If It Only Had a Heart

Like Alice falling through her looking glass, most truly enduring fantasy stories which feature a female as the central character involve falling/traveling to an alternate and highly stylized and exaggerated version of reality. And arguably a reality which exists as a dream-like vision with symbols and motifs taking the heroine on an internal journey for the purpose of ultimately learning something significant about herself.

The story of the Wizard of Oz, specifically the adaptation onto the big screen staring the fabulous Judy Garland as Dorothy, has endured as possible the most famous and iconic example of this formula. It’s possible to suggest the film has even transcending it’s literary origins to become the most accepted and appreciated version of the story. And if Oz represents a trip through the imagination, the myriad of adaptations it has engendered are a testament to the scope of that imagination. From the original film, to The Wiz, the book and extremely popular musical Wicked, to the newly re-imagined version to be found in the Sci Fi channel’s miniseries Tin Man.

Unlike Wicked, which shuffles Dorothy off to the side to focus on the main character Elphaba (a take on the initials of L. Frank Baum), a peculiar and strong minded girl who grows up to be the Wicked Witch of the West, Tin Man instead re-invents Dorothy, into DG, a daydreaming and motorcycle riding waitress. Unknowingly, D.G. has her origins in ‘The O.Z.’ – short for Outer Zone, but which unfortunately does little but make me constantly wonder whether Marissa is going to show up – as a princess who was sent away as a child for her own safety.

Her well known companions have had similarly sweeping makeovers, with the titular Tin Man cleverly characterized as a former cop who was incased in a tin prison and forced to watch a projecting of his family’s suffering for years, burning away all but the quest for revenge in his heart.

The idea of D.G. as not only the princess, but also the sister of the Wicked Witch, here named Azkadellia – though it’s fair to assume that DG isn’t in danger of being crushed by any houses. Initially she comes across as a hybrid of sorts which is less based on Dorothy as it is Ozma, the princess and ruler of Oz in L. Frank Baum’s series of books. Using familial ties to bind the three central women together within the story, their mother becomes a Glinda of sorts, as the original bearer of knowledge and power who gives DG a mystical gift and helps set her upon her quest of self-discovery.

In the first installment of the mini-series, DG is a terrifically gung-ho protagonist, ready to jump into danger to help strangers and find her own way out of precarious situations. Armed with a mystical mark on her palm, and a lifetime of stories meant to prepare her for her journey, she embarks on it as the driving force rather than the timid child helped along her way by her adopted band of protectors.

And though this new version of Dorothy isn’t necessarily as intriguing or engaging as Elphaba, in the truly original lens Gregory McGuire used to transport us back into Oz, she is strong and bold, growing in confidence and ability as she finds her way through her homeland.

Perhaps it’s because Elphaba (and if you haven’t already, Wicked is well worth reading) helped paint the techni-colored land of Oz with a few more shades of grey than black and white, but the most disappointed aspect of the new miniseries so far is the two-dimensional nature of Azkadellia, herself. So far, she seems driven by nothing more than pure greed and ambition, which helps drives the story along, but doesn’t do much to add any depth or emotion to it.

And this is perhaps the biggest weakness of the story in general. It’s long on clever throwbacks to familiar situations and characters from The Wizard of Oz, but short on heart and truly engaging emotions. DG, herself, has motivations which are understandable, if not tremendously emotionally engaging.

If the original Dorothy was an example that you can take the girl out of Kansas, but you can’t take the Kansas out of the girl, what they’ve done in Tin Man, essentially, is to take the Kansas out of Dorothy. Since it was that origin which connected her fundamentally to the audience, the tangible loss of it, though subtle, is still there.

By making her quest for re-discovering Oz as her home, it is a journey which leads her emotionally further away from the audience rather than trying to make her way back to our more familiar sense of home. Somehow it means less to not be in Kansas anymore, if you weren’t ever really home there to begin with. And if the story is taking that sense of pathos out of the equation, to be as effective and endearing it should be there has to be some element which takes its place.

Or perhaps if it had the cleverly veiled, scathing political allegories which were at the heart of the original book, there would be something solid and tangible enough to ground the story despite it's fantastic elements. Fantasy for it's own sake is rarely the recipe for a good story, no matter the form it might take.

While we haven’t seen it yet, I’m hoping that the story will find its way, and it's heart, as DG does, but I'm afraid nothing in the Wizard's bag of goodies is going to solve all of its problems.