The era of (fictional) Bionics (Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman)
- Thread starter Qonundrum
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I'll say again that the pilot was TSMDM concept at its best, when Austin was portrayed as close to having realistic reactions to his plight and government theft of his autonomy as one will ever see in TSDM, with the exception of the Jaime Sommers 2-parter which introduced her (3/16/75 & 3/23/75). Being produced in 1973, the pilot's politics were clearly walking the "Do not trust the government" path, which resonated with viewers who could understand Austin's anger at having a government agency choose his fate for him. There were no faux-superheroics, or tongue-in-cheek moments in what was what a sci-fi character study. The downbeat end was such a hallmark of early 70s TV movies, and it was a fitting end to a film that stands on its own if a viewer was not interested in the other TV movies and series.
It's been years since I've seen a full episode, so maybe it's my memory failing, but I remember feeling disappointed as a kid the very few times when one of the bionic protagonists had to face an opponent of their own caliber, like a robot or another bionic person. Instead of some epic fight, they just pushed each other around for a bit and then it was over. Underwhelming.
Do I remember correctly?
Do I remember correctly?
You're not far off. As I remarked above, they just didn't have the sophisticated stunt work we have today, or the budget for elaborate fight scenes. Also, there was pressure to minimize onscreen violence, particularly in family shows.
I remember watching the fight scene in "The Seven Million Dollar Man" and thinking that it was just an ordinary fight scene in slow motion with sound effects. I get that their equal strength would've cancelled out, but still, logically they could've thrown each other much further, done much more damage to their surroundings, etc. But the show just didn't have the budget for that.
Well, then thinking about it, a fight between two (partial) cyborgs would be very short. The first one to land a punch on an organic part wins.
Today I learned, Sandra Bullock was the bionic woman Kate Mason, in Bionic Showdown (1989), long after I'd ceased being interested in watching the shows.
Were either one of them trained in hand to hand combat?
It's odd to me to see people describing the bionic sound as "nuh-nuh-nuh" or something like that. To me, it's more of a "ta-ta-ta-tang" sound, sharp and metallic rather than the softer sound that "nuh" implies. I guess the lower-pitched "impact" sound effect they used could be described that way, perhaps, though to me it's more of a "bu-bu-bu" or "du-du-du" kind of thing.
I can't remember, did either of the Bionic shows deal with the concept that it's not enough to simply have bionic limbs, but one must also have the endurance to deal with them?
Meaning, it's not enough to just have super strength and vision and all that, but the body has to be equipped to actually USE that ability, otherwise Steve and Jaime would wear themselves out in like two seconds.
Meaning, it's not enough to just have super strength and vision and all that, but the body has to be equipped to actually USE that ability, otherwise Steve and Jaime would wear themselves out in like two seconds.
I'm pretty sure the shows glossed over all the realistic problems of being only part-bionic, like how their normal spinal columns shouldn't have been able to support the weight of the objects they lifted with their bionic arms. As for endurance, though, the limbs were said to have miniature nuclear reactors powering them, so theoretically their use didn't drain metabolic energy. Indeed, with less biomass for the organs to support, their endurance might theoretically have been greater, though I'm sure that's oversimplified.
Because in onomatopoeia, accuracy by some set of theoretical standards isn't the only variable in play. Being clear in conveying to another person exactly what sound it is that is being suggested is extremely important. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na accomplishes that, where the others don't. This is an example of the difference between a descriptive dictionary that describes how people in the wild have elected to do it, as opposed to a prescriptive one that declares how it ought to be done.
Warren Ellis has a slightly more realistic take on this in Global Frequency - where it's pointed out that cyborgs generally rip themselves apart because the human body isn't equipped to support that sort of activity regardless of what the cyborg parts can do.
The only time they VAGUELY mentioned it was in an episode of the Bionic Woman. If I remember the scene, our heroine had gotten captured by the bad guys along with another woman and they had tied their hands and feet. While Jamie easily broke the rope that bound her ankles by simply spreading her legs, she explained to her friend that she couldn't do the same with her arms, because that way she risked breaking her organic wrist. She simply burned the ropes with a sort of "super-friction".
I hope I remember the scene correctly. Paging @Christopher who I believe watched the series more recently.
Sorry, no. I started a rewatch a decade ago but only got through the first season, because that was all they had on Netflix's DVD rental service at the time.
It's been forty plus years since I read a copy of 'Cyborg', but I do remember that the doctors said that during the reconstruction process that they strengthened/reinforced Steve's shoulders and spine to handle the added stress the bionic arm would bring; otherwise Steve would have torn both arms out of their sockets the first time he used his bionic arm.
Yeah, I do recall the book's depiction of bionics being more grounded and less fanciful than the show's (e.g. the eye was just a disguised film camera and Steve couldn't actually see through it). As I recall, the book was also a lot more adult, which was a bit startling when I read it in high school, I think it was.
I have this series on the Shout Factor blu rays of TSMDM, but did a full rewatch when I had the Time Life DVD set.
This is a series that works best when you wear your heave prescription Nostalgia Glasses on. If you look at it with today's eyes, it's a hard journey. Even with forgiving eyes, it can be tough.
The original pilot movie (the network version not the godawful syndicated edit) is excellent, if uneven.
Just a quick correction, they didn't put Steve out at the end to keep him on ice between missions. That was Oliver's suggestion, but Rudy said "over my dead body." He was just in a coma while he was being repaired.
The two Glen Larson follow ups were just terrible (although The Solid Gold Kidnapping was less so). Once Harve Bennet took over, the show returned to the feel of the movie a bit more, with Steve back to being the country boy type.
The first two seasons were excellent, really, with some solid scripts by Elroy Schwartz, of all people (brother of Sherwood and equally bad at the comedies). D.C. Fontana also contributed some nice stories. Steve was rather reserved when talking about his bionics, as if still carrying self-consciousness about it. The show was a lot more adult and had some really good stories. I feel The Seven Million Dollar Man was a great look at how Steve could have turned out and it remains my favorite episode.
The second season was really solid and the introduction of Jaime was a great benefit. But this is also where the series started down its more cheesy path. First, someone let Lee Majors believe he could sing. It really does bring the episode down somewhat, which is a shame because Ken Johnson's script is excellent (so good he retooled it for a two part Hulk episode "Married"). Bringing Jaime back was, if not a great idea in the context of the original episode, understandable. But the whole "Jaime's doctor falls in love with her" is so unethical it left a bad taste. Luckily, he doesn't become a regular in her series.
When we got The Bionic Woman series, we got the other side of the coin. The "girl's show" and even as a kid, I wasn't crazy about it. It was fine to have Jaime doing jobs Steve never could (beauty pageants and lady wrestling), but at this point, the bionic shows were more gimmicky. And TBW was geared more towards Lindsay Wagner's interests, like saving tigers and environmental issues (nothing could be more boring to a 10 year old boy who wanted people being tossed around). Still, she had some solid episodes (Kill Oscar, the Lisa Galloway episodes, Doomsday is Tomorrow and more fembots) and, I agree, Lindsay was a much more accomplished performer in these shows than Lee, who used his eyebrow more and more to do the heavy lifting.
The mustache season was the end of Steve having a personal life of any kind. He was all about the job. He wasn't even a personality at this point, just a glorified stuntman. And even in season 3, the weirdo celebrity guests were laughable: Rodney Allen Rippy, Sonny Bono, Flip Wilson....really just terrible.
Like Airwolf a few years later, TSMDM was dumbed down to appeal to kids.
Then TBW went to NBC and suddenly Jaime was having a bevy of romances. Chris Williams and some Indian boy for an episode. Ken Johnson left the series and it seemed to go in a more SF/action direction. Some good, some not.
TSMDM's 5th season was a series out of gas, with Allan Balter and Fred Freiberger co-producing. They tried goosing it up with a series of two-part episodes and a lot of cool location shooting. Some episodes were great. Dark Side of the Moon and Deadly Countdown (with amazing NASA location shooting) were really well done. Just a Matter of Time was also really good. But then we got The Lost Island and Date With Danger (a 30 minute story stretched to a torturous two parts). Not to mention The Return of Death Probe, a dull threat brought back with a LOT of padding. However, I did enjoy Bigfoot V mostly because it was just a single part episode and moved really fast.
Lee was bored and he showed it. Lindsay still gave it her all and at least she had a good final episode. TSMDM just ended.
The first reunion was quite good and it's a rare example of an otherwise never involved producer doing his homework. While "Lyle Stenning" and "FORTRESS" were out of the blue even though the characters stressed they were major adversaries in the past, the explanation for Steve having an unknown son made sense. Chris Williams being killed on a mission held some satisfaction for me and all of the Steve and Jaime relationship repair was very well done. The music was terrible, a far cry from Oliver Nelson's masterworks and even the composers who took over after his death would have been better choices. But Tom Shanley was great at Michael Austin (but Lee Majors II was awfully annoying).
Bionic Showdown was a good story, but Steve and Jaime were sidelined in favor of Sandra Bullock and V's Jeff Yagher. Richard Anderson, conversely, turns in his best performance as Oscar. Bill Conti's theme is great but the score itself is meh. At least Steve and Jaime get re-engaged.
Bionic Ever After (done as a favor to Richard Anderson apparently) was not very good. Three years too late with the cast far too old and with the worst synth music every to disgrace the series. The villain was annoying but the Wendy's guy in a cameo was hysterical.
This is a series that works best when you wear your heave prescription Nostalgia Glasses on. If you look at it with today's eyes, it's a hard journey. Even with forgiving eyes, it can be tough.
The original pilot movie (the network version not the godawful syndicated edit) is excellent, if uneven.
Just a quick correction, they didn't put Steve out at the end to keep him on ice between missions. That was Oliver's suggestion, but Rudy said "over my dead body." He was just in a coma while he was being repaired.
The two Glen Larson follow ups were just terrible (although The Solid Gold Kidnapping was less so). Once Harve Bennet took over, the show returned to the feel of the movie a bit more, with Steve back to being the country boy type.
The first two seasons were excellent, really, with some solid scripts by Elroy Schwartz, of all people (brother of Sherwood and equally bad at the comedies). D.C. Fontana also contributed some nice stories. Steve was rather reserved when talking about his bionics, as if still carrying self-consciousness about it. The show was a lot more adult and had some really good stories. I feel The Seven Million Dollar Man was a great look at how Steve could have turned out and it remains my favorite episode.
The second season was really solid and the introduction of Jaime was a great benefit. But this is also where the series started down its more cheesy path. First, someone let Lee Majors believe he could sing. It really does bring the episode down somewhat, which is a shame because Ken Johnson's script is excellent (so good he retooled it for a two part Hulk episode "Married"). Bringing Jaime back was, if not a great idea in the context of the original episode, understandable. But the whole "Jaime's doctor falls in love with her" is so unethical it left a bad taste. Luckily, he doesn't become a regular in her series.
When we got The Bionic Woman series, we got the other side of the coin. The "girl's show" and even as a kid, I wasn't crazy about it. It was fine to have Jaime doing jobs Steve never could (beauty pageants and lady wrestling), but at this point, the bionic shows were more gimmicky. And TBW was geared more towards Lindsay Wagner's interests, like saving tigers and environmental issues (nothing could be more boring to a 10 year old boy who wanted people being tossed around). Still, she had some solid episodes (Kill Oscar, the Lisa Galloway episodes, Doomsday is Tomorrow and more fembots) and, I agree, Lindsay was a much more accomplished performer in these shows than Lee, who used his eyebrow more and more to do the heavy lifting.
The mustache season was the end of Steve having a personal life of any kind. He was all about the job. He wasn't even a personality at this point, just a glorified stuntman. And even in season 3, the weirdo celebrity guests were laughable: Rodney Allen Rippy, Sonny Bono, Flip Wilson....really just terrible.
Like Airwolf a few years later, TSMDM was dumbed down to appeal to kids.
Then TBW went to NBC and suddenly Jaime was having a bevy of romances. Chris Williams and some Indian boy for an episode. Ken Johnson left the series and it seemed to go in a more SF/action direction. Some good, some not.
TSMDM's 5th season was a series out of gas, with Allan Balter and Fred Freiberger co-producing. They tried goosing it up with a series of two-part episodes and a lot of cool location shooting. Some episodes were great. Dark Side of the Moon and Deadly Countdown (with amazing NASA location shooting) were really well done. Just a Matter of Time was also really good. But then we got The Lost Island and Date With Danger (a 30 minute story stretched to a torturous two parts). Not to mention The Return of Death Probe, a dull threat brought back with a LOT of padding. However, I did enjoy Bigfoot V mostly because it was just a single part episode and moved really fast.
Lee was bored and he showed it. Lindsay still gave it her all and at least she had a good final episode. TSMDM just ended.
The first reunion was quite good and it's a rare example of an otherwise never involved producer doing his homework. While "Lyle Stenning" and "FORTRESS" were out of the blue even though the characters stressed they were major adversaries in the past, the explanation for Steve having an unknown son made sense. Chris Williams being killed on a mission held some satisfaction for me and all of the Steve and Jaime relationship repair was very well done. The music was terrible, a far cry from Oliver Nelson's masterworks and even the composers who took over after his death would have been better choices. But Tom Shanley was great at Michael Austin (but Lee Majors II was awfully annoying).
Bionic Showdown was a good story, but Steve and Jaime were sidelined in favor of Sandra Bullock and V's Jeff Yagher. Richard Anderson, conversely, turns in his best performance as Oscar. Bill Conti's theme is great but the score itself is meh. At least Steve and Jaime get re-engaged.
Bionic Ever After (done as a favor to Richard Anderson apparently) was not very good. Three years too late with the cast far too old and with the worst synth music every to disgrace the series. The villain was annoying but the Wendy's guy in a cameo was hysterical.
Mm? What's the difference between the two?
Indeed. Clumsy attempts to turn Steve into James Bond, with some of the most sophomoric sexual innuendos ever written for a screen spy.
It's interesting that Oscar is portrayed as the same kind of manipulative hardass as Spencer from the pilot, but Richard Anderson is a much more amiable performer from the start, so it doesn’t really fit him as well as the characterization he developed in the series. A classic case of a character being rewritten to fit the actor's strengths.
Hmm, I don't feel they're that similar. In the movie, Steve (in addition to being a civilian rather than the Air Force colonel he became in the series) was an unwilling agent under duress, trapped into working for the government that owned half his body (much like in Christopher Gorham's Jake 2.0, which was somewhat inspired by 6M$M). In the series, he was a free agent who willingly worked for Oscar, although he often had to be talked into it. And of course, Oscar became his best "pal" instead of the domineering figure Oliver Spencer was.
Yeah, when I rewatched it, I was impressed by how much smarter the first season was than I remembered -- although the VFX were much, much worse than I remembered, and the directing and editing were often rushed and clumsy. The worst instance was the Skylab sequence in "The Rescue of Athena One." You could see Majors and Farrah Fawcett moving their upper bodies as if to pretend they were floating between handholds, but due to inept directing, the camera was far enough back that you could clearly see them walking.
Hmm, I was around 8 when TBW premiered, and I don't remember finding it any less interesting than its parent show. But my big sister and I often watched it together, so maybe that was a factor. (I vaguely remember us joking around with each other about "Fem-butts.")
I didn't get that far on my rewatch a decade ago. Sounds like that may have been a blessing.
Freiberger? Uh-oh.
One thing that really impressed me in my rewatch, but also kind of saddened me, was the reminder of how the Space Age looked to us back then in the early ’70s, when we really believed we’d continue forward from Apollo rather than all but giving up on manned spaceflight. Watching "Athena One," I almost wept at getting to relive what it felt like to be in those times.
It's also interesting how much the show plays up friendly relations between the US and the Soviets, in contrast to the reheating of the Cold War that began near the end of the seventies.
I direct you over to The Classic/Retro Pop Culture Thread where @The Old Mixer just posted a lengthy breakdown of the differences between the 90-minute TV movie/pilot and the 2-part syndication edit.