The Fox television network has announced its mid-season schedule and it included some surprises.  Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, which was originally scheduled for Mondays (see “Genre-Fest on Fox Primetime”), has been moved to Friday nights where it will debut at 9pm (ET, PT) on Friday, February 13th with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as a lead-in.  Whedon fans, who remember how Fox exiled Whedon’s Firefly to low-rated Friday nights where it died a horrible, wrenching ratings death, will certainly not be happy with the Friday night timeslot for Dollhouse.

Fox had originally planned to use Dollhouse as a lead-in for 24 on Monday nights.  The new schedule has the proven ratings winner House serving that function starting in February.  Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which currently airs at 8pm (ET, PT) on Mondays and has scored only modest ratings lately, shifts to Friday night where it will air at 8pm (ET, PT).  Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse will form a Friday night science fiction block on Fox and might even serve as a sort of channel-switching science fiction lead-in to Battlestar Galactica, which will be airing its final season at 10pm (ET, PT) starting on the SciFi Channel.