Dr. Horrible Revisited: Three Years Later
It would be incorrect to say that Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog single handedly invented the webseries medium when it initially launched in July 2008. While the online musical—created by television producer Joss Whedon, his brothers Jed and Zack and Jed’s fiancé Maurissa Tancharoen—generated a magnitude of positive press and served as the inspiration for a countless number of other webseries that have sprung up on the Internet ever since, in reality the medium had been around for a number of years. The female lead of Dr Horrible, Felicia Day, had already established her online credentials with another webseries (The Guild), for instance, while the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post had previously written about such online video creations like Break a Leg and Chad Vader.
It would likewise be incorrect to say that the idea for Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was directly born from the 2007 strike by the Writers Guild of America. While Joss Whedon was an adamant supporter of both the strike and the need for greater financial compensation that led to the work stoppage, in reality he had already been an independently-minded rebel when it came to the entertainment industry before Dr. Horrible had generated a single frame of film. His initial television creation was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a ridiculously titled show that melded together a number of genres, including horror, comedy and action, into an effective metaphor for high school and young adulthood.
The ambiguously entitled Firefly, meanwhile, was a “space-western” that was mishandled by the FOX network and cancelled after a mere eleven aired episodes. Whedon refused to let the series die, however, and convinced Universal Studios to fund a big-screen continuation of the narrative with the 2005 feature film Serenity. Clearly Joss Whedon is a man not willing to budge in terms of his principles or creative visions—Buffy, after all, would no doubt have been taken more seriously by the uninitiated had the show enlisted a more mainstream moniker—and the webseries medium obviously offered a fair amount of freedom for such a person.
That is not to suggest that Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was not a by-product of the strike. Compensation for online video, including original webisodes for such shows as the NBC sitcom The Office, was a major issue of the labor dispute. The prevalent attitude of the major production companies at the time was that if you wanted to be a writer in Hollywood, then you had to accept what the production companies were willing to offer in terms of both financial rewards and creative leeway. Dr. Horrible, meanwhile, was produced without the backing of traditional Hollywood and demonstrated that a television writer in the Age of the Internet was not necessarily beholden to anyone. In the opening sequence of the online musical, main character Dr. Horrible makes the comment, “It’s not about making money, it’s about taking money. Destroying the status quo. Because the status is not quo.” The statement could just as well have summed up Joss Whedon’s attitude towards the television industry with his “grassroots” endeavor.
But as Liz Shannon Miller pointed out in April 2011 on GigaOM, it would also be incorrect to call Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog a truly “grassroots” project. The webseries cost $200,000 to produce, for instance, was cast with television stars Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion, featured scenes filmed on the back lot of Universal Studios and utilized the expertise of professional costume designer Shawna Trpcic. Very few independent producers could replicate any of those feats in their own “grassroots” productions, nor be able to tap into the substantial pre-existing fanbase that Joss Whedon had already amassed. And very few—if any—other webseries has grossed over $2.5 million and spawned a merchandising enterprise that includes t-shirts, action figures, CDs, coffee table-style books and graphic novel offshoots.
While there may be a number of incorrect statements that could be made about Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, the fact remains that the online musical is still arguably the most important and influential entry into the webseries medium even three years after its initial release. Previous media mentions on the medium painted the webseries more as a novelty than creative art form but the press that Dr. Horrible garnered was of a different nature. Everyone from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, to USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety heralded it as a landmark achievement. Time magazine even went so far as to name it the fourth best television show of 2008 despite its Internet-exclusive nature.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog even earned an Emmy Award for “Short-Format Live-Action, Special Class.” Emmys, of course, are given for television productions and while the category in which Dr. Horrible was honored is for online video, previous winners and nominees have ties to actual “television” shows, like webisodes from The Office or original clips for The Daily Show. By rewarding Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, it was almost as if the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences was bestowing legitimacy upon the webseries medium.
Dr. Horrible also raised the bar in terms of webseries quality. Many early entries into the medium had sub par production values ranging from lighting to sound to even acting and writing. As a new and still emerging entertainment outlet, a lot of those deficiencies were often overlooked at the time. After Dr. Horrible, however, sub par was no longer acceptable. Many mediocre efforts fell by the wayside as a result, but a new batch of television-style creators filled the void—and then some—with quality webseries worthy of the Dr. Horrible stamp of approval.
While the vast majority of webseries that followed Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog were by non-industry insiders who realized that they could independently produce their own creations, the “revolution” in Hollywood that Joss Whedon had seemingly launched with his three-act online musical never actually materialized. “I definitely feel like I missed my window a little bit,” Whedon told the audience at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con. “After Dr. Horrible, I was waiting for everybody else to show up at the party. I was like, ‘OK, now we’re going to get this all together. We’re going to make a ton of Internet stuff.’” Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way.
Felicia Day—whose own webseries, The Guild, continues to excel—agrees with Whedon. “I thought it would happen faster,” she admitted to Cinemaspy.com in May 2011. “I assumed that filmmakers would come in and say, ‘Hey, I want to make this kind of content,’ but for some reason it didn’t attract that large scope. Dr. Horrible was just ahead of its time.” Day adds, however, that the observation may change very quickly due to a number of “high profile” webseries on the horizon.
Her assessment is not a case of wishful thinking. Kiefer Sutherland, for instance, chose a webseries as his first acting project following eight seasons of the FOX drama 24 with the Hulu-exclusive The Confession. Like with Joss Whedon, Sutherland’s star power generated a fair amount of publicity as well as turned The Confession into a financially beneficial investment for those involved. Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Brent Spiner likewise launched a webseries in 2011, Fresh Hell, and sci-fi fan favorite Ben Browder appears ready to enter the world of the webseries with Naught for Hire.
Despite such notable entries, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog still stands supreme within the webseries medium three years after its initial release. Much of this has to do with the creation itself and the staying power of the narrative that the Whedon clan crafted. It has been praised by many, and that praise is worthy.
On the other hand, Dr. Horrible still stands supreme because no other webseries since has come anywhere close to achieving the same success. Not from a quality standpoint, not from a financial standpoint. And certainly not from a cultural standpoint. Despite being only forty-five minutes in total length, for instance, Dr. Horrible is arguably just as popular as previous Whedon creations Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. But although Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog may overshadow other webseries, the medium itself is better and stronger because of it.
Maybe someday Dr. Horrible will be reduced to a mere footnote in the history of the webseries medium, but it’s doubtful. More likely it will continue to serve as an inspiration for many webseries still to come and a level of achievement for which to aspire. The three-act musical many not have invented the webseries but its appearance has had an immense impact on the medium nonetheless—an impact that is still felt three years later.
Anthony Letizia (July 11, 2011)
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