The winner by vote is Mike Mueller, for "Because I have a perfectly good see-saw that's just sitting there. It's just sad."

And the random choice winner is David Pickett! (His entry, for the curious, was  "So i could talk to myself without looking crazy.")

Congratulations gentlemen, and thanks to every who participated! And a big thank you to Scott Neumyer from Click Communications for letting me do this.

If you didn't get one here, fret not. The Dollhouse Season One DVD hits the streets next Tuesday. All 13 episodes (including the unaired "Epitaph One")  and the unaired pilot, "Echo," plus commentaries, deleted scenes and tons of features. See my mini-review here.  Preorder it at Amazon for the best price: at the moment, $29.99 for the regular one, $47.99 for Blu-Ray.

Since Saturday there's been a graphic on BashingInMinds.com leading you to vote for the entries you liked, but the link was wrong. You could still find where to vote by searching or scrolling through posts or from my Twitter posts about it, but visitors to the site wouldn't find it easily.

The link has been fixed, and so I'm adding an extra day until closing the voting. Here's where to go. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Just head here and tell me why you'd hire a doll.

Two sets will be given away; one to a random winner, and one to the entry you select from the best 10, which I'll be posting tomorrow.

Winners will be announced Tuesday, July 21, so folks going to Comic-Con will know if they should be trying to buy one or not.

Don't miss your chance!

Update: three days after ordering and being charged three times, my duplicate "authorization" charges have finally been removed from my account.

So, here's what's going on.

First the countdown till the time we could order the Dollhouse SDCC Limited Edition DVD set ended, but the order form did not appear. Instead, the countdown started counting up.

Then the order form appeared, but it rejected more credit cards than it approved and kept giving errors or blank pages. Problem: refreshing the page, using your back button or pressing "submit" more than once apparently caused it to try your credit card again, resulting in multiple charges on the cards of many fans, me included. According to Fox these multiple charges are "authorization charges only" and will be refunded/canceled within one to two business days, depending on your bank.

And the promised confirmation e-mails were not coming out.

Then they brought down the page and redirected it to the main Fox store while they worked on the problem.

Things seem to be a bit more stable now. One of the credit card problems was fixed (if you typed in 2009 for your credit card expiration date, it only read the 20 part and not the 09 part, causing the validation to bounce) and orders are now going through. Give it a shot!

I just received my confirmation e-mail, about 8 hours after I received my confirmation number.

About the sneak peek of "Epitaph One" we were promised: In your confirmation e-mail you get a JAGTAG, which you must take a picture of with your cellphone and send it to a specified number. Also, you must be a customer of Verizon, AT&T or Alltel, none of which was mentioned by Fox beforehand. Also, your phone must be the right sort to handle the content, which mine apparently is not. From reports it was JagTag's problem, as their own site was giving up errors. A few hours later, I finally received the video to my phone (even though earlier I got a text message telling me my phone wasn't good enough), and there it was: 25 seconds of a confrontation involving a familiar face. And there's Felicia Day! Hi Felicia! By the next day the clip was posted at Dollverse.com for everyone to see.

I don't know what the deal ultimately was, but this promotion had serious problems on every level. Glad to see they seem to have it patched up now — and I don't know if they've ever tried anything like this before — but I'm glad to see the mood among fans is mostly tolerant, with some very understandable beefs.

All of this is to get the limited SDCC edition Dollhouse Season One, numbered, with different packaging (see above) and a note from creator Joss Whedon. Only 5,000 will be produced, and you'll have to pick it up at the con or have a friend pick it up at the Fox booth at the con (#4129) starting Wednesday at 6 pm.for you, and you'll need to provide your friend's e-mail address when you order.  One per customer.

$49.95 for the regular set, $69.95 for Blu-Ray. Or you could just order the regular edition from Amazon for just $31.99 (or $48.99 for Blu-Ray).

Or you could try to win one from me…

Season one of Joss Whedon's controversial series Dollhouse will be hitting the streets on July 28, but you can win one a week early. All you have to do is tell me this:

Why would you hire a doll?

Please keep comments under 50 words or so, and relatively PG-13. Otherwise, go wild. Please use the form below; entries posted as a comment to this post will not be entered.

Entries must be received by midnight EST on Friday, July 17, 2009, and there will be two ways to win. First, I'll select the best 10 and put those up for a vote, winner gets a DVD set. And I'll select a name at random from all the entries for the other set. Winners will be announced Tuesday, July 21, so folks going to Comic-Con will know if they should be trying to buy one or not…

This is for the regular DVD, not the Blu-Ray, and winners will receive their prizes a week or so after the release date (they won't be shipped to me until then). Must be over 18 to enter, one entry per person, U.S. and Canada only. Your information will be used only for this contest and will not be saved or given to other parties.

And don't miss my mini-review of the set here.

Good news! I can tell you about most of the upcoming Dollhouse DVD set!

Bad news: reviewers only get the first 3 discs with the aired episodes, but not the final disc with the extra goodies. So I can't tell you about the unaired episode 13 "Epitaph One," or the original unaired pilot, or the features, or the deleted scenes. FOX wants to keep those under wraps until the release date and I can understand that even as I secretly hoped their shipping department would mistakenly send me the wrong disc. But I did get to listen to the commentaries from creator Joss Whedon and star Eliza Dushku, and those were well worth it.

The show

The Dollhouse is an illegal underground company spoken of in whispers, where you can hire an attractive young person for literally any purpose you can imagine. These people, known as "actives," have had their memories completely removed so that they can have new memories and new personalities imprinted in them to order. Actives can temporarily become perfect lovers, thieves, assassins, companions, detectives, whatever the very well-heeled clients want, and afterward their new identities are stripped away again so they're ready for the next engagement. Only, one of them is starting to remember…

Dollhouse stars Eliza Dushku as Caroline/Echo; Harry Lennix as Boyd Langton, Echo's handler; Fran Kranz as Topher Brink, the amoral genius behind the Dollhouse tech; Olivia Williams as Adelle DeWitt, the boss of the place;  Reed Diamond as her creepy chief of security Laurence Dominic; Enver Gjokaj as Victor; Dichen Lachman as Sierra; and Tahmoh Penikett as FBI agent Paul Ballard. Regular guest stars included Amy Acker as staff physician Dr. Claire Saunders and Miracle Laurie as Mellie. The series had an uneven start, with the first episodes being mostly standalones that simply showcased what actives from the Dollhouse are hired to do with only a passing nod to any ongoing story arcs or show mythology.

The commentaries

Now, there are three types of DVD commentaries. There's the one where the people talking get caught up in the show and forgot to comment on anything, but I've rarely seen that on a Whedonverse DVD. Talkative bunch, they are. Then there's the type where the commentators are just having a blast, reminiscing and cracking each other up and offering funny little behind the scenes moments. That's what Joss and Eliza do in their commentary on the aired pilot episode, "Ghost."

"Ghost" sets the stage for the series, with an active named Echo (Dushku) being sent out on various assignments while an FBI agent searches for the woman she used to be. Joss is in full goofball form, Eliza is keeping right up with him, and they joke about sexing it up for the network, Eliza's shirt-dress, Amy Acker's "mood scars," the problems of writing hostage negotiation scenes without the slightest idea how they go, why things seem to go wrong in the Dollhouse every week, and much, much more. I'm wildly tempted to just transcribe the whole thing but I'll control myself and stick with my favorite line from Joss about the broad strokes of the plot:  "Subtlety is for little men."

You don't get a lot of introspection about the complex themes of the show but it's great fun to hear them point out some of the same incongruities that the fans did. There's also a moment in the end when they say something about the people in the closing "Alpha" scene that I don't recall as ever being mentioned in the show, so watch for that and let me know if I'm right.

Then there's the third type of commentary, where the creator of the show tells us exactly what he was thinking, what effect he was going for, what moral questions he was asking, and how the show was crafted. That's what Joss gives us in "Man on the Street."

"Man on the Street" is the 6th episode and teh one where the show really took off. Joss wrote and shot it like a second pilot and it feels that way, giving us a very different show than we'd previously seen. From this point on every episode moved the plot forward with secrets and hidden agendas and wheels within wheels, and a headfirst dive into the moral complexities of using human beings.

The show itself is packed until you can't believe they fit it all into an hour minus commercials. Every moment contains a revelation or development, every action has several layers of meaning, and everyone involved has a story to tell. And so does Joss. I thought this was similar to his non-stop, detailed commentary on Firefly's "Objects in Space" in the way he explains how carefully they presented the story to evoke specific expectations in the fans which would be dashed to the ground moments later, such as the love scene between Ballard and Melli:

"They are clearly into each other," he said. "And he wants her to help him, and she believes him. This is a huge thing. What it is, of course, is me saying 'I'm going to kill her now.'"

And he talked about the moral aspect, the most troubling and interesting aspects of this show. Fans have been discussing the competing issues of the Dollhouse and its employees, clients, and enemies, and while he doesn't provide any answers, he does address the questions head on. Is it right to sell people if they've previously agreed to be sold? Once a person has agreed to let their body be used, does it make a difference who's using it? If you don't remember what happened to you, did it really happen? What makes a person want to rent another human being? What person would consent to be rented, and why? And when you take away a person's memories, is there anything left?

"Man on the Street" was the first episode to tackle these questions head on. Interstitial clips of a news feature on the "urban legend" of the Dollhouse tell us what the public  thinks of the idea, and we see a schlubby Internet mogul (played beautifully by Patton Oswalt) with a very good reason to hire an active. The episode mixes political correctness and layers of moral entanglement and the fact that they can do that is, according to Joss,  "what scares me about the show and is absolutely what makes it worth making."

The extras

As I said I haven't seen the extras so I can't comment on them. And I don't know if the screener copies I have are identical to what you'll be buying, so the fact that I couldn't find any easter eggs may not mean that you won't (I'm hoping for bloopers, me).

I can tell you that the final episode, "Omega," which aired without a promoted scene that was cut for time, is presented here just as it aired. Hopefully the deleted scenes feature will include the missing Sierra/November bounty hunter segment.

The stats

The regular Dollhouse DVD is presented in widescreen format with English and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital plus English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles. The Blu-ray version is in 16×9 aspect ratio with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Master Audio.You get all 12 episodes, with the two commentaries I described above. Then you get the never-before-seen episode "Epitaph One" with commentary by writers Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, the original unaired pilot "Echo," deleted scenes, and the featurettes  “Making Dollhouse,”  “Coming Back Home,” “Finding Echo,”  “Designing the Perfect Dollhouse,” and  “A Private Engagement.”

Dollhouse Season One goes on sale July 28. You can preorder it from Amazon now ($31.99 for the regular one, $48.99 for Blu-Ray), or if you're going to the San Diego Comic-Con you can get a limited edition copy with a note from Joss.

And there may be other ways to get one, he said foreshadowingly…

All photos (C) Fox Broadcasting Co.

Dollhouse Season One will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 28, but if you're going to the San Diego ComicCon you can get one the week before. Even better, it'll be a limited edition, numbered, with different packaging (see above) and a note from creator Joss Whedon. Only 5,000 will be produced. Sweet!

If you're going to the con, stop by the Fox Store on Monday, July 6, starting at 10 am PST. You'll need to take your order confirmation, plus a photo ID to the Fox booth (#4129) starting Wednesday at 6 pm. If you're not going to the con but you have a friend willing to pick it up for you, you'll need to provide your friend's name and e-mail address when you place your order. Only one per customer.

They're not cheap, mind you. $49.95 for the regular set, $69.95 for Blu-Ray.

Click here for more details!

If that's too rich, or if you don't have a way to pick up a ComicCon one, you can order the regular edition from Amazon for just $31.99 (or $48.99 for Blu-Ray).

And check back here, within the next few days I'll be posting a mini-review and telling how you how you can win a free Dollhouse Season 1 DVD.

This is only good today, so don't miss out!

Sony's having a contest to promote the new Blu-Ray edition of The Ghostbusters, and it can get you to Comic-Con! Just head here and enter for your chance to win roundtrip airfare, 3 nights at the Embassey Suites, 2 days for 2 people at the San Diego Comic-Con, and more! Or lots of Ghostbuster-related merchandise; shirts, hats, the usual.

You can also head to the main Ghostbusters movie site to put yourself into the team, or upload a video of your Ghostbuster tryout.

The Ghostbusters Blu-ray edition is coming June 16th.

If the DVDs and  soundtrack isn't enough – and it isn't – go check out the free Dr. Horrible comics at Dark Horse Presents. First up is "Captain Hammer: Be Like Me," written by Zack Whedon, drawn by Eric Canete and colored by Dave Stewart. Excellent look at Captain Hammer's life before the events of the show, and hilarious all by itself. Read it here.

Then there's "Moist: Humidity Rising," Dr. Horrible's sidekick's awesome origin! Well, kind of awesome. Well, not really. I wasn't as impressed with this one, even though Zack penned it as well (art by Farel Dalrymple and Dan Jackson). It hits all the points – got his powers, met Billy, dreamed henchmen dreams – without any memorable lines or interesting twists or much plot at all. It's just… there. Which, come to think of it, also describes Moist, so maybe it works after all. Read it here.

And out this week, "Penny: Keep Your Head Up," by Zack Whedon and Jim Rugg, a sweet tale of her activist beginnings.