As usual, after just seeing one episode, many people here are too quick to write a new show off. I thought the first episode did a very good job of laying out the plot and introducing the concept of 'actives' such as Eliza's role 'Echo'. Many seem to agree that Buffy and Angel were Joss Whedon's best work and something he hasn't been able to top, but even those 2 shows (which I'm a huge fan of) failed to capture me from the first episode the way Dollhouse did. Instead they started to grow on me far into the second season or even further, until I one day realized I really loved them. As far as I'm concerned, Dollhouse kicked off with far better episode than they did, so I'll stay optimistic.
Also I'd have to disagree with a comment made earlier that the following episodes can only deliver a single-episode story with a new character, without being able to relate to 'Echo' or having a greater story-arc. It was quite obvious that 'Echo' is having flashes of memory and seems to be remembering fragments of things that were supposed to have been wiped. While there probably will be many single-episode stories like the kidnapping in this pilot, I can easily see a story-arc forming over the whole series, which Joss Whedon has done successfully before (again Buffy and Angel, with the single-episode creepy crawlies to dispatch and a bigger story forming over that).
Anyway, all over I think it's a great start, and while it's a wait and see to how well the story will develop, I'm still giving this an 8/10, just for that.