Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog landed in July 2008 as three acts of roughly 14 minutes each, released online with two-day gaps between them. It was built for internet distribution and almost nothing else, a musical comedy-drama filmed and set in Los Angeles about an aspiring supervillain chasing membership in the Evil League of Evil and a charity worker he cannot bring himself to talk to. It runs about 42 minutes in total. It won a Hugo, a People’s Choice Award and seven Streamy Awards. It remains the best thing to come out of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike.
Trailer, via doctorhorrible.
A Strike Project That Was Not a Stunt
Joss Whedon wrote the series with his brothers Zack and Jed and with Maurissa Tancharoen. The team put the musical together during the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The stated plan was to make something small and inexpensive that still looked professionally done, and to do it in a way that got around the issues being protested during the strike.
That origin story matters more than it sounds. A strike project could easily have been a stunt: a few famous friends, a camera, a joke. What came out instead is tightly built. Three acts, each around 14 minutes, each with its own songs and its own turn in the story. The scale is small on purpose. The craft is not.
Billy, Dr. Horrible, and the Ph.D. in Horribleness
Neil Patrick Harris plays Billy, who is also Dr. Horrible. He is a mad-scientist variety of supervillain, and he has a catchphrase: “I’ve got a Ph.D. in Horribleness.” He wants into Bad Horse’s Evil League of Evil. He builds inventions meant to take over the world and, by his own account, to push social change for the betterment of humanity.
His politics are a contradiction he does not seem bothered by. He calls it autocratic anarchy. His line is: “The world is a mess, and I just… need to rule it.” As Billy, away from the lab coat, he cannot manage a normal conversation with Penny. That gap between the two halves of the same man is the engine of the whole show. Harris plays both without letting either become the joke.
Captain Hammer Stops Him at Every Turn
Nathan Fillion is Captain Hammer, Dr. Horrible’s archenemy. He has super-human strength and near-invulnerability. He is also self-centered, and he harasses Dr. Horrible even when nothing about the situation calls for it. The show’s logline says Hammer stops Dr. Horrible at every turn, and that is close to literal.
Fillion is the funniest thing here, and the least sympathetic. Hammer is not a hero with a flaw. He is a bully with a fan base. The series never asks you to like him, and Fillion never plays for that. The result is a villain story where the villain is the one you root for, and the show knows it.
Penny, the Shelter, and the Shared Love Interest
Felicia Day plays Penny. She is the love interest for both men, and she works at a homeless shelter. The source describes her as idealistic and generous, someone who rose above a troubled past. She is the only person in the story trying to do something plainly good.
That is also the show’s weak spot, and it is worth saying so. Penny exists to be wanted by two men and to be failed by both. The series gives her warmth and almost no agency. Day makes her likable anyway, which is the performance doing work the writing does not. For a 42-minute musical that is a forgivable gap. It is still a gap.
Moist and the Evil Moisture Buddy
Simon Helberg plays Moist, Dr. Horrible’s friend and sidekick. His power is that he dampens things. That is the whole power. Dr. Horrible calls him “my evil moisture buddy.”
It is a one-joke character and the joke lands every time, mostly because Helberg plays it straight. Moist is also the clearest sign of what kind of show this is. The Evil League of Evil is a bureaucracy of mediocre powers, and Dr. Horrible’s ambition to join it is both sincere and ridiculous. The comedy comes from taking that ambition seriously.
Cameos From the Buffy and Angel Crew
Joss Whedon’s colleagues fill out the edges. Marti Noxon, an executive producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, plays a newsreader alongside Buffy and Angel writer David Fury. Doug Petrie and Drew Goddard, also Buffy and Angel writers, cameo as the supervillains Professor Normal and Fake Thomas Jefferson.
Jed, Joss and Zack Whedon all sing on the song Bad Horse Chorus. Zack also plays the man who rolls the gurney out of frame with Penny. Jed Whedon appears as the supervillain Dead Bowie. Tancharoen, Steve Berg and Stacy Shirk play superhero and supervillain groupies, and Tancharoen sings the background vocal on Everything You Ever.
None of this is padding. The cameos are the show’s social world, and they cost nothing, which was the point of the production.
Fifteen in Time’s Top 50 Inventions of 2008
The reception was not mild. On October 31, 2008, Time magazine named Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog number 15 in its Top 50 Inventions of 2008. It won the People’s Choice Award for “Favorite Online Sensation.” It won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.
At the first Streamy Awards in 2009, for web television, it took seven: Audience Choice Award for Best Web Series, Best Directing for a Comedy Web Series, Best Writing for a Comedy Web Series, Best Male Actor in a Comedy Web Series for Harris, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Music. It also won a 2009 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class – Short-format Live-Action Entertainment Program.
That is a lot of hardware for a strike side project. It is also the moment web television got a credential it could point to.
Where the Score Lands
The audience score on TMDB sits at 7.6 out of 10 across 570 votes, and that is about right, which is a rarer thing than it sounds. The number is not a rave and not a shrug. It reflects a show that is genuinely excellent at what it attempts and modest about how much it attempts.
What holds the score down is scale, not quality. Three acts of roughly 14 minutes is not enough room for Penny to be a person rather than a prize, and the show does not seem to notice. The middle act sags slightly between its best songs. Anyone arriving at Dr. Horrible expecting a full season will find a very good short film with two sequels attached.
What pushes it up is everything else. The songs are written to be sung, not endured, which is more than most musicals manage. Harris and Fillion are both doing career-best comedy work in a format that gave them no safety net and no notes. The production values beat the budget by a wide margin, which was the entire thesis of the project.
The real verdict is about what the show proved. Dr. Horrible showed that a small, cheap, professionally made thing could go straight to an audience, skip the machinery, and still collect a Hugo and an Emmy. Every web series that followed owes it something. The fact that it is also funny, and that Bad Horse Chorus will live in your head for a week, is the part that made the argument stick.
Score: 7.6 of 10.
By the Numbers
- Title: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
- Year: 2008
- Created by: Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon
- Network: Hulu
- Episodes: 3 acts, roughly 14 minutes each
- First aired: July 15, 2008
- Last aired: July 19, 2008
- Genres: Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- Cast: Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, Simon Helberg
- TMDB audience score: 7.6/10 (570 votes)
- Awards: 2009 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form; People’s Choice Award for “Favorite Online Sensation”; seven 2009 Streamy Awards; 2009 Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Special Class – Short-format Live-Action Entertainment Program
- Time ranking: #15 in Time’s Top 50 Inventions of 2008, named October 31, 2008
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