Did JJ Abrams watch SciFi Channel’s Tin Man?

I mean — I don’t know. But look:

  • Tin Man was 2007, Fringe debuted 2008
  • each features someone who grew up in a parallel world (Peter, DG)
  • each features someone who has had ‘knowledge’ surgically removed from their brain (Walter, Glitch)
  • each has a ‘mystic man’ (each played by someone with starpower, too: Nimoy, Dreyfuss)
  • each has automatons (DG’s ‘parents,’ Walternate’s shapeshifters)
  • each has a doomsday device that must be stopped
  • each doomsday device is ‘linked’ the the child who was raised in the ‘other’ universe
  • each doomsday device is associated with relics
  • each features storms as associated with moving from one world to another
  • each includes damaged people who are telepathic (a one-shot for Fringe, though — this is a weak entry for this list)
  • each features a ‘world that’s gone off track’
  • each has a ‘witch’ (Walternate, Azkadellia)
  • each features ‘inhabited’ people (the witch in Azkadellia, William Bell in Olivia)
  • each at various points hinge on repressed childhood events (Olivia’s [time with Walter], DG’s [experience in the cave])

However: Toto? And, can’t quite figure how/where to place Olivia, either. And not sure how the flying (tattoo-)monkeys might be represented in Fringe, if at all. And the sister dynamic in the two is completely different. And is there an ‘old road’ in Fringe?

All of which is to say: Tin Man, yeah. It’s on Netflix Instant, is very tight — far and away my favorite version of Oz. Also: can we watch Tin Man to guess where Fringe is going? I would like to see Walter get his brain back, anyway.

 

Author: SGJ