The new four-hour series, made by the same people behind last year's surprise hit Tin Man, will star DS9's Colm Meaney as the King of Hearts (with Kathy Bates, Misery's Annie Wilkes, as the Queen of Hearts), Tim Curry as the Dodo and io9 favorite Matt Frewer as the White Knight. Primeval's Andrew Lee Potts, meanwhile, will play (the apparently-no-longer-Mad) Hatter, while Alessandro Juliani - AKA BSG's traitorous Gaeta - teams up with SGI: Stargate Universe's Zak Santiago as 9 and 10 of Clubs, respectively.

The mini-series is being described as "a modern day take" on the Lewis Carroll original, with Alice (Caterina Scorsone) updated to a twentysomething who ends up going down the wrong rabbit hole at the wrong time. The series will debut in December.

'Alice' miniseries rounds up cast [Hollywood Reporter]

At a press roundtable for the upcoming release of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, McDonough told reporters that SciFi is planning to bring Tin Man back as a regular series after it became the channel's most watched show ever last year:

Last year, I had the great fortune to play Wyatt Cain in Tin Man, that could have been my favorite performance of anything I've done. That was a character that was really close to me... I do enjoy playing villains, and I had a great run the last year or so doing it. I certainly would love to go back and visit a guy like Wyatt Cain, whteher its Tin Man the series, which wenve talked about, or just to explore the character [in some way.]

When asked whether a Tin Man series was a possibility, McDonough replied,

It is, yeah. Sci Fi and [producer] Robert Halmi are talking about it. We were going to start up when I got back from Street Fighter, and then [Desperate] Housewives came along, and we weren't ready yet. So I said, let's do some Housewives and let's see if we can get Tin Man done when I come back. It's definitely a possibility, they just talked about it a few days ago. They would like to do it.

Does this mean weekly Alan Cumming and Zooey Deschanel may be in our future? If so, we can't wait.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li comes out February 27.

• Kraftwerk — "We Are Robots": The original video for this song came out back in 1978, and they released an updated version in 1991. During their 1981 concert tour they used mannequins to perform as themselves onstage in a bizarre "robots singing about robots" moment.
• Peter Miser — "Scent of a Robot": Pete Miser is actually Pete Ho, an asian-american hip hop rapper who breaks beats in New York City. This robot video features cool CGI versions of Pete becoming a robot.
• Flight of the Conchords — "The Humans Are Dead": Probably the finest post-human robot song is one written for the robots of the future by the humans of today, just so they'll have something to dance the funky robot to, on our mass graves.
• Bjork — All Is Full Of Love": One singing Bjork robots would be pretty creepy, but imagine what would happen with two of them singing with each other. Now you can see it for yourself.
• Beck — "Hell Yes": This video was directed by Garth Jennings of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and features the world's (at the time) only four QRIO robots doing some fan dancing.
• Daft Punk — "Robot Rock": Daft Punk already thinks that they are robots, and they go out of their way to hide their humanity from audiences. So who better than robots to provide some of the first music for robots?
• Styx — "Mr. Roboto": This video is about Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (ROCK) hiding inside a "roboto" prison guard robot to escape from jail. Of course, this will just give away that secret to real robots, so now we're screwed.

The Batmobile from Batman Begins. This was the first on-screen version of Batman's muscle car that didn't just look like a cheesy toy car. Instead of the stretched-out roadster of previous movies, director Christopher Nolan opted for a compact, tank-like design. In "attack mode" the driver shifts to the middle of the car, in a more secure prone position. This car doesn't look like it's only designed to impress Kim Basinger.
Top speed: 110 mph, plus jet engine and adjustable control surfaces let it jump 30 feet without a ramp.

The DeLorean from the Back To The Future movies. This car's main superpower is making those movies look incredibly dated. But it also travels in time if you feed it enough plutonium. And after a visit to the year 2015, it also gains the ability to fly, with wheels that turn sideways and become thrusters.
Top speed: A regular DeLorean could reach 124 mph. It needs to reach 88 mph to time-travel.

The flying taxi from The Fifth Element. It looks just like a regular cab, but it can fly. It handles amazingly well, judging from some of the teeny openings Bruce Willis manages to steer it through during the high-speed cop chase. And it can stop on a dime to hide behind billboards.
Top speed: Unclear, but it's fast. The original movie script says: "Korben and his flying taxi are absolute masters of the air. The cops have trouble following him."

The self-folding car from that SciFi Channel ad. Long after people have forgotten Flash Gordon and Tin Man, they'll still be passing around this ad. It looks like a regular pick-up truck, until the driver presses a button. Then it folds up to the size (and weight) of a golf ball.
Top speed: no clue.

The Whomobile on Doctor Who. Stranded on Earth in the early 1970s, the Doctor started dressing like Prince. Except instead of driving a little red Corvette, he pimped out an antique roadster named Bessie to go super fast. Then he built his own spaceship-looking car. With huge honking fins! Because, of course, an alien trapped on Earth has to stay incognito at all costs.
Top speed: 150 mph (in real life), plus the Whomobile can fly (using dodgy greenscreen.)

The Spinner from Blade Runner. Deckard's cop car flies, but also has vertical take-off and landing (VTOL). It uses regular internal combustion, plus antigrav and a jet engine. It also directs air downwards to create lift. And it has a pretty sweet glass cockpit.
Top speed: Deckard mentions a fellow cop was going 150 mph when he went off a cliff.

KITT, from the Knight Rider TV show and TV movies. KITT was a Pontiac Trans AM with a super-computer that could talk to Michael (its driver) and even drive itself. (Plus KITT prints money in one episode, which could be handy.) The new Knight Rider, airing in February, will feature a new KITT that can launch a mini-car drone and fire a rocket launcher
Top speed: 300 mph, plus a "turbo boost" lets you jump over obstacles.

The Lexus from Minority Report. Lexus designed a special flying car for Tom Cruise to zip around the city of 2054 in. The car includes an electric engine, body panels that change color at a voice command, doors and ignition that require a DNA match, and "auto valet."
Top speed: According to Lexus, this car can get up to about 350 mph. We have a winner!

First there was the prissy alien Cumming in Flintstones:

Then there was the campy, fey, matching-crazy-suit bad guy Flegan Floop in Spy Kids:

Butch-but-swishy Nightcrawler from X-Men 2 came next:

And let's not forget Loki, another campy, fey, matching-crazy-suit creature in Son of the Mask:

And that lands us at today, where Cumming is having the gay mutant alien career that Tim Curry could only dream of after The Rocky Horror Picture Show put him on the map.

Maybe it's because Cumming makes his own perfume? Because he likes monsters? Because he's openly queer?

Hard to say, really. But one thing is for sure: he sure makes a cute sissy alien mutant boy, and Hollywood could always use more of those.

Maya will realize that (duh) Sylar is evil. Nikki has to rescue Monica from that street gang that stole some comic books. (It's a gang thing. They love those obscure Ditko comics for their Ayn Rand messages.) Peter and Nathan finally get reunited, but then they have to deal with that whole "Adam wants to wipe out humanity" thing. Elle has to make some tough decisions. Oh, and a couple of good guys are going to bite it. And Claire will try to blow the whistle on her dad's old company, as you can see in this clip:

Want more spoilers for the episode? These seem like they could be credible.

Tonight's episode of Chuck might also be the last one for a while. NBC still has two more Chuck eps in the can, but it's not clear when they'll air, says Reuters. "Chuck vs. the Crown Vic" doesn't sound particularly climactic: Chuck has to go undercover as Sarah's wife to deal with a "counterfeiting yachtsman with strong political ties." Seeing the downtrodden Chuck confronting evil rich people sounds sort of entertaining in a Veronica Mars-y way.

Also tonight: part two of Tin Man, the Sci-Fi channel's re-noodling of Wizard of Oz. Tin Man
concludes on Tuesday with another two-hour installment. If you don't have a TiVo or some other device that lets you tape two channels at once, don't worry. Sci-Fi will re-run Monday's segment before Tuesday's.

Monday night movies: X2: X-Men United on FX, and Being John Malkovich on IFC.

Tuesday night sees the season finale of Beauty and the Geek, in which a LARPer and a science-fiction fan compete to win the admiration of hawt girls who can tie cherry stems with their tongues. All of the show's teams return, for the maximum concentration of cringe-inducing stereotypes.

Wednesday night movie: The Brother from Another Planet on TMC. If you haven't seen it, you really should check it out. You'll barely notice that Bionic Woman is off.

Thursday's Smallville is a rerun where he meets his cute cousin.

Friday has a Flash Gordon rerun, but a new Stargate Atlantis, the last new episode until January. A "strange drone" crashes into Atlantis, and it could mean the Replicators have found Atlantis. (The Replicators are self-replicating machines, sort of like the Borg except without any human parts.) More spoilers than you can shake a stick at are here.

Our inner tween loved the sci-fi touches in this darker, more violent Oz. Every holiday season The Wizard of Oz comes on television, and ding, dong the witch is dead and all that jazz. Sure it's charming to some degree, but by the fifteenth time you've seen the thing, you're ready to seek solace in something new. Which is where Tin Man comes in. You've got holographic projections, people getting shot left and right, an evil queen who can suck the life out of you, and an entire town full of robots where no humans are allowed.

But our inner adult had some quibbles. First of all, it's called Tin Man, but the Tin Man isn't central to the story. In fact the title will lead some people to think that this is a miniseries version of The Tin Woodman of Oz, which was the 12th book in the Oz series. Second, the main character D.G. simply accepts the fact that she's in an entirely new world right away, yet wanders through the rest of the story with a slack-jawed, wide-eyed face. By the time night three rolls around, you'll find yourself wondering if she might be missing a few marbles.

The new miniseries revolves around D.G. (Zooey Deshcanel), a restless young motorcycle-riding waitress living with her parents in Kansas. She begins having strange dreams and visions of a woman who is trying to tell her something. This enigmatically leads her parents to remark "it's time." Strange men in long black leather coats called "Longcoats" (hooray for clever names) show up via a tornado and attack the family. Mom and "Popsicle" (as D.G. calls her dad) take D.G. to the roof and toss her off into the cyclone. After a couple of seconds they hop off too. That's how D.G. gets to the OZ, where munchkins are resistance fighters.

Other changes: the Wicked Witch-esque villain has flying monkeys tattooed on her neck, which come to life and do her bidding. The titular Tin Man is a cop who's been imprisoned in a steampunk suit of armor, where he's been forced to watch a projected holographic time-loop of the day his family was taken away from him. Richard Dreyfuss plays The Mystic Man, a sideshow psychic who can see visions of the future when he takes "the vapors." When he performs his act, he appears as a giant green glowing head. Toto is now "Tutor," a man who can turn into a dog and was responsible for D.G.'s education when she was a child. And D.

It would be really fun to see someone turn The Wizard of Oz completely on its ear and set it fully in a science fiction realm without any magic at all. Of course, stories like Farscape and even Buck Rogers use that as a basic premise, but we want to see the Oz story used as a template for a sci fi reimagining. With this new Tin Man series coming out, and cool things like the Oz manga that came out last year, it'll probably only be a matter of time before someone gives it a whirl.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.