On the (completely awesome — more about that later) set of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon gave reporters at the TCA press tour an explanation for his recent revelation that his highly anticipated new series is reshooting its pilot. The same thing happened with Whedon's Firefly the last time he worked with Fox — but Whedon told reporters that Dollhouse is in no great danger.

When Whedon turned in the first episode to Fox, "I could sense some hesitation about what I'd given them, and I understood why," he said. "I believe that first story works very well, but I also believe that their concerns about the audience coming into that world a little more simply were valid."

So, rather than try to re-cut what he'd already shot, Whedon proposed keeping that episode as a second episode and creating a new pilot that would introduce the characters in a slightly different way. "There are a lot of aspects of how [the characters] interact that we were planning on showing, and so what's a nice one to put up front?" Whedon said. "It was kind of nice to do a dry run and then say, 'What is absolutely the most iconic way to introduce this character, and this character, and this character?'"

Eliza Dushku, who was also there to show reporters around the set, joked that they also needed to reshoot because she didn't wear her leather pants in the original first episode (though her character did, apparently, make good use of the co-ed showers Whedon had built on set — and will again!).

Whedon and Dushku both seemed confident, and while I won't give away too many details from the set tour just yet, I will say that it was a very expensive-looking place that Fox clearly has a great deal of money invested in. But I'm wondering if this news makes any of you out there feel nervous or wary about the show's future. (If something bad does happen to the show, of course, there's already a legion of fans waiting in the wings to save it . . . )

Photo courtesy of Fox