

Season 1, Episode 4
Written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain
Directed by Rod Hardy
Original Airdate: 6 March 2009
“That could lead to a coma state, or it could turn her into Carrie at the prom.”
Topher
REGULAR CAST
- Eliza Dushku as Echo
- Harry Lennix as Boyd Langton
- Fran Kranz as Topher Brink
- Tahmon Penikett as Paul Ballard
- Enver Gjokaj as Victor
- Dichen Lachman as Sierra
- Olivia Williams as Adele DeWitt
GUEST CAST
- Reed Diamond as Laurence Dominic
- Mark Ivanir as Cyril
- Liza Lapira as Ivy
- Toby Leonard Moore as Walton
- Anson Mount as Vitas
- Andrew Bowen as Scott
- Sarah McElligott as Nancy
- Tony Amendola as Atalo Diakos
CO-STARRING
- Kevin Will as Gerry
SYNOPSIS
A child’s first cry echoes in a remote mountain cabin. Snow blankets the world beyond the cliffside home, isolating the couple within. Echo, now a midwife, delivers their newborn, bringing life into the silence.
She wakes. The moment vanishes, wiped clean.
At the Dollhouse, Echo motions for Sierra to sit with her during lunch. Instinct guides them. Lubov joins. They are drawn together – not by memory, but something deeper. Topher and Boyd observe, fascinated by the flocking behaviour.
Adelle meets with a client. She reassures him that engagements remain confidential, but hers is a business of calculated risks. As she speaks, her real concern is elsewhere – on Ballard. A cryptic call to her unseen superior confirms it. He needs closure. They are masters at providing that.
Echo, now Taffy, struts through her reflection, confidence radiating through thigh-high boots and a smirk. She whispers her signature phrase: “Blue skies.” It is code, a cue. She isn’t just playing a role – she’s leading a job.
At a hotel bar, she drapes herself over the groom-to-be, a pawn in a staged bachelor party. The deception falls seamlessly into place, the hotel manager gently escorting her from the chaos, offering hush money. It’s a setup, a well-orchestrated illusion.
The moment shifts. Taffy disables the manager, calls her crew. “I’m in.” They move. A vault stands before them. Inside – priceless stolen artifacts, the most coveted among them, an ancient piece of the Parthenon.
Ballard limps into his apartment, pain meds in hand. Lubov appears again, pleading for sanctuary. The Borodins will kill him. Ballard tests him – Caroline’s name, the picture. Lubov feigns ignorance. The game between them continues, layered in deception.
Back in the vault, betrayal detonates within the team. The antiquities expert turns, killing a crewmate with a blade before escaping, locking the others inside. Taffy barely reacts. Confident, unfazed – until the static cuts through her call. She stares blankly. “Did I fall asleep?”
Echo is gone. Topher watches the monitors. Something is wrong. The two remaining thieves panic. Echo curls into herself, small, lost. “Can I go now?” Her programmed confidence has dissolved. One of the men strikes her.
Boyd intercepts the traitor, forcing him to drop the stolen artifact. The job is falling apart, but the greater danger lies within the vault.
Topher’s realization spreads fast – Echo has been remote-wiped. No explanation, no reversal. Whoever did this, they hijacked her mind, severed her programming, leaving nothing but confusion. Adelle orders a solution: Sierra is imprinted as Taffy.
Inside the vault, Echo stares at a Picasso painting, fixated on the broken image. It doesn’t look right. The remaining crew member speaks – art isn’t about looking right, but feeling right. Picasso painted what is. We all start whole. Then we break. Sierra, now Taffy, prepares to take the rescue job.
Echo listens as her crewmate explains their inevitable capture. When the security doors open, there will be no sky. Only prison. The thief decides. If the vault doors open, they won’t surrender. They’ll fight their way out. Then, the hour runs out. Echo finds her phone. Sierra’s voice instructs her, guiding her through the escape process step by step. Echo follows, drilling, spraying resin. Glass shatters. The lights die. Dominic readies a kill order.
The vault doors then open.
Echo refuses the gun – she won’t use it. Chaos unfolds. A syringe finds flesh. Gunfire erupts. Smoke grenades fill the air. A single chance remains. Echo rushes into the unknown. Boyd reaches the breach in time to find her, stumbling through, pulling the injured hacker along.
Elsewhere, Ballard returns home, resigned to his frustration. Lubov waits, steady, watching.
Echo undergoes her treatment, wiped clean. Adelle and Dominic stand over the stolen artifact. The deal is done. The client gets their prize. The traitor gets his fate. Topher questions everything – Alpha is alive. Adelle confirms it. They failed to kill him.
Echo moves through the Dollhouse, through water, through steam. Sierra smiles at her. Echo traces the outline of a fractured face in condensation, as if something still lingers beyond the wipe.
TRIVIA
This is one of two episodes where multiple Actives have the same imprint identified by a catchphrase. In this case, the imprint is Taffy and her catchphrase is “blue skies.” The other one is Terry Karrens from Belle Chose whose catchphrase is “goodness gracious.”
CONTINUITY
Paul is recovering from the gunshot wound he received in Stage Fright.
Boyd seems doubtful that dolls are volunteers while observing Echo, Sierra, and Victor. Echo’s backstory, touched upon in Ghost and explored further in Echoes and Getting Closer, as well as Sierra and Victor’s, shown respectively in Belonging and Stop-Loss, will reveal that of the three dolls, only Victor actually volunteered.
Topher concludes that only one person can achieve a remote wipe and it’s Alpha, and is proven right by the end of the episode. Alpha will be shown to have a profound understanding of the imprinting technology in Omega where he has his own imprinting chair, A Love Supreme where he has figured out a way to inject viruses into imprints, and Epitaph Two: Return in which he helps Topher assemble his device.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
EPISODE
Stage Fright / True Believer
STORY ORDER
Stage Fright / True Believer









