The Six Million Dollar Man: Difference between revisions

In the 1970s, the utterly exorbitant $6 million seemed about the right cost to create a bionic man<ref>You might say it [[Incredibly Lame Pun|cost an arm and a leg]]</ref>. Oddly enough, due to the rapidly-falling costs of technology, it still seems about right, despite inflation.

 

* [[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.

* [[Government Agency of Fiction]]: The O.S.I. (Office of Scientific Intelligence).

* [[The Great Repair]] - "Little Orphan Airplane"

* [[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.}}

* [[Mission Control]]: Oscar, in many episodes.

* [[Named After Somebody Famous]]: Steve Austin (1793 – 1836) was the man after whom the city of Austin, Texas was named.

** Steve Austin himself is likely not to be confused with [[Stone Cold Steve Austin|a certain beer-swilling bad ass wrestler]].

** Candidates for bionic implantation need to be missing limbs. There are plenty of amputees among the general population, but since the technology is top secret, you have to find an amputee ''with a security clearance'' who is willing to put himself into danger after he's been modified. There isn't a very big recruiting pool to choose from.

*** Also, we should note that the technology ''didn't always work right''. In the case of Steve Austin, it worked spectacularly, his body adapted superbly, ''and so did his mind''. He was able to control his power and his temper, he continued to think of himself as a 'normal man' for most purposes, etc. He was the exception. Jaime Sommers was able to handle the power all right, but her body kept trying to reject the bionics and this brought her close to death on several occasions. The previous bionic man had not been able to handle the temptations of power, and some of the other instances of bionic implementation also went wrong in various ways. Steve Austin was both lucky and an exceptional man before he was made bionic.

* [[Required Secondary Powers]]: As noted above, the non-bionic parts of his body would have trouble handling the forces created by his bionic limbs. He's also subject to the [[Super Strength]] issues of this trope.

* [[Stock Footage]] - most notably the footage of a real-life test flight crash that opens every episode (though the pilot in that crash wasn't nearly as badly hurt...he did lose vision in his right eye) and numerous episodes using NASA spaceflight and moon walk footage.

* [[Stock Sound Effects]]: The Venus probe sounds suspiciously like your Kenmore washing machine....