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Caught the premiere of Tin Man last night on the Sci-Fi channel.

The big budget sci-fi retelling of L Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is a dark, steampunk-esque epic featuring robots, fierce monsters, magic, interdimensional travel, shape-shifting and drugs. Most of those things feature in some way in either the original book or the classic MGM movie -- so they shouldn't come as such a shock. But it's a thoroughly modern vision of the story with quite a few important changes:

* OZ is now "The O.Z" or "Outer Zone," a different dimension that was once a paradise until the rise to power of the evil witch Azkadellia (played by a sexy-as-she-is-scary Kathleen Robertson).

* Dorothy Gale is now "D.G." (Zooey Deschanel), a rebellious waitress who rides a motorcycle rather than a bicycle with a handle-bar basket.

* The Scarecrow is now "Glitch," (Alan Cumming) a once brilliant scientist who was tortured in one of Askadellia's prisons and had half his brain stolen and a zipper attached to his skull.

* The Tin Man (Neal McDonough) is now an ex-cop whose badge (and being sealed in a metal suit while watching a hologram of his family being tortured) gives him his name. He's out to kill those who took his family from him and took over the O.Z.

* The Cowardly Lion is now "Raw" (Raul Trujillo), a psychic man/wolverine who can heal wounds with a touch.

* The Wizard is now a drug addled nightclub performer who mixes philosophy and...well, incoherence...while trying to help D.G.

Can't tell you much more than that without revealing some of the show's many secrets -- some of which are only beginning to unravel. Overall I enjoyed the first installment very much - enough to make me anxious for the next.

Who else saw it? What'd you think?

If you missed it, you can watch all of part one here.