I'm watching "The Six Million Dollar Man"

[Gingerbread Demon]

And boy is it rough. How the hell did we enjoy this show in the 70s?
It's pretty rough watching it now in 2020.
Some of the stories, well most of them in fact are pretty dire, but it's cheesy and fun and hilarious for the most part. Security, what security?

Oh we're at NASA, yeah that NASA, never mind the bad guys won't be noticed as they walk around high security areas and do shady things that bad guys do. I mean I can just walk up to this access panel and open it and switch around the wires inside and no one even questioned me, and I had zero ID or anything. How easy was that? They'll never catch me bwawawawawawa, and pretty much that's how that scene played out in one episode. Later on in the same episode the baddy sets up a tripod with a hard hat on top and swings a crane into the hard hat.

Jolly good thing that later on our hero Steve Austin stands in just that same spot so we can knock him out with the crane later. And that's how that scene played out.

This show is absolutely hilarious to watch.

Favorite episode is still the two stories with the death probe, even though the second version was built by a bad guy that managed to find the plans somewhere, I mean they had no internet it was 1978.

 

[Forbin]

Yeah, I remember loving it as a teen, but having a hard time rewatching it later.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Yeah, I remember loving it as a teen, but having a hard time rewatching it later.

Oh tell me about it. I'm trying to watch all 5 seasons but only picking out the episodes I liked and even those were bad, and not in a really good or even nostalgic way. Did love all the 70s clothes.

 

[Spectre Of The Fun]

Oh tell me about it. I'm trying to watch all 5 seasons but only picking out the episodes I liked and even those were bad, and not in a really good or even nostalgic way. Did love all the 70s clothes.

I am watching season one and I like it. However I do understand why you are finding it a chore.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I am watching season one and I like it. However I do understand why you are finding it a chore.

They made 3 pilot movies to sell the series. Must have been a pretty tough sell but those pilot movies were a little more serious then the actual show that followed too. On the set I own they included all 3 of those and all the episodes with the Bionic Woman.

 

[Christopher]

They made 3 pilot movies to sell the series. Must have been a pretty tough sell...

The one had nothing to do with the other. There were a number of series at the time that were released as sequential TV movies rather than weekly hourlong installments. Some series were entirely movie-length, like Columbo and the other shows that made up the NBC Mystery Movie. Others did a handful of movies before switching to a weekly format. Battlestar Galactica was originally intended to be a series of 2-hour movies, which is why it had so many 2-parters. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was planned as a trilogy of TV movies, essentially a miniseries, but then they decided to release the first movie theatrically so the latter two were put on hold, and then the network changed their minds after that and asked for a weekly series instead.

 

[TrekMD]

I own the entire set of this show and got it autographed by Lee Mayors a couple years back at a convention. The show is a product of its time but I still do enjoy watching it. I guess the nostalgia lens has to do with that.

 

[Orac]

I always thought that show was dumb. Case in point the slow motion used in every action sequence just like the equally dumb slow motion action sequences in the Incredible Hulk TV show from around the same time. Of course that was my opinion of those shows as a 5 year old, if I watched them now I would probably enjoy the dumbness with my age addled brain.

 

[Christopher]

Slow motion is a counterintuitive way to show superspeed, but the alternative -- those few times in 6M$M where they sped up the film to show Steve running superfast from another character's POV -- looked much sillier.

As for Hulk, I think it helped lend the perception of weight and power to the Hulk's movements. Although slow motion for action scenes was a commonplace practice in the '70s.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Many 70's shows are really, very much products of the 70's. This one and as @Christopher mentioned, the Incredible Hulk.

Knight Rider, Greatest American Hero and Salvage One are late 70's/early 80's examples that have the same 70's cheese factor.

Tons of quickly cancelled shows too. Still, even the worst 70's cheese-TV is better than the airwave clogging reality programs around now.

 

[Christopher]

Knight Rider, Greatest American Hero and Salvage One are late 70's/early 80's examples that have the same 70's cheese factor.

Salvage 1 was the only one of those to air in the '70s (1979). TGAH began in '81 and Knight Rider in '82.

And really, The Incredible Hulk doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the cheesy shows. It was just about the smartest, most thoughtfully written sci-fi/action show of the period, and actually a pretty high-budget production thanks to all its location work and action, however limited its VFX may have been. For that matter, The Six Million Dollar Man started out relatively sophisticated in its first season (at least in the writing and concepts, though it had an often painfully low budget), but got progressively dumbed down over time.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Not to mention they had no idea how weight and levers work, the very first time Steve tries to lift a car his arm should have been ripped off, that was retconned after the series had ended in one of the movies where they mention using titanium or something to reinforce his shoulder and rib cage. Also that bionic eye runs the full length of his skull so yeah there's a thing in there called brain. Wonder if that got shoved out the way.

 

[Push The Button]

I watched the pilot last night. It is amazing how much detail I remembered from the two times that I viewed this back in the early 70s. I wish I could remember useful things as well as I can remember old TV episodes.

Steve went to the moon three times, alone apparently, and was a NASA astronaut for twelve years. Was he supposed to be one of the Mercury Seven?

The production ranged from pretty good (the lifting body flight and the lab/operating room scenes) to awful (Steve on the moon.) I’m going to try watching a few more episodes, but I have a feeling that it will all be downhill from here.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I watched the pilot last night. It is amazing how much detail I remembered from the two times that I viewed this back in the early 70s. I wish I could remember useful things as well as I can remember old TV episodes.

Steve went to the moon three times, alone apparently, and was a NASA astronaut for twelve years. Was he supposed to be one of the Mercury Seven?

The production ranged from pretty good (the lifting body flight and the lab/operating room scenes) to awful (Steve on the moon.) I’m going to try watching a few more episodes, but I have a feeling that it will all be downhill from here.

It's amazing how incompetent the USA looks in this show. Spies on every corner nearly, and the ease with which very obvious listening devices were placed in rooms where key characters spoke.

 

[Mrs. Silvercrest]

We got The Six Million Dollar Man for Christmas. I watched all of it. And I liked the movies they did for the show. One is like a James Bond movie. And I liked the first two seasons. After that I didn't enjoy it as much. I can relate to it more now that I ever have though. Since I broke both of my ankles two years ago, I have metal in one ankle holding it together, so we joke I have a bionic foot!

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

We got The Six Million Dollar Man for Christmas. I watched all of it. And I liked the movies they did for the show. One is like a James Bond movie. And I liked the first two seasons. After that I didn't enjoy it as much. I can relate to it more now that I ever have though. Since I broke both of my ankles two years ago, I have metal in one ankle holding it together, so we joke I have a bionic foot!

You really should go bionic. Any Radio Shacks left Mr. Silvercrest can get some parts from?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

there's a thing in there called brain.

Brain and brain. WHAT IS BRAIN?

But yeah, you're right. It's not enough to replace Steve's limbs - it takes superhuman amounts of stamina and endurance to be able to use them. (Otherwise Steve would exhaust himself to death.) Show never dealt with that, did it?

 

[DonIago]

The only episode(s) of that show that I strongly remember is this two-parter, I think, where a teenage boy is injured and he gets bionics as well, but they end up overpowered or such.

I never watched it regularly, so that two-parter must have made quite an impression on me for me to remember it now.

 

[FormerLurker]

The only episode(s) of that show that I strongly remember is this two-parter, I think, where a teenage boy is injured and he gets bionics as well, but they end up overpowered or such.

I never watched it regularly, so that two-parter must have made quite an impression on me for me to remember it now.

That teenage boy was Vincent Van Patten, Dick Van Patten's little brother*. And it wasn't actual bionic limbs as implants that were designed to accelerate muscular performance, a concept further developed in the reunion movies with Sandra Bullock a decade or more later.


*Or son, I can never remember if he or the Van Patten on The White Shadow is the son.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

And really, The Incredible Hulk doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the cheesy shows.

Yes, it does; the show's a bad adaptation of the comic book (recycling of old plots from The Fugitive, renaming Bruce as David due to some homophobic bullshit, not even trying to get any of the characters from the comic book into the show [in particular the villains] and the premise doesn't even hold up (nobody will care about 'David' Banner after his 'death' because he's dead, so nobody will be looking for him like Richard Kimble, society then was easier to hide out in than now due to having none of the plethora of security cameras everywhere, and the Hulk-outs would be pretty hard to believe [and convey] to anybody, unless they happen in the middle of a major city, as in one episode [and even then, how does one track the Hulk when his alter ego is never anywhere near a big city most of the time, and is on the run?)

I'd rather see the recent movies (and the TV show Hulk & The Agents Of S.M.A.S.H) than watch the '70's show again. Or, I'd just read the comic book.