Happy 45th anniversary, Bionic Woman!
January 14 marked the 45th anniversary of the first broadcast of The Bionic Woman, the Emmy-winning spin-off of The Six Million Dollar Man and the first-ever US prime time series featuring a female superhero (Joanna Cameron’s Secrets of Isis, the actual first-ever for US TV, was a Saturday morning show, and Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman didn’t debut as a proper series until April 1976).
Lindsay Wagner become the first lead performer in a sci-fi series to win a lead acting Emmy for her work as Jaime Sommers, a former tennis pro and onetime fiancee to Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin who becomes a secret agent for the deceptively named Office of Scientific Information (OSI) when a parachuting trip goes horribly wrong and she loses an arm, both legs and an ear. Using nuclear-powered life-like prosthetics called bionics she was given the ability to flip cars one-handed, jump 30 feet into the air, hear a pin drop from half a mile away, and run more than 100 miles per hour. (That last isn’t an exaggeration - in an early episode, she actually outpaces a race car pursuing her and they take pains to show its speedometer).
Using the slow-motion photography techniques developed for capturing the power of NFL players in action, we got to see Jaime in action for three seasons, two on ABC and then the series moved to NBC. Her co-stars, Richard Anderson as her boss, Oscar Goldman (who the later actor later confirmed was secretly in love with Jaime) and Martin E. Brooks as Dr. Rudy Wells, the inventor of bionics, became the first actors in history to appear on two shows airing simultaneously on two networks as they also kept their roles in The Six Million Dollar Man (though the frequent crossovers with Steve Austin, such as the epic 3-part “Kill Oscar” arc, came to an end).
Sometimes called a “more human” counterpart to Six Mil, the Bionic Woman tended to focus more on personal stories than “save the world” ones - though the two-part “Doomsday is Tomorrow”, which put her on the clock from stopping a doomsday device from eliminating all life on earth, remains one of the most amazing storylines of its day:
And Jaime tended to use her charm to try and defuse situations before she had to start throwing people around. Or firing off a tennis ball like a missile (a trick I’m surprised she didn’t try on the bad guys):
I loved this show growing up and, yes, I had a crush on Lindsay like so many others did. (As I write this I am greatly enjoying seeing CGI-de-aged Lindsay, resembling her Bionic Woman years, in the video game Death Stranding that I got for Christmas.) Yes, there were silly episodes that haven’t aged well (one where she infiltrates a beauty pageant more than a decade before Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality; another where she pretends to be a WWE-style wrestler), and some early episodes were straight remakes of Six Mil episodes because of the very short notice the producers got to create a series after Jaime was introduced on Six Mil, immediately killed off, and then the hue and cry from viewers was so great the entire opening of Six Mil’s next season had to be reworked with mere weeks’ notice to a) revive Jaime somehow (with shades of Doctor Who’s Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald, it involved her forgetting about her relationship with Steve) and b) set her up for a new series to debut a few months later. For a while, reportedly, Lindsay wasn’t sure she wanted to put her growing film career on hold to do a TV series, so the show almost didn’t happen.
One of BW’s strengths is its heroine was not just a “punch-clock hero” who did what she was told. There were episodes where she openly disagreed with having to take on missions and the show’s finale (minor spoiler) was actually reminiscent of Patrick McGoohan’s classic The Prisoner as she tries to leave the OSI, only to find herself (befitting the episode’s title) “on the run”. In 1978 it was still rare for TV series, especially shows in the sci-fi/action genre, to have finale episodes, but BW got one. Years later, Jaime and Steve reunited for three TV movies that gave closure to both characters’ story arcs.
The magic of the Bionic Woman has proven difficult to recapture. A remake series in 2007 starring later Doctor Who one-off companion actress Michelle Ryan failed in part because they took too many liberties with the characters (including taking elements from Martin Caidin’s original novel, Cyborg, upon which Six Mil was based - Jaime herself was the creation of Kenneth Johnson, later the creator of “V” and producer of Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno’s “The Incredible Hulk” and the “Day One” Fox network series “Alien Nation”), plus many felt Ryan was miscast (I disagree) and the show never really had a chance due to a writer’s strike that forced it to end production after only about a half dozen episodes. There were also rumours of a remake starring Jennifer Aniston at one point, and another that reportedly was going to feature a non-superpowered lead with “bionic woman” being a “metaphor for the human condition” or something like that.
Glad that last one didn’t happen. Jaime Summers was (and, let’s be honest, remains) part of an elite group of female superheroes with their own TV shows. And I still think it’s one of the best. In fact, the one-two combination of Jaime Summers and the soon-to-debut Wonder Woman (plus the watered-down-for-kids-but-still-intriguing Isis on Saturday mornings) made 1976 something of a golden year for female superheroes. Nothing beats Jaime taking on Bigfoot or her recurring version of the Daleks, the Fembots. Sadly, a crossover between Jaime and WW never happened, even though they were on the same network at the time; it wasn’t until a couple years ago that DC Comics and Dynamite Comics (who have been doing BW comics for a few years) made that finally happen.
Ultimately, though, full credit for the success of the original Bionic Woman goes to Lindsay Wagner. Some years ago the Bionic Blonde Youtube channel posted what has become a classic fan video tribute to Jaime. Titled “Bionic Kashmir” it’s just a snapshot of her in action (bookended by scenes from a 1980s reunion movie), but it’s fun. The series is available on DVD and streaming, and I recommend it if you’re interested in some retro fun and experiencing an iconic character again or for the first time.
