The Bionic Woman

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The Bionic Woman

Opening credits
Genre Science Fiction
Running time 60 mins.
Creator(s) Kenneth Johnson
based upon Cyborg by Martin Caidin
Starring Lindsay Wagner
Richard Anderson
Martin E. Brooks
Country of origin Flag of United States United States
Original channel ABC, NBC
Original run 11 January 1976–13 May 1978
No. of episodes 58
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Part of The Bionic series

The Bionic Woman was a television series which spun off from The Six Million Dollar Man. It starred Lindsay Wagner as Jaime (sometimes, Jamie) Sommers, a tennis professional who was nearly killed in a sky diving accident, and was rebuilt by Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) and Dr. Rudy Wells (Martin E. Brooks), who had also rebuilt The Six Million Dollar Man. As the result of her surgical implantation, Jaime Sommers had amplified hearing, a greatly strengthened right arm, and enhanced legs, enabling her to run faster than a speeding car.

The series ran on the American Broadcasting Company from 1976 to 1977 and on NBC from 1977 to 1978.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Jaime Sommers first appears in a two-part episode of The Six Million Dollar Man in 1975 entitled "The Bionic Woman." In this episode, Steve travels to his old hometown of Ojai, California to visit with his mother and step-father and take a vacation from his work. During his visit, he rekindles his old relationship with Jaime Sommers, now one of America's top tennis players. Their relationship progresses rapidly to the point where Steve proposes marriage.

During an outing, Steve and Jaime take part in some skydiving. Jaime's parachute malfunctions and she plummets through a clump of trees and hits the ground, suffering traumatic injuries to her legs, right arm, and head. Austin makes an emotional plea to his boss, Oscar Goldman, even going so far as to commit Jaime to become an OSI operative. Goldman agrees to assign Dr. Rudy Wells and the bionics team to rebuild her.

Jaime's body is reconstructed with parts similar to Steve's, but smaller. The actual cost of rebuilding her is not revealed but is said to be less than the $6 million it cost to rebuild Austin. (The German dub of the show changes this - the show is called The 7 Million Dollar Woman, breaking down to $2 million for each leg and her arm, and the ear at $1 million!). Like Steve Austin before her, Jaime is given two bionic legs and her right arm is also replaced. In addition, her right ear is augmented by a bionic device that gives her the ability to hear a whisper a mile away. Jaime recovers from her operation and, over Steve's initial objections, agrees to go on a mission for Oscar Goldman. During the mission, her bionics malfunction and she experiences severe and crippling headaches.

Dr. Wells determines that Jaime's body is rejecting her bionic implants, a massive cerebral clot apparently causing her headaches and malfunctions. Soon after, she goes berserk and crashes her way out of the hospital. Steve takes pursuit and eventually catches up with her, where she collapses in his arms. Soon after, Jaime appears to die on the operating table, her body shutting down. The episode ends with Steve weeping at her memory.

The character was so popular that ABC asked the writers to find a way to bring her back. In the first episode of the next season it is revealed that Jaime hadn't died after all, although Steve Austin was not informed of this fact. He discovers it when he is hospitalized at Dr. Wells' bionic clinic after a mission goes bad and he suffers severe damage to his bionic legs; he sees Jaime as he is being rolled into the operating room for repair, just before slipping into a coma.

As Steve later learns, Wells' assistant, Dr. Michael Marcetti, had urged Rudy to try his newly developed cryogenic techniques to keep Jaime in suspended animation until the cerebral clot could be safely removed, after which she was successfully revived.

A side-effect of the procedure causes Jaime to develop amnesia and forget her relationship with Steve; any attempt to make her remember her life with Steve causes her headaches and pain. Steve reluctantly lets her go on to live her own life, as an agent for the OSI.

Jaime, now retired as a tennis player, takes a job as a schoolteacher in Ojai. She lives in a converted farmhouse rented from Steve's mother and stepfather, who were aware of her and Steve's bionic nature and their double lives as secret agents. In later episodes, Jaime adopts Maximillion, a german shepherd that had been given bionic legs and jaw. He was an experiment to see if trained animals could benefit from bionics. The dog was named Maximillion because the cost of his bionics was one million dollars. She also worked frequently with Steve on missions and the two reestablished their friendship, although no romance resulted initially.

Her most noted enemies were the Fembots, a line of powerful androids that Jaime fought twice in the series. Arguably her most vital mission was the thwarting of an insane billionaire's plan to destroy the Earth using a doomsday device. Jaime's mission's frequently involved undercover work in which she takes on a number of roles. In the past she has been a nun, a police officer, a college student, an air-steward, and a professional wrestler.

As with many spy films at the time, Jaime was frequently kidnapped (more often than not with the use of chloroform or a drugged drink) and placed in dangerous situations from which she would need her bionic abilities to escape. Typically she would be bound or handcuffed to a bomb which she could escape with ease once she woke up. However, on one interesting occasion she was handcuffed to her friend, so she could not use her bionic strength to escape as this would pull off the friend's hand.

While many of the episodes dealt with somewhat mundane double agents and technology thefts, several episode veered from the extraordinary to the down right strange. For example, Jaime dealt with a villain who operates a hair salon using a "truth serum" shampoo to extract information from OSI agents. A convict named Lisa has been given plastic surgery so she could replace Jaime. In a later episode, Lisa ingests a clay-like substance that gives her temporary super-strength, allowing her to fully replace Jaime at OSI while the real Jaime is imprisoned and led to believe she was actually Lisa. Lisa, however, did not know of Jaime's bionic implants and believed her powers to come from the substance; this led to discovery of her plan, and to Jaime's liberation.

Jaime's bionic abilities were depicted as being similar to Steve's. She could run about 60 mph, like Steve, and could bend steel bars with her right arm, and could jump to and from great heights with her new legs. But Jaime's and Steve's powers have their limitations. In one episode, Jaime jumps from the window of a particularly tall building while trying to escape the Fembots. Due to the height from which she jumped, her legs malfunctioned upon impact with the ground, knocking her unconscious. Her right ear, however, is extremely sensitive and can detect most sounds regardless of volume or frequency (she is often shown using this ability to break into safes). As it is encased in her body, it is also typically not subject to the negative effects extreme cold has on bionic implants.

In later years, the love between Jaime and Steve rekindled and this was further explored in three made-for-TV reunion movies in the late 1980s and early 1990s (see the article for The Six Million Dollar Man for more information).

In the first reunion, The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Jaime Sommers and Steve Austin are reunited after nearly ten years of living separate lives. Jaime's memory is fully restored (according to Oscar Goldman, Jaime was in an accident that involved an explosion, and "she remembered everything" after she recovered from her concussion) and she tries to reconcile her feelings for Steve, while at the same time helping train Steve's son Michael in the use of his own recently acquired updated bionics. Jaime challenges Michael to a friendly race, and is outpaced, making the comment she feels like an "obsolete model".

In the final reunion film, Bionic Ever After?, a computer virus corrupts Jaime's bionic systems. Dr. Wells informs Steve that "she may never be bionic again," but Steve's main regard is he wants her alive above all else. She undergoes a major upgrade, which not only increases the power of her bionics but gives her night vision. Finally, after so many years of waiting around, the bionic couple say their I Do's.

[edit] DVD release

The first season of the original series was released to DVD in the UK on September 26, 2005. The second season is due to be released in the UK on October 23, 2006. A North American DVD release was suggested by Universal Studios press material issued in mid-2004, but as of August 2006 this has yet to occur.

[edit] Spin-off books

Two novels adapting various episodes were published to coincide with the series: Welcome Home, Jaime and Extracurricular Activities, both by Eileen Lottman. The UK editions of these two books were credited to "Maud Willis" and were retitled Double Identity and A Question of Life, respectively. Although the closing credits of every episode says the series was based upon Martin Caidin's 1972 novel, Cyborg, this only refers to the bionics concept, the characters of Rudy Wells and Oscar Goldman, and the occasional appearance by Steve Austin; Jaime Sommers does not appear in any of Caidin's novels.

A short-lived comic book series by Charlton Comics was published in 1976-77. The character was also to have appeared in a 1996 comic miniseries entitled Bionix by Maximum Press. Although the magazine was advertised in comic book trade publications, it was ultimately never published.[1]

A possible reference to Sommers occurs in the Star Trek novel, The Eugenics Wars Vol. 2: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh by Greg Cox, which mentions a blonde agent with a strong arm.

[edit] Television Remake

In August of 2002 it was announced that the show was to be remade by producers Jennifer and Suzanne Todd ("Team Todd") for the USA Network. After the intial press release was issued, the show never made it out of pre-production and no other announcements were made as to the show's fate. However, on October 9, 2006, NBC Universal announced that it is bringing the project back, with new producers and reportedly a radical reworking of the concept.

[edit] Bionicon

In June 2006, the first Bionicon fan convention was held in Tampa, Florida which united fans, actors and film makers from the Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man TV shows along with other science fiction series. Lindsay Wagner, Richard Anderson and Kenneth Johnson attended.

[edit] Episodes

[edit] Season 1 (1976)

  1. "Welcome Home, Jaime Part 1" (originally aired on January 14, 1976 as an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man but later syndicated as a Bionic Woman episode.)
  2. "Welcome Home, Jaime Part 2" (January 21, 1976)
  3. "Angel of Mercy" (January 28, 1976)
  4. "A Thing of the Past" (February 18, 1976)
  5. "Claws" (February 25, 1976)
  6. "The Deadly Missiles" (March 3, 1976)
  7. "Bionic Beauty" (March 17, 1976)
  8. "Jaime's Mother" (March 24, 1976)
  9. "Winning is Everything" (April 7, 1976)
  10. "Canyon of Death" (April 14, 1976)
  11. "Fly Jaime" (May 5, 1976)
  12. "The Jailing of Jaime" (May 12, 1976)
  13. "Mirror Image" (May 19, 1976)
  14. "The Ghosthunter" (May 26, 1976)

[edit] Season 2 (1976-1977)

  1. "In This Corner, Jaime Sommers" (September 29, 1976)
  2. "Assault on the Princess" (October 6, 1976)
  3. "Road to Nashville" (October 20, 1976)
  4. "Kill Oscar, Part 1" (October 27, 1976)
  5. "Kill Oscar, Part 2" (originally aired on October 31, 1976 as an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man but later syndicated as a Bionic Woman episode.)
  6. "Kill Oscar, Part 3" (November 3, 1976)
  7. "Black Magic" (November 10, 1976)
  8. "Sister Jaime" (November 24, 1976)
  9. "The Vega Influence" (December 1, 1976)
  10. "Jaime's Shield, Part 1" (December 15, 1976)
  11. "Jaime's Shield, Part 2" (December 22, 1976)
  12. "Biofeedback" (January 12, 1977)
  13. "Doomsday is Tomorrow, Part 1" (January 19, 1977)
  14. "Doomsday is Tomorrow, Part 2" (January 26, 1977)
  15. "Deadly Ringer, Part 1" (February 2, 1977)
  16. "Deadly Ringer, Part 2" (February 9, 1977)
  17. "Jaime and the King" (February 23, 1977)
  18. "Beyond the Call" (March 9, 1977)
  19. "The DeJon Caper" (March 16, 1977)
  20. "The Night Demon" (March 23, 1977)
  21. "Iron Ships and Dead Men" (March 30, 1977)
  22. "Once a Thief" (May 4, 1977)

[edit] Season 3 (1977-1978)

  1. "The Bionic Dog, Part 1" (September 10, 1977)
  2. "The Bionic Dog, Part 2" (September 17, 1977)
  3. "Fembots in Las Vegas, Part 1" (September 24, 1977)
  4. "Fembots in Las Vegas, Part 2" (October 1, 1977)
  5. "Rodeo" (October 15, 1977)
  6. "African Connection" (October 29, 1977)
  7. "Motorcycle Boogie" (November 5, 1977)
  8. "Brain Wash" (November 12, 1977)
  9. "Escape to Love" (November 26, 1977)
  10. "Max" (December 3, 1977)
  11. "Over the Hill Spy" (December 17, 1977)
  12. "All for One" (January 7, 1978)
  13. "The Pyramid" (January 14, 1978)
  14. "The Antidote" (January 21, 1978)
  15. "The Martians are Coming, The Martians are Coming" (January 28, 1978)
  16. "Sanctuary Earth" (February 11, 1978)
  17. "Deadly Music" (February 18, 1978)
  18. "Which One is Jaime?" (February 25, 1978)
  19. "Out of Body" (March 4, 1978)
  20. "Long Live the King" (March 25, 1978)
  21. "Rancho Outcast" (May 6, 1978)
  22. "On the Run" (May 13, 1978)

[edit] TV movies

  1. The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (May 17, 1987)
  2. Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (April 30, 1989)
  3. Bionic Ever After? (November 29, 1994)

[edit] External links

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