The Bionic Woman - Seasons 1-3!

I can tell you one thing -- I hate the theme music to The Bionic Woman. It's willowy and soft and noxious in the extreme. But it does point to how the producers want this bionic TV show to come across, and that is friendly and kind, while still stopping villainy. They succeed in that, but I just wish the music was better. Watching this show through 21st Century eyes, the sexism is stunning. Jaime Sommers is smooched and fondled by just about every guy who turns up on the show. Some are cast as family members, but still and all, let the girl breathe. Lindsey Wagner is the lead and she's excellent.

Season One (1976)

There is clearly an attempt to develop a somewhat different tone in The Bionic Woman. Jaime Sommers has had an incredibly stressful origin story. She was severely, suffered surgeries that replaces her arm, her legs, and one of her ears and then used those bionic enhancements to help Steve Austin, the man she'd been engaged to. The difference was she'd lost her memory, and the return of those memories ignited pain, enough that she died. The she was brought back to life and her memories were almost all gone. For the series she has been rehabilitated and knows the truth of her life. She now chooses to live in her old hometown and teach. She is a classic TV teacher who only ever teaches one set of kids and then only when the plot requires it. She is free to help a man who is running from a killer and later an old mentor who seems to want to overthrow the government itself. The also doesn't want anyone to forget its ties to the successful The Six Million Dollar Man and cameos by Lee Majors as Steve Austin are common and Oscar Goldman played by Richard Anderson is a regular.

Season Two (1976-1977)

If there is a clear distinction between The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, it is that leading emphasis in the latter is Jaime's idealism. She's a person looking to do good, whether in the classroom or in the field fighting baddies. The crossover with other show is a big deal in the beginning of the second season. She has the freedom to cry and not lose her hero credibility, in fact it only enhances it. Her tears are not weakness but a sign of empathy. She and Steve have a close friendship if not romance. The season has the ballyhooed crossovers with its older sibling when Bigfoot shows up and the duo must stop a scheme to kill Oscar Goldman. Jaime goes undercover as a wrestler, a card dealer, a cop, and as a country singer to stop various thugs and spies, and as a nun to capture some diamond smugglers who dabble in heroin. She pretends to be a teacher to help protect a young prince. There's a terrific episode when she pretends to be one among a very eccentric band of family members who are battling for the family inheritance. Vincent Price is top notch in this one. 

Then she must overcome a small army of what I've dubbed the "Parka People" because they have to wear heavy coats because they've been taken over by an alien force which needs warmth. It's a bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The Andromeda Strain. (They actually use some footage from the latter I think.) One weird one was titled "Biofeedback" and dealt with a guy who could use that technique to imitate many of the old tricks of the fakirs of days gone by. The end of the world when a pleasant scientist builds a doomsday device. The exchanges between Jaime and the computer named Alex-7000 are clearly meant to evoke Hal-2000. There's a story in which a Jaime must help a young violent girl deal with her horrifying history. A light tale about art forgery and a downright comedic effort about a hard-luck thief who chooses the wrong house to burgle. We get a bit of Oscar history when we learn his brother disappeared during the Pearl Harbor attack under mysterious circumstances. And Jeff Corey shows up as a mentor to Jaime in a story about Native American demons and radiation. Lindsey Wagner must be taking a hand in her wardrobe as well, since some of her frocks are decidedly unusual and there's an awful tendency to wear hats which were regrettably in vogue at the time. But she's not done yet. 

Season Three (1977-1978)

The show moves from ABC to NBC in its third and final season. Sadly, it seems to lose some of the sweetness which characterized the previous shows and gets a more generic TV adventure feel. It's notable that Ken Johnson, the creator of the series was absent from many of these new shows. We meet a bionic dog named Maximillion in a two-parter to kick off the third and final season. One gets the sense this was intended as a possible spin-off with the dog hooking up with a Forest Ranger. Then our heroine has to face down the Fembots again, this time in Las Vegas in a wild fracas. While both Oscar and Rudy maintain strong presences on the show, Steve Austin has been largely pushed into the faceless background. Truth told, his place has been taken by Max the dog, who gets another full episode later in the season. Probably the fact the two shows were now on different networks made things difficult to say the least. 

Jamie ends up getting missions which take her to the rodeo to protect an eccentric scientist, the depths of Africa to stop a dictator, and... One weirdness is the guest-starring of Evel Knievel in an episode in which comes across as neither comedy nor drama, just odd, as the daredevil is conscripted to help Jaime cross over into East Germany the typically obscure but essential reasons.  Then's there's a lift of a plot from the first season when Callahan is tricked by her boyfriend into giving up secrets. Jaime goes into some bogus country to rescue some kid who is portrayed poorly by a young actor in only his second TV role. Much better is Franklyn Ajaye as a computer Robin Hood, committing internet crime before the term was invented. Things get dark when Jaime is poisoned, and world peace is on the line. Full blown science fiction breaks out when we get alien returning in a nod toward those Chariots of the Gods books, Jaime must protect an alien girl, and a "UFO" turns up in an episode as well. The show all but forgets Jaime's life as a teacher and that actually plays into what became the final episode, written with the knowledge the show was ending. It's a remarkable effort with some real conflicts that frankly I wish we'd seen more of during the run. 

The Bionic Woman was a better show than I remembered. It was a nifty lens into the 70's, my heyday when we still used phone booths and computers still filled rooms. We lived as we ever have under the abstract fear of nuclear destruction, but detente had allowed those fears to abate. The late 70's was a time of economic hardship for many given the price of oil among other things, but it was also a time of hope. Jimmy Carter was President, and he was a decent man trying his best to do a decent job in extremely hard times. After Watergate, the country was seeing some changes which made politics less hostile and government more trustworthy. Women actually were planning to see life the other side of the Equal Rights Amendment which was nearing success after decades of a creeping crawl. (Sadly, it didn't happen.) In many ways Jamie Sommers was a hero for the time. 

Tomorrow, we check out Season Four. 

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The Six Million Dollar Man Season 6!

Dynamite Comics and I have an imperfect relationship. They insist on acquiring and publishing comics I find interesting, and I sometimes buy them. The one constant is that I am almost invariably unsatisfied. So is the case with The Six Million Dollar Man Season Six. I will give the creative team props for being true to the TV show in regard to casting and referencing various aspects of venerable shows. But like so many Dynamite projects, I found the artwork just this side of satisfying. The layouts and storytelling worked for the most part, but the finishes and the depth of field in the images seemed spare. And a pet peeve of mine is how artists render men's hats. It seems almost no modern artist can do it particularly well and that's certainly case here. 

In the story Steve Austin is called upon to face several threats such as a robot with is his face operated by OSI itself, a Russian robot more in the style of ED-209 from the Robocop movies, and aliens which have infected and transformed the bodies of scientists studying a Venus probe. Steve also gets to punch a shark. He is helped by Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman and he needs it when his bionic arm is damaged. I had an uneasy feeling as I read the series that the creators were putting too many story elements into the mix to be resolved by story's end. I was right as three different threats are identified for future installments. Those never happened, so we end up something of a cliffhanger and chance to see how it came out. Frankly I'm fine with that. 

The slim collection also has a script for the first issue and alternate covers. Here are the covers for the series produced by Alex Ross. 

Now it's time for The Bionic Woman. Be seeing you. 

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The Six Million Dollar Man - Seasons 1-5!

Before there was a TV hero there was the 1972 novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin which told the tragic story of Steve Austin who after a terrible crash is given by Doctor Rudy Wells, two new legs, a steel plate in his noggin, gimmicks in his eyes and fingers among other things. He becomes a super-agent under the control Oscar Goldman who is an agent of the Office of Strategic Operations (O.S.O.). Sounds pretty familiar doesn't it. That was adapted to television. Before the series we get three pilot movies, which was unusual. Apparently, the powers that be were not convinced of the potential of the show. They were wrong of course. 

The Pilots

The three movies were The Moon and the Desert in March of 1973 and later the year Wine, Women, and War and finally The Solid Gold Kidnapping. The first was the story of the first novel pretty much with alterations such as the bionic arm for extreme strength. Lee Majors was cast as Steve Austin and was made into a star. Richard Anderson became Oscar Goldman and for a time Allan Oppenheimer played Rudy Wells. I was struck by Darren McGavin's role in the first movie where he is a much more cold-blooded Oscar-type character. I hated the theme songs for the last two movies which seemed to evoke some kind of blaxploitation film feel. It's clear that Austin is supposed to be a super-spy sent on exotic missions and battling Bond-Lite villains. 

Season One (1973-1974)

The first season of The Six Million Dollar Man kicked off in January of 1974 and gave us two episodes with punch. The first evoking The Andromeda Strain (using actual footage from that film) and the second featuring a large cast stranded on a remote island with murderers aboard. William Smith was largely wasted in the that one. And then it seems the budget was spent because the next many episodes felt lighter in tone and felt like more traditional TV fare. Jimmy Sangster wrote a silly one about a Soviet nuclear facility. We get John Saxon as a robot in an episode and frankly he seemed largely wasted. Farrah Fawcett shows up in one written by D.C. Fontana as the first woman astronaut and it's not bad at all. Other faces from adventure and science fiction shows appear such as William Shatner as a man whose brain is affected by strange energy, Greg Morris as a downed spy-plane pilot, and George Takei as a mountain-climbing expert. Gary Lockwood as an assassin with a secret was pretty good, but Gary Collins as a Russian was laughable, and Ron Soble playing an Asian warlord was regrettable. The shows had variety with Steve whipping across the globe, but alas the countryside always looked like California. Once I found my footing with the show and realized what it wanted to be, I found it diverting at the very least. It's easy to see why this was a hit. Richard Anderson as Oscar was bit hit and miss for me, as I wish he'd been a more ruthless at times. Lee Majors is stylish and his calm, cool presentation gives the show a solid anchor. 

Season Two (1974-1975)

By this time the series was a hit and one can see that more money was being put into the productions and being used rather well. A highlight of the season is the introduction of "The Seven Million Dollar Man" played by Monte Markum to great effect. It explores how the bionics affect the psyche and how perhaps Steve Austin is more special than we knew. Steve must also face up to some ghosts as the vehicle he was piloting when he crashed is rebuilt and needs a pilot. Some of the quality of these episodes is suspect as the pressures of weekly television show seem to produce cracks. Much is made of Austin's charm toward women and frankly he's quite the womanizer in classic Bond fashion, though maybe not quite so callous. It's frustrating when the writers seem to forget that Steve Austin is a celebrity in this world and have stories in which no one seems to know him. In one he has amnesia (a tiresome cliche) and it's a particularly weak effort. Farrah Fawcett shows up again, this time as a reporter who uncovers Steve's secret and blackmails Oscar in order to get ahead. The whisk her off to Baja and she seems strangely unsuspicious when Oscar starts digging a bit hole. (The story claims it archeology.) She and Steve romance a bit. The big news in the second season is the introduction of Jamie Sommers who would become the "Bionic Woman" and would go on to be a spin-off of the highly successful show. 

Season 3 (1975-1976)

Things start off pretty strong with a two-part episode that brings Jamie Sommers back to life and also explains why she must be separated from her intended husband Steve Austin. Of course this is a set-up for spin-off show The Bionic Woman. Then Steve saves the Liberty Bell as a shout-out to the upcoming bicentennial of the United States. Steve Austin is presented a likeable guy and so I guess it's not an enormous surprise he has lots of friends. And we see them now as his college roommate turns out to Sonny Bono (doing a Tony Orlando imitation) and his high school football pal is Larry Csonka who gets kidnapped by Dick Butkis and Carl Weathers among others. I rather liked the episodes in which Steve is a lumberjack, a stevedore, and a cop. And he starts finally to use some disguises. He's a famous astronaut, yet he goes undercover. It didn't make sense. But you roll with it. 

When rolls into Morgantown, Georgia to break up a moonshine ring, the familiar hillbilly gags and tropes fairly drip off the screen. I'm a hillbilly by birth and raising, so I'm sensitive to these portrayals. Making fun of country hicks gets a free pass in a country which is quite tender about most things. (MAGA hasn't helped the situation any.) This season also has the epic first encounter with Bigfoot played by Andre the Giant. Bigfoot was major fad in the 70's and they grab a piece of that pie. Farrah Fawcett shows up again, this time as yet another old flame of Steve's. She a degenerate gamble helping him rescue a stolen statue. So, the show was running the gamut, from crime drama, to foreign intrigue, to full-blown sci-fi epic.  

Season 4 (1976-1977)

Steve kicks off the longest season of the show's run sporting a pretty cheesy mustache. It doesn't really work for him as it did for Clark Gable. The return of Bigfoot is a headline in a story which moves from this show over to The Bionic Woman. Bigfoot is still controlled by aliens, but this time it's a splinter group stealing stuff to make themselves invincible. Farrah Fawcett returns for the fourth time in the series, this time playing the pilot she portrayed in the first season. There is an epic crossover with The Bionic Woman in which Oscar Goldman is kidnapped. This is a pretty good story with nice twists and opportunities for everyone to showcase their stuff. We get a Bionic Boy when a youngster is given implants which allow him to walk and even more. This was a two-hour episode, one of two in the season. The weird thing about this one was where it was filmed in Kane, Utah and from what I can tell used townspeople as actors, with expected results. 

Steve gets involved with quite a bit of espionage in these stories, going undercover as a contestant in a glider competition, an oil rigger, a boxer, a flying Thunderbird, and even Santa to help bring the Christmas spirit in the most modern Dickens manner. He fights super chimps and relentless probes to Venus gone haywire. Spies try to use carnival rides to bring down experimental aircraft in one truly baffling episode. (Sidebar on that one -- the remains of a long dead cowboy were discovered in a wax figure during the shoot.) One episode title "The Ultimate Imposter" has very little Steve and is in fact an attempt to spin-off a new series about a guy who gets his smarts from computers in order to do espionage. (The show never launched and if it had been the creators of Joe 90 could well have sued.)

Season Five (1977-1978)

The final season of The Six Million Dollar Man kicks off with jolt as its partner show The Bionic Woman shifted to NBC making crossovers untenable. (To the credit of someone though Oscar and Rudy appeared in both shows.) Lee Majors was a bona fide star and in this season his role gets a James Bond juicing when he seems to get a new romance very episode. The season kicks off with two two-part stories, the first dealing with a woman who can control sharks so that a nuclear sub can be stolen and the second about the complications of getting a rocket into orbit to rescue a damaged satellite. In both Steve runs to the rescue in more than a few nicks of time. A yarn about a tornado threatening a community was pretty lame despite having a multitude of moving parts. Then it's the roller derby as Steve infiltrates a team which is planning a heist in a federal building. Then we are treated to a sci-fi blockbuster in the grand tradition of Radar Men from the Moon. The Moon is shifted when nuclear bombs are used to drill for some important ore and results in tragically terrible weather on Earth. It takes Steve two episodes to put down the cold-blooded mad scientist behind the scheme. 

Then he takes an experimental bomb on a road trip in an RV followed by a yarn about a technology that will blind radar. Steve wing walks in an episode that features some outstanding arial stunts. A strange one features Steve thinking he's in the future of 1984, which is revealed to be a con to get some fuel formula. The Death Probe returns looking more bad ass than the first time with a neat black paint job and a distinct Dalek feel. It gets super wacky when Steve and Rudy find an island brimming with aliens hiding from mankind but now mutated into powerful and violent creatures by the radiation from a satellite. There's a nifty art heist story with some great twists and turns followed by a bizarre one in which Steve seems to be haunted by himself. We get a terrific two-parter that hints at the future when Steve must contend with computer hackers and worse still. The Bradbury Building is used in this one and is as always lovely to look at. The season and the show close out with story that pits Steve against a lovely Soviet agent to recover some stolen smart bombs and a rolling launcher. 

One final note on these darn good shows is that I was impressed. They hold up better than I expected, and I was pleased by Steve Austin's belt buckle. Though he's a "superhero", he doesn't have a costumed. But he does have a belt buckle resembling two wings which he wears in every episode. Nice subtle touch I missed out on totally back in the day. 

Tomorrow, we check out Season Six. It's a comic book. 

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Augustus!

Let the espionage begin! This month will focus on some secret agent comics from Marvel such as the famous Nick Fury seen above leading his hearty Agents of SHIELD into battle as rendered by master Jim Steranko. I will look at the SHIELD years both before and during the Steranko reign. I'll also be looking specifically at how Steranko came to be the transformative artist he became on the SHIELD series as well as some later work he created for Marvel. 

The Six Million Dollar Man was a highly successful 70's television show which pitted the All-American cyborg Steve Austin against a varied range of threats to the homeland. Charlton had the license and produced some handy comics back in the day and more recently from Dynamite, but my focus will be on the TV show and its spin-off The Bionic Woman, which also got both the Charlton and Dynamite treatments. My focus will be on the shows themselves with perhaps a glimpse or three of the comics. 

But for the biggest focus this month, I'm reaching back into the most ancient coffers of the Dojo and dusting off some of my earliest work, creating revised reviews of Charlton's The Fightin' Five. Look for detailed looks at all the missions of these men who only ever sought to save the world. These reviews will feature work by the likes of Rocke Mastroserio, Ernie Bache, Bill Montes and Joe Gill among others. These are some pretty fascinating comic-book stories and well worth a month to look at again. 

And you never know what might pop up during the month in addition. All these men and women fought to make the world safer. We do that today with crucial political elections seemingly around every corner. We must be as stalwart as our heroes, and we must win the day as they did. 

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The Six Million Dollar Pitch!

I was surprised and bemused by an ad I saw on TV a few days ago featuring Lee Majors. We all know Lee Majors as "Colonel Steve Austin" the Six Million Dollar Man. But now it seems those memories are merely fodder for Majors to tout a new health product, the "The Lee Majors Rechargeable Bionic Hearing Aid ".


Here's a link with more on this modern medical marvel.

I don't mean to scoff. This is a serious issue for many people, but it's very weird indeed for fiction and reality to blend in such a way. It's like those TV doctors but stranger still. Because an actor played a character who gets high-tech implants which enhance his human capabilities, we should take real medical advice from him? Besides wasn't it the Bionic Woman who had the super hearing?


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