Alice (TV miniseries)

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Curiouser and curiouser...

"Does this look like a kid's story to you?" —Hatter

The team that brought you Tin Man, a loose reimagining of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, takes on Alice in Wonderland, saturated with Darker and Edgier and Rule of Cool. When martial arts instructor Alice Hamilton (Caterina Scorsone) sees her boyfriend, Jack Chase, being taken away by some mysterious men in a white van, she chases one of them Through The Looking Glass... and into a Crapsack World. Guided by Hatter (Andrew-Lee Potts) and The White Knight (Matt Frewer), Alice goes looking for Jack, but discovers that things aren't all that wonderful in Wonderland.

This series was a mini-series broadcast in December, 2009. It is not to be confused with the CBS Work Com starring Linda Lavin.

The director has recently done Neverland.

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Tropes used in Alice (TV miniseries) include:

• 0% Approval Rating: The Queen, more or less. When stripped of her Casino, no one displays any loyalty towards her.
• Action Girl: Alice is a martial arts instructor and kicks a fair amount of ass on her own.
• Actor Allusion: When first introduced to the robotic Mad March, the King of Hearts asks, "Does he have a user manual? I hate user manuals." Which is only funny coming from Miles O'Brien.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: The Duchess. So very much.
• Adaptational Badass: Hatter, Dodo, The Knave of Hearts, the March Hare. Hell, even the gun-toting Duck and Owl are more badass than their literary counterparts.
• Adaptation Decay: Lampshaded and subverted, as it openly regards the original as history from which everything has descended to Crapsack World levels.
• Adult Fear: Wonderland exists! And the people who live there can make you forget your family and work for them, or simply drug you and drain you of your emotions to keep the local population under their control. Another reason why this isn't a kid's story.
• Alice Allusion: Nah, really?
• Alien Lunch: Barbecued borogrove is delicious, apparently.
• Almost Kiss: Alice and Hatter in the second act.
• Ambiguous Gender: Dormie, who is played by a woman wearing a moustache. Normally, this wouldn't be ambiguous- but as we're in Wonderland...
• Applied Phlebotinum: The Looking Glass, and later the ring that Jack gives Alice.
• Ax Crazy: Mad March, a formerly-dead Psycho for Hire with a rabbit-shaped cookie jar for a head.
• Badass Beard: As seen in the page image, Charlie sports a particularly awesome one.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Mad March may have a rabbit cookie jar for a head, but he's always impeccably dressed in a pinstripe suit.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: Hatter uses this to get into the Casino to rescue Alice.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: During the course of the miniseries, Hatter is beaten, mussed, and generally looked like he went through a meat grinder. Alice... got wet a lot.
  • It also must be noted that Hatter's Guyliner never smudged, no matter what he was put through.
• Big Damn Heroes: Hatter and Charlie arriving just in the nick of time to save Alice from Doctors Dee and Dum.
• Big No: Hatter, after Alice goes to the Casino on her own.
• Billing Displacement: Tim Curry has exactly ONE scene, yet was the name most often mentioned in commercials. Kathy Bates was billed alongside him, despite being the antagonist.
• Black and Grey Morality: The bad guys kidnap people from our world including children and drain them of their emotions, Mooks are sentenced to decapitation with frequency, and keep the populace in control with drugs. As for the good guys... see Well-Intentioned Extremist, and the way Hatter the con man behaved, especially before becoming committed to the Resistance.
• Brainwashed: Alice's father aka The Carpenter.
• Bulletproof Vest: Hatter has body armor that serves this function.
• Chess Motifs: The architecture White Knight's kingdom resembles giant chess pieces.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Hatter flirts like crazy and is obviously attracted to Alice. When it comes time for sleeping arrangements, Charlie gets a hammock, Alice gets the bed... and Hatter sleeps propped up against the wall.
• Cliff Hanger: Part 1 has a nearly literal one.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Charlie, the last of the White Knights, lives in a forest castle with giant chess pieces and the skeletons of his fallen comrades.
• Combat Pragmatist: Dodo just shoots Hatter. Luckily, Hatter has a Bulletproof Vest.
• Con Man: Hatter comes off as this.
• Con Men Hate Guns: Averted. Hatter seems to be very familiar with them.
• Correlation-Causation Gag: When Charlie fires his crossbow toward the end, and thinks he blows up the Hearts Casino because the timing happens to be spot-on.
• Cowardly Lion: The White Knight, Charlie.
• Crap Saccharine World: Wonderland goes back and forth between Crapsack World played straight, and the beautiful Happy Hearts Casino, where "Oysters", or people from our world, are drugged and play in the casino so that they can be drained of their emotions, which are sold on the market as drugs.
• Creepy Twins: And how! Doctor Dee and Doctor Dum, an adult Bald of Evil version.
• Cyberpunk: Mixed with Biopunk and maybe a little Magitek.
• Deadly Decadent Court: The Happy Hearts Casino.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Hatter punches the Jabberwock in the face helping Alice.
• Disappeared Dad
• Disney Death: Charlie. He gets better.
• Dude in Distress: Jack. Oh, Jack.
• Domestic Abuse: The Queen of Hearts to her King, of the emotional abuse flavor.
• Double Agent: Hatter:

I've lived my life playing both sides of the court. I'd make the Hearts think I was working for them, while I fed their enemies.

• Down the Rabbit Hole: Duh.
• Driven to Suicide: Poor Winston, King of Hearts.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Hatter effing earned that hug and kiss he got in the last scene, with all that he went through for Alice.
  • He even whispers: "Finally!" as it happens. Awww.
• Emotion Eater: The Queen of Hearts keeps the residents of Wonderland happy and controlled by harvesting positive emotions from captive humans and selling them to the populace as "teas" through "Tea Shops", like the one Hatter owns/operates.
• Mr. Fanservice: Hatter. See below.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Queen of Hearts assumes that Jack chose Alice because she was useful to him, not because he fell in love with her.
• Evil Matriarch: The Queen of Hearts.
• Expospeak Gag: When sneaking into the Casino

Hatter: We're guardians to the mesmeric portals of the cosmos. Guard: What. Hatter: Stage hypnotists!

• Failure Knight: Charlie.
• Fantastic Drug: Emotions, which can, in fact, be overdosed upon, leading to one of the few instances ever on film of Fantastic Rehab.
• Foot Focus: All the Oysters are kept barefoot in the casino.
• Funny Background Event: Alice's mother's face during the final kiss
• Government Drug Enforcement: Not only is this how the Queen of Hearts stays in power, but a throwaway comment suggests that it's the root of the entire economy. Also Hatter's legal employer.
• Heel Face Turn: The Carpenter also, when he remembers that Alice is his daughter.
• "Hey You!" Haymaker: This is practically Hatter's calling card.
• High Heel Face Turn: The Duchess rescues Jack when she realizes she truly loves him. Also helped by the fact the Queen had deemed her expendable.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: The Suits are named for theirs.
• Hurricane of Puns: This is a Wonderland fandom. "she brought down the whole house of cards", "first we have to ditch that royal flush", "I'll shuffle your deck". I'm missing some, I just know it.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Another Hatter trademark.
• Knowledge Broker: Hatter is called "The Man Who Knows" in some circles.
• La Résistance: Hatter's other employer.
• Large Ham And Cheese: Tim Curry and Kathy Bates.
  • Matt Frewer and Colm Meaney.
• Last-Minute Hookup: Torpedoed by an earlier Moment Killer from the Wrong Guy First, Alice and Hatter get together in the final thirty seconds of the second act.
• Little No: Alice gets one of these before she decides to stay and fight to keep the Queen from continuing to steal people.
• Lotus Eater Machine: The Casino makes sure its Oysters are happy and pleased as the Queen only wants happy emotions. And it is a bad thing to mix Good and Bad emotions indiscriminately.
• Love Martyr: Winston, King of Hearts:

I would have conquered the world just for one smile.

• Love Triangle: Alice is caught in two of them.
• Mad Scientist: The Carpenter and the Walrus.
• Malevolent Architecture: The Truth Room.
• Mark of Shame: People from Earth who arrive in Wonderland are marked with a special tattoo to identify them as "Oysters".
• Meaningful Name: Played with:

Hatter: Do you know why they call me Hatter? Alice: Because you wear a hat? Hatter: (Beat) No.

• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Yeah. The dead Winston King of Hearts, Carpenter/Robert Hamilton, Walrus, and potentially Agent White are all men.
  • Admittedly, there were not a great many female roles at the forefront of the show aside from Alice and the Queen. Duchess could have theoretically qualified for expendable because Redemption Equals Death but it was averted in her case. Probably just as well. Somebody had to rescue Jack
• Mind Screw: The Truth Room. Also the size-changing box that Alice gets trapped in near the beginning, when it is somehow over the ocean.
• Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Doctors Dee and Dum.
• Mythology Gag: Where to start?
  • When giving the password to the Great Library, Hatter says that he's returning a book by Edwin and Morcar. They are both historical figures mentioned by the Dodo in his lecture about William the Conqueror in the novel.
  • When the Tweedles give Alice a desk to write on, it has a pair of white gloves and a fan on it. In the novel, Alice found these things on the White Rabbit's desk.
  • Hatter introduces himself and Charlie as Robinson and Duckworth. Robinson Duckworth was part of the boating expedition where Carroll first told the tale.
  • Possibly doubling as a Visual Pun, the last shot of the series is Alice, Hatter, and Carol seen through a looking glass.
• Narnia Time: Wonderland seems to run on this.
• Nice Hat: Guess.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Winston plays this to the hilt around his bride. Not sure if anyone else was fooled or meant to be.
• Offing the Offspring: The Queen of Hearts sentences her son Jack Heart to death after she discovers his ties to the Resistance.
• Off with His Head: The Queen's Catch Phrase, of course. Implicitly the fate of Agent White.
• Older Sidekick: Charlie.
• Perma-Stubble: Hatter.
• Power of Love: Winston's entire motivation; he claims he would have conquered the world so the queen would give him just one smile. And they never tell us how big Wonderland is, so maybe he did.
  • Also is what leads the Hatter through the Looking Glass, and a number of smaller instances.
  • And The Carpenter's Heel Face Turn, but that was more paternal love.
• The Power of Trust: Hatter talks about trust so frequently one might be forgiven the misconception that he's a rogue Handler who wandered over from the Dollhouse.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Hatter. It works well here, but is so darn odd when one recalls the original characters of the source material.
  • Although, if you're working primarily off the new movie, it might not seem so odd.
  • Perhaps, but it aired about three months before the new movie came out.
• Rebellious Prince: Jack, quite literally, who also doubles as a Runaway Fiance from an Arranged Marriage. He fits better as a Gender Flip of Rebellious Princess than as a Rebel Prince.
• Redemption Equals Death: Alice's father, aka The Carpenter.
  • Also, possibly Winston, King of Hearts.
• Room 101: The Truth Room.
• Ring of Power: Here, a literal power source.
• Rule of Cool: Everything from the book is stylized and made to look extremely cool. Why does the aerial transport look like a blend of a Vespa and a flamingo? Rule of Cool. Why make your lackeys wear black robes with clubs on their heads? Rule of Cool.
• Sealed with a Kiss: Alice and Hatter end the series this way.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the last times we see the Duchess, she's wearing Jane Fonda's outfit from Barbarella.
  • Alice's mother is named Carol. Which could also be considered to fit doubly so - Alice Liddell, who inspired the book, named her youngest son "Caryl".
  • The White Knight is often considered to be Charles Dodgeson's Author Avatar.
• The Silent Bob: Walrus.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: A scaled down version in the Love Triangle between Jack (snob - cultured, stylish), and Hatter (slob - chaotic, scruffy), with Alice in the middle.
• Soft Water: Once when Alice breaks out of Scarab and falls a truly frightening distance, and once when the flying flamingo rocket scooters crash into the lake.
• Spiritual Successor: To Tin Man
• Stealth Pun: Winston, the King of Hearts is Driven to Suicide. The nickname of the card 'the king of hearts' is 'the suicide king'.
  • The Oysters are barefoot and that is what connects them to the Lotus Eater Machine. Said Machine drains their souls through their soles.
• Suddenly Voiced: The Walrus is so when he reveals he was the Carpenter's warden and tells him not to try leaving when the Carpenter remembers he's Alice's father.
• Super Strength: Though not stated outright (at least as far as I remember), Hatter can punch hard enough to leave a small crater in a wall.
  • It may not be strength; there was an early throwaway line mentioning "that sledgehammer you call a hand".
    • To which Hatter replies "It's just flesh and blood." Not that we're sure he's telling the truth at that point...
  • During his fight with The Dodo, Hatter misses punching Dodo in the face and punches a marble pillar. Given how easy it is to break small bones in one's hand punching a person, it's fairly impressive that Hatter punched the pillar and the pillar broke.
• Survival Mantra: Hatter recites Lewis Carroll poetry to help him resist Mad March's torture.
• Tall, Dark and Handsome: The 10 of Clubs. Just...ignore the hat.
• Those Two Bad Guys: Dee and Dum
• Torture Always Works: Subverted. Both Alice and Hatter are tortured during the course of the mini. Alice feeds them false information. Hatter screamed a lot.
  • Interestingly, the Ten of Clubs reflexively calls Alice's false lead her 'confession', which might indicate that the Truth Room is not primarily used for getting factual information.
• Torture Technician: Doctor Dee and Doctor Dum, who do a merry little dance while poking their victim with cattle prods.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Mad March is the Queen's favorite assassin. Too bad she had him decapitated, and his new head is now made of porcelain...
  • Though, as noted above, with Hatter's Super Strength it really wouldn't have made a difference if his head was made of solid marble.
  • That, and the porcelain head was never meant to be permanent. The Queen ordered him sent out before the new head could be finished, so the doctors slapped on what was available.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Dodo.
• Wings Do Nothing: The Jabberwock has a set of purely-decorative reptilian wings.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Dodo actually does, but Hatter is prepared.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Alice is severely afraid of heights. Most of Wonderland is several stories above ground without any form of barrier.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Alice was ten when her father left, and it has been ten years since; naturally, this makes her twenty-three.
  • This troper remembers Carol telling Jack that it had been just her and Alice for almost ten years.
  • When does it say she's twenty-three? Granted, she doesn't seem at all nineteen, but I never remember anyone actually stating her age.
    • It's on the DVD cover, the website, and the promotional material.
    • Well, someone who bought the movie on itunes and has only watched the movie wouldn't see that. I just checked the official summary on SyFy's website and didn't see it there, either. It refers to her only as "young."
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Dodo, about Hatter, after he shoots him. Thankfully, it doesn't take.
• You Must Be Cold: Early on, Hatter gives a soaked Alice one of his coats to ward off the chill. It also covers up her magical tattoo that marks her as an Oyster.
• Your Cheating Heart: Jack Heart is engaged to Duchess the entire time he and Alice are dating.
• Your Universe or Mine?: Alice's.