neither great scientist nor Satan incarnate, but rather a fallible human being who made more than his share of mistakes. And, in the end, isn’t that what we all are?