L. Frank Baum probably never realized his 1901 allegory on Populism in the form of a classic children's book would become a 2007 made-for-TV miniseries on the SciFi channel.
Last night, however, was the premiere of "Tin Man," a modern interpretation of Baum's "The Wizard of Oz." The second installment of the three-part series will air tonight at 9 p.m.
"Tin Man" vaguely resembles the "Wizard of Oz" story everyone is familiar with, except for a few slight details: Dorothy is now D.G. (played by Zooey Deschanel), a young girl from the Midwest whose parents tell her to jump into a giant cyclone to escape mob-like guys who are out to kill her.
D.G. finds herself in an unknown land surrounded by little men who look like a combination of turkeys and Native Americans. Much scarier than munchkins, they capture her, put her in a giant birdcage and steal her locket.
Inside the cage, she meets Glitch, played by the always-entertaining Alan Cumming, who has a gaping hole in his head which can be sealed with a convenient zipper. With her brainless Scarecrow-like character firmly in place, it's easy to guess who D.G. meets next on her journey: the Tin Man himself - only this guy isn't made of metal. He goes by Cain (Neal McDonough) and is a gruff and tough former police officer - and, that's right, he lacks a heart.
Grudgingly, Cain joins D.G. and Glitch as they continue on in search of D.G.'s parents who somehow also got sucked into the mysterious cyclone, which is actually a portal to an alternate universe known as the Outer Zone or O.Z.
If this sounds confusing, it's because the majority of the two-hour premiere episode is just that. Parallels to the well known Baum story are obviously present, but the science fiction aspects of this modern-day retelling make the trajectory of the story muddled at best.
D.G. meets her next travel companion, Raw (Raoul Trujillo), when she releases him from some sort of tree sealed in plastic wrap (actually the least of the bizarre happenings in the O.Z.), thus completing her troupe.
Up to this point, the plot more or less keeps with the original story, though some aspects become unrecognizable. Throughout the episode, an evil sorceress named Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson) demands that her cronies find an emerald that will ensure her rule of the land. It becomes clear that D.G. stands in the way of her finding it. Azkadellia's not the Wicked Witch of the West, though; she turns out to be D.G.'s sister who tried to kill her when the two were children. Further complicating things, the parents D.G. grew up with are actually robots programmed to love and care for her in the years before she was sent back to the O.Z. Oh, and Richard Dreyfus plays Mystic Man, a person who once had the answers to all the world's questions but now finds himself drugged up and part of a cheap cabaret act in a seedy, prostitute-ridden, Central City due to Azkadellia's wickedness.
There's shockingly still more convolution involved in the telling of this story: D.G.'s real mother may or may not be buried under an icy tundra and she's the only one who knows where the emerald can be found.
Though the plot teeters on total insanity, "Tin Man" is not without its positives. The dialogue is at times laughably awful, but in a charming, bad science fiction movie sort of way.
It is unclear whether or not "Tin Man" takes itself seriously, but last night's episode ended with Azkadellia warning, "There's no place like the Outer Zone" and releasing computer-generated bats from tattoos on her breasts, hinting that it probably does not.
And for that, we can appreciate SciFi's effort to reinvent such a cherished story, however delightfully unsuccessful its attempt may be.
