Part of me rolls my eyes, and another part of me cringes when I contemplate the premise of “Dollhouse,” Joss Whedon’s new television series for Fox which premieres tonight. Joy Press at Salon sums up the premise of the show:

It stars former “Buffy” star Eliza Dushku as Echo, a young woman — known on the show as an “Active” or “Doll” — sapped of her memories and free will, who is sold to rich clients to fulfill their needs and fantasies. For each assignment she is imprinted with a fresh personality, complete with new skills, intelligence and neurological information; sometimes she morphs into a sexbot, other times she takes on the life of a highly methodical negotiator. Echo and her fellow Actives live in a giant Zen loft called the Dollhouse, blissfully unaware that they are being remote controlled by a shadowy organization.

It sounds like a science-fiction extension of Law and Order: SVU. Do we really need another show where women = victim — and she looks sexy while she’s being exploited/manipulated/killed?

Even if we see this new show’s lineage more in shows like Charlie’s Angels or Alias, that doesn’t feel any more promising. In some ways, these types of shows are more insidious, purporting to revel in female empowerment and agency while really just exposing how television executives can’t imagine a powerful woman who isn’t a cartoonish, supermodel superhero.

Fox’s marketing of “Dollhouse,” moreover, seems to revel in all of my fears. In combination with their “Terminator” series, Fox decides to evoke 70s sexploitation films as it points out that “Friday’s Got Grindhouse,” starring the “Dames of Deception.” It might be a light-hearted parody, but the satire has no point other than to emphasize that you can “Double Your Pleasure” with women who are “Hotter than Hades.”

In this context, it should come as no surprise that …. I cannot wait to watch the “Dollhouse” premiere.

There’s a new Joss Whedon show on television! Hallelujah!

If you are not familiar with Whedon’s work already, here’s just two things you need to know:

1. All of my anxieties with representations of gender, sex and violence, as mentioned above, Whedon knows. In fact, the unabashed feminist doesn’t just get it, he spends most of his non-artistic energy working for organizations like Equality Now, which has a global mission to end violence and discrimination against women. And his art has always reflected, among a general humanistic sensitivity, a commitment to gender justice.

2. Whedon enjoys nothing more than taking a pop culture genre that we think we know and messing with it. His purpose isn’t simply to upset the conventions of the genre (in fact, he often has great reverence for the conventions) but to stretch and push them to encompass intelligent, often profound social commentary. Whedon gets all the benefits of pop culture without selling out or compromising his larger vision. More than anyone I have seen in the postmodern entertainment world, he is able to exploit the exploiter — and he almost always come out on top.

When you hear Whedon talk about “Dollhouse,” you begin to see how large the canvas for “Dollhouse” is in his mind. It appears to be an allegory for real-world sex trafficking and a way for him to explore many other intersections of sex, love and power.

Maureen Ryan, one of my favorite TV critics, wonders if Whedon can really pull it all off:

Whedon has more than proven in the past that he’s a master at creating dense mythologies that aren’t just pleasurable in their own right, but tell us complicated truths about what it means to be a human being. But these days, the broadcast networks positively flinch at the word “serialized” — they want standalone episodes that tell similar stories over and over again.

Whether Whedon can satisfy both his fans, who want all the nuanced complexity and ongoing story arcs he can dish out, and his corporate masters, who want newcomers to be able to join the show mid-season — well, that is the big question that hangs over “Dollhouse.”

All I know is that Whedon has as much of my time as he needs.