Six Million Dollar man??

[Christopher]

I think they were both initially on ABC, but NBC may have picked up a "return" movie that had a young Sandra Bulloch in it.

There were three revival movies, two on NBC, the third on CBS. The first two were both backdoor pilots for sequel series. The Return of the Six-Million-Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman introduced Steve Austin's hitherto-unknown son and had him suffer an accident and get a bionic upgrade. Ironically, Lee Majors' namesake son was in the movie, but was not playing Austin's son. (It also features Martin Landau, Gary Lockwood, and William Campbell, so it's classic-TV old home week.) Bionic Showdown was the one with Sandra Bullock as an OSI agent who became the new bionic woman. Bionic Ever After?, the third movie, made no attempts at setting up a spinoff, and simply told the story of Steve and Jaime's wedding.

Jamie Somers was a creation of Ken Johnson's, so that's why they could that cruddy remake a couple of years back.

Except they gave no credit to Johnson for his creation, which always struck me as a lousy thing to do. Of course, they only used the character name; their "Jaime Sommers" had absolutely nothing in common with the original. They could've changed her name and the series title and it could've been a completely independent (if vaguely derivative) show.

Any of the killer robot episodes: the first one with John Saxon as a friend of Steve's who replaced with a robot duplicate created by Henry Jones, and then Jones comes back with a duplicate of Oscar! After that, we get the Fembots, which was a big 6MDM/BW cross-over. The sequel to the Fembots on BW was after they jumped to NBC, so they had to remove all references to Steve Austin for that one!

Ah, yes, we have these shows to thank for introducing "fembot" to the language.

The Seven Million Dollar Man. Monte Markham. Nuff said.

Who was named Barney Miller in his first appearance and then became Barney Hiller in the second to avoid conflict with the sitcom Barney Miller.

And the irony is that Markham was the actor that Martin Caidin had wanted to play Steve Austin.

Ok, I still don't understand. How do a reinforced shoulder and spine help one arm bend steel. I can see him crushing steel in one hand, but bending would require both arms working together. If one arm is bionic and the other muscle and bone, the bionic arm should have pulled his non-bionic arms apart at the elbow; or ripped the hand off. I just dont see how a non-bionic arm can provide the resistence or force needed to bend steel.

As far as I can recall, whenever he bent something, he did it one-handed. It wasn't like he'd pick up a beam in his hands and bend it; he'd just reach out with his right arm (that was the bionic one, right?), grab something like a metal post or door frame, something that was already anchored, and pull. The shoulder and spine would need to be reinforced because they're the anchors for his arm. The forces would transfer through his body, and if his shoulder and spine weren't reinforced too, he'd snap his bones by exerting more strength than they could bear. Remember Newton's Third Law: action and reaction. You exert a force of five tons on something, then it exerts a force of five tons on you. So a person can't exert any more force than their own body is able to withstand.

 

[McCoy]

^ Yup that's how I remember it too.

 

[bionicbob]

Okay, so I have been doing a bit of a SMDM marathon these past two weeks and we all know the show is not only famous for it's Bionic Action, but also Steve's ultra hip wardrobe!

Along with the matching leisure suits, red track suit, and very cool silver belt buckle, Steve alway wore (at least up until the end of Season 4) a gold bracelet on his right wrist.

Now the question I have, was the bracelet just a hip wardrobe feature popular in the 70s? Or did the bracelet have some story/character history significance?

I thought I read a long time ago, and I might be mixing this up this a different tv show (Magnum PI, maybe...), that it was a P.O.W. bracelet. Though I have never come across an episode that actually referenced this.....

So just wondering if anyone else had any ideas?

 

[McCoy]

You might be mixing it up with Magnum. His watch had belonged to his military father, who died in service of his country (don't think he was a POW though).

 

[sojourner]

As far as I can recall, whenever he bent something, he did it one-handed. It wasn't like he'd pick up a beam in his hands and bend it; he'd just reach out with his right arm (that was the bionic one, right?), grab something like a metal post or door frame, something that was already anchored, and pull. The shoulder and spine would need to be reinforced because they're the anchors for his arm. The forces would transfer through his body, and if his shoulder and spine weren't reinforced too, he'd snap his bones by exerting more strength than they could bear. Remember Newton's Third Law: action and reaction. You exert a force of five tons on something, then it exerts a force of five tons on you. So a person can't exert any more force than their own body is able to withstand.

Of course, strictly speaking, most of the time attempting to bend something in this manner he should have just ended up lifting himself off the ground at a right angle.

 

[bionicbob]

You might be mixing it up with Magnum. His watch had belonged to his military father, who died in service of his country (don't think he was a POW though).

hhhmmmmm..... I think you are right.

Maybe the bracelet was simply so actor Lee Majors would remember which arm was supposed to be bionic?