Toto recall

HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR This may be the darkest Oz yet.

Great, just what the universe needs: an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz that looks like The Matrix crapped on L. Frank Baum. And after generations of children have been terrified by the freaky antics of the flying monkeys (not to mention the truly horrific Jack Pumpkinhead in 1985’s abysmal Return to Oz), must we endure a tweaked-out extra-scary version For Grown-Ups? Can the inclusion of Richard Dreyfuss here be anything other than a harbinger of the suckpocalypse? Let’s just say, were we the gambling type, we’d be inclined to bet against Tin Man.

And we’d lose. Sci Fi’s Tin Man is a sumptuous, modern take on a classic that has us rethinking our ban on remakes. Zooey Deschanel stars as DG (recall Dorothy’s last name is Gale), a wide-eyed Kansas girl whose trip to Oz isn’t courtesy of an ill-fated attempt to run away, but rather a leap into the swirling cone of a tornado to escape the evil, leather-clad militaristic forces who’ve invaded her family’s home. These troops, we learn, are Azkadellia’s, née Wicked Witch’s, minions, who obey the evil sorceress’s every command.

Of course, the tornado carries DG to Oz, only here it’s “the O.Z.,” as in “Outer Zone,” and she isn’t greeted by the mayor of Munchkinland; she’s surrounded by diminutive warriors angrily pointing spears at her and speaking in clumsy rhymes. (We never said it was perfect.) DG teams up with Glitch (Alan Cummings), a lobotomized former genius with a zipper that keeps his head closed; Wyatt Cain (Neal McDonough), a torture victim DG and Glitch discover inside an ancient metal diving suit; and Raw (Raoul Trujillo), a psychic but petrified anthropomorphic feline. No singing, no dancing.

The three-part miniseries doesn’t stay true to the Baum story or the better-known film throughout—Dorothy’s quest to get back to Kansas becomes DG’s quest to find her real mother and sister and flesh out her family tree; there’s a sojourn to an Ice World of some kind; and Toto isn’t a dog so much as a shapeshifter. Those are the points where Tin Man loses its most fascinating asset: the miniseries’ ability to reinterpret the familiar aspects of the story. The Man Behind the Curtain (Dreyfuss) is now a drug-addicted cabaret performer who’s too high to tell the difference between his powers and his delusions? Yes, please. Azkadellia has magical, evil breast tattoos? Eh, that we could do without.

Mercifully, the contrast between new and old isn’t the only game Tin Man plays. It’s perhaps equally reliant on Star Wars motifs as it is on Oz ones. Azkadellia is Darth Vader with bosoms. As she kills one of her high-ranking deputies, we fully expect her to declare that he had “disappointed [her] for the last time,” and the way her cape billows as she marches around is no coincidence. Munchkinland is reimagined high in the trees, with rope bridges and wooden cages that are straight out of Ewok Village, and the snow scenes are just a tauntaun short of Hoth.

And that’s what we like best about Tin Man: Boy, does it ever know its target audience. (Maybe, more precisely: Boy, are we ever in it.) Tin Man isn’t looking for casual fans of entertainment. It has its sights set on minutiae fans, sci-fi nuts, those of us who’ll squeal with X-Files glee when Wyatt announces the rule in the O.Z. is “trust no one.” Tin Man’s steampunk aesthetic—kind of a mash-up between Victorian forms and technologically advanced functions—is on the up-and-up in the speculative fiction world, and the miniseries badly wants to tap that fanbase. With delightfully wry lines like “you flick the abacus” instead of “you do the math,” and “the great and terrible blah, blah, blah himself,” it shouldn’t be a problem.

Except that Tin Man is a tough sell, and appealing to the comic-book guys among us is a dangerous strategy. So we’ll just have to follow the major lessons of DG, or Dorothy, and remember there’s no place like home—and Tin Man is right at home on Sci Fi.

Tin Man has a brain, heart and nerve starting Sunday 2 at 8pm on Sci Fi, with parts two and three airing the following nights at the same time.