Re-imaginings are nothing new, especially in the world of Sci-fi and Fantasy…a world in which I toil most happily. Case in point, the last book I attempted to read for pleasure was one such re-imagining…

And if one were to grade a re-imagining solely on, say, inventiveness the The Looking Glass Wars would definitely deserve an A. I tend to judge books on actual writing ability, though, and this one probably rates a C- where that’s concerned. The idea is great, and I was very spirited in my reading for 100 pages or so…at a certain point, regardless of how much I wanted to ignore it, the plain fact that the book is not written well just became too much of a hurdle, and I put it down about 2/3 of the way in. Thanks to work, school, the kid, the website, and my own attempts to scratch out what fiction I may, my time for reading is limited and I just can’t devote energy to something that isn’t enthralling. I’ll likely finish it at some point, since I’ve never left a book unfinished indefinitely, but that time is not now.

Besides which, there is a wholly amazing re-imagining taking place right now on the Sci-fi channel, Tin Man.

While the special effects aren’t quite what I’d like…granted, it is a Sci-fi original, I understand that the budget probably wasn’t great…the writing is very good. I think for a re-imagining to be successful, it needs both a fresh take on the original content, and the writer (or writer’s) needs to be committed to actually creating something wholly new. In this way, the source material becomes a framework on which the actual (new) story is constructed. Broadly speaking, this is how Shakespeare worked.

And I think that Tin Man is a very good representation of this. By the end of the first episode, we had already seen nearly all of the “source” material used up and evolved, and the series was moving into its own creative territory. Plus the line by line writing is very, very good. This, in my mind, is the ultimate lynch pin. It is where The Looking Glass Wars fell short, in fact. All the imagination in the world cannot save a writer who is unable to construct a compelling sentence.

And it doesn’t hurt Tin Man that both Zooey Deschanel and Kathleen Robertson play the heroine and villain respectively…

There’s a couple of women that would definitely be on my stalking list if I still did that sort of thing…which I totally DO NOT…seriously, I’m completely cured…