The Bionic Woman

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The Bionic Woman

Opening credits
Genre Science Fiction
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
No. of episodes 58
Production
Running time 60 mins.
Broadcast
Original channel ABC, NBC
Original run 11 January 1976 – 13 May 1978
Links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

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] Overview

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 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 operative of their secret government organization, the Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI). Goldman agrees to assign Dr. Rudy Wells (played at this point in the series by Alan Oppenheimer) and the bionics team to rebuild her.

Jaime's body is reconstructed with parts similar to Steve's. The actual cost of rebuilding her is not revealed but is said in dialogue to be less than the $6 million it cost to rebuild Austin because the replacement parts were smaller. (The German dub of the show contradicts this - the show is called The 7 Million Dollar Woman). Like Steve Austin before her, Jaime is given two bionic legs, capable of propelling her at speeds exceeding 60 mph, and her right arm is replaced by a lifelike prosthetic capable of bending steel or throwing an object for a mile. Whereas Austin received a bionic eye, the inner mechanism of Jaime's right ear is replaced by a bionic device that gives her the ability to hear a whisper a mile away. These bionic implants cannot be distinguished from natural body parts, except on occasions where they sustain damage and the mechanisms beneath the plastiskin become exposed.

After Jaime recovers from her operation, Steve attempts to renege on his promise that she will work for OSI. But Jaime agrees to go on a mission for Oscar Goldman, despite Steve's objection. During the mission, however, 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 dies 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 (now played by Martin E. Brooks) 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 a bionic jaw and legs. He was an experiment to see if trained animals could benefit from bionics and was named Maximillion because the cost of his bionics was one million dollars. When he was introduced, he started experiencing symptoms that suggested an age-related variant of bionic rejection and was due to be dissected, but it was discovered the condition was actually psychological owing to resurfaced memories of a traumatic fire that threatened Max in his youth.

Jamie also worked frequently with Steve Austin on missions and the two reestablished their friendship, although no romance resulted initially.

The close connection between The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman was highlighted by the fact that Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks were credited in the openings of both series; this continued even after The Bionic Woman was cancelled by ABC and was immediately picked up by NBC. It is believed that Anderson and Brooks were the first (and, to date, only) actors to play the same roles in two concurrent television series airing on two different networks.[citation needed]

The most notable of the frequent crossovers between The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman included a two-part episode in which the two characters squared off against Austin's sometimes-friend/sometimes-enemy Bigfoot, and a three-part story arc entitled "Kill Oscar" that aired two parts as Bionic Woman episodes and the third as an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man.

On her own, Jamie's 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 government scientist'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, such as a nun, a police officer, a college student, an air-steward, a singer, and a professional wrestler. Her tennis background also came into play occasionally, and she was also from time to time seen having adventures with some of her students in Ojai.

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 occasion she was handcuffed to a friend, so she could not use her bionic strength to escape as this would pull off the friend's hand.

Jaime dealt with a number of bizarre cases, such as a villain who operates a hair salon using a "truth serum" shampoo to extract information from OSI agents. In another episode, a convict named Lisa is given plastic surgery and tries to replace Jaime. In a later episode, Lisa ingests a paste-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 quesion her own identity. Lisa, however, did not know of Jaime's bionic implants and believed her powers to come from the Adrenalizine. The final episode of the series is acknowledged to have been inspired by The Prisoner; Jamie resigns from the OSI and finds herself being pursued by entities concerned about the secret information she possesses.

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 releases

Universal Home Video has released the first 2 Seasons of The Bionic Woman on DVD in Region 2 for the very first time. A North American DVD release (Region 1) was suggested by Universal Studios press material issued in mid-2004, but as of April 2007 this has yet to occur. The NBC remake of the show may result in renewed interest by Universal Studios in a North American release.

Name Cover Art Region 1 Region 2
The Complete Season One TBA September 26, 2005
The Complete Season Two TBA October 23, 2006

[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] Merchandise

Like its parent program The Bionic Woman spawned its own line of toys. Kenner produced an 11-inch doll of the character, with similar features to the Steve Austin version (bionic modules and removable bionic limbs), except instead of a bionic eye the doll's head would click when turned, simulating the sound of Jaime's bionic ear. Accessories for the doll released by Kenner included additional fashions, and a Bionic Beauty Salon playset.

[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; media reports suggested that Jennifer Aniston was being considered for the title role. After the initial 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. The project's one hour pilot was given an official greenlight by NBC on January 3, 2007. On February 13, 2007 it was announced that British actress Michelle Ryan has been cast in the title role for this pilot. Katee Sackhoff will play Sara, the bionic woman's nemesis. [1]

[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] References in Pop Culture

  • In the 2005 episode of Duck Dodgers titled The Six Wazillion Dollar Duck, Duck Dodgers is injured and repaired with "cyborganic" parts, an obvious reference to bionics. Dodgers' mentor in the episode, "Steve Boston, the Cyborganic Man" is married to "Jamie Wynters, the Cyborganic Woman", references to Steve Austin The Six Million Dollar Man and Jaime Sommers, The Bionic Woman respectively.
  • In the 8th episode of third season of Veronica Mars titled "Lord of the Pi’s", Veronica Mars and her dad are trying to break into a villa. Veronica is climbing over the wall and when she lands, she makes the famous Sha-na-na-na-na-na-na! sound, as well as imitating the body language of the Bionic Woman.
  • In the third episode of Freaks and Geeks, Bill dresses up as The Bionic Woman.

[edit] Episodes

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ex-Eastender Zoe transformed into Bionic Woman. Retrieved on February 14, 2007.
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