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The Six Million Dollar Man: Difference between revisions
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The series was followed by made-for-TV movies in the late [[The Eighties|1980s]] and early [[The Nineties|1990s]]. In the last of these, Steve and Jaime finally got married. As for bionic kids -- Austin's estranged son by a pre-series marriage, Michael, appears in ''The Return of the Six-Million-Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman'' (1987), where he is fitted with bionics far, far exceeding those possessed by his father. In the second film, ''Bionic Showdown'' (1989), a new bionic woman named Kate Mason is introduced, played by [[Sandra Bullock]] in one of her first roles.
The series is known for its slow-motion special effects, which while often derided by some modern-day viewers, were in fact based upon similar slow-motion effects used by NFL Films in its acclaimed series of sports archive films (and even before that, films like ''Olympia'' had also used the technique). The slow-motion action actually wasn't consistently used until midway through the second season, but it was decided that speeding up the action usually didn't work, with Lee Majors on the 2010 DVD release of the series, saying, it looks like something out of the Keystone Cops. With CG effects still years away, slow-motion was the only practical option.
Majors, an acclaimed actor from such films as ''The Ballad of Andy Crocker'' and ''The Francis Gary Powers Story'', but best known for his work in westerns like ''The Big Valley'', was chosen because of his stoic demeanor, although episodes such as "The Coward" (in which Austin discovers the fate of his long-lost father), and "The Bionic Woman" showed that he had the range if he required it. His co-star, Richard Anderson ([[Forbidden Planet]]), played Oscar Goldman and provided a fatherly figure to both Steve and, later, Jaime. Three actors played Dr. Rudy Wells: Oscar-winner Martin Balsam in the first pilot, noted voice actor Alan Oppenheimer for the first 2 seasons, and Martin E. Brooks thereafter. In 1977, Anderson and Brooks made US TV history by becoming the first lead actors to play the same roles in two ongoing series on two competing networks, when they were allowed to appear on both ''Six Mil'' on ABC and ''Bionic Woman'' on NBC. They also reprised their roles for the later reunion films.
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Achilles' Heel]] - Extreme cold could make the bionic heroes' parts stop working until they warm up.
** Steve's natural arm is vulnerable and often injured.
** He seems to also have the skull equivalent of a glass jaw.
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** His bionic parts are powered by miniature nuclear fuel cells. In one of the Bigfoot two-parters, the cells burst when his legs were damaged, exposing him to lethal levels of radiation.
* [[Affectionate Parody]]: Nick at Nite's marathon ''The Bob, Bob Newhart, Newhart Marathon'' presented 60 second parodies of Bob Newhart starring in various shows. One of these was ''The Six Million Dollar Bob''.
** [[Mad Magazine]] printed a parody of the show. The opening paragraph leading into the title talked of what a rip-off Steve Austin was to the US taxpayers, concluding with "Just wait 'till you see what we got for ''The Six Million Dollars, Man!''
* [[Better Than New]]- Austin is given [[Artificial Limbs|bionic replacements]] for his legs, his [[Fashionable Asymmetry|right arm]], and [[Electronic Eyes|one eye]], leaving him with superhuman speed and strength and telescopic vision.
* [[Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti]]- A recurring "guest star". {{spoiler|[[Voodoo Shark|Bigfoot's actually a robot. Built by aliens hiding in the woods to keep people away.]]}}
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* [[Government Agency of Fiction]]: The O.S.I. (Office of Scientific Intelligence).
* [[The Great Repair]] - "Little Orphan Airplane"
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: Wrestling fans likely did that when they realized it was Andre the Giant under the Bigfoot costume.
* [[Lensman Arms Race]]: While Steve and Jamie's bionic legs could propel them at 60 miles per hour, the bionic legs given to Steve's long-lost son in the later TV movie could make him run at '''300''' miles per hour.
* [[Manipulative Bastard]]: Oscar falls into this category in the early episodes. His predecessor, Oliver Spencer (featured in the pilot TV movie) is the epitome of this trope as {{spoiler|he orchestrates a dangerous mission for Steve simply to see if he would survive; if he hadn't, Spencer was prepared to simply build another bionic man and try again.}}
* [[Mind Reading]]: In one episode, a psychic man was captured by the Bad Guys and forcibly hooked up to a psychic-amplifying machine. The O.S.I. used ''another'' psychic (a plucky teen-age girl) to track him down.
* [[Mission Control]]: Oscar, in many episodes.
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