Friday night, the highly anticipated and controversial “Dollhouse” premieres on Fox. The show’s creator, Joss Whedon, was at New York Comic Con yesterday where he showed a sneak peak of Friday’s episode and shared a few spoilers with a crowd of thousands who gathered for a panel discussion and Q&A with the writer. Whedon has a cult-like following thanks to his earlier projects “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Angel”, “Serenity” and the internet hit, “Dr Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog”.

“Dollhouse” is a Sci-Fi drama about the “dollhouse” where “the dolls” have their personalities wiped clean and are imprinted with new personas that help them complete any number of jobs from crimes to fantasies, even the occasional good deed. The preview we saw at Comic Con opens with Echo (Eliza Dushku) at a club, dancing and having a good time with a man, when a van comes to pick her up. The van takes her to the dollhouse where her memories are erased.

“Dollhouse” is part of a Sci-Fi event night at Fox paired with “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” in the 8 p.m. slot. During the NYCC panel, Whedon commended Fox for putting them in the Friday night slot, allowing the show to gain an audience gradually. Whedon acknowledged the show “won’t have to get Monday numbers with “24″”.

Whedon’s hardcore fans will be happy to hear that no matter what the fate of “Dollhouse”, he has plenty of other projects in mind. During the Q & A session he said he always wanted to work on Broadway (maybe “Buffy the Musical” is on the way?) and said he is “pursuing the idea of creating more internet projects and finding out what’s up with Dr. Horrible”. He also mentioned he would love to do a costume/period piece noting they are more like Sci-Fi than people realize becuase “you don’t really know what the world is like, just like people won’t really know what our world is like in 100 years”.

The preview we saw was intriguing but I’m not sure how it will play out over the long haul. Whedon said they have filmed 7 episodes and “episode 6 is the key episode” so hopefully it will only get better. Are you going to watch “Dollhouse”? Do you think it will live up to the hype?