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The Six Million Dollar Man: Difference between revisions
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In a spring 1975 episode, Jaime Sommers (Lindsay Wagner), a tennis pro and Austin's love interest, was injured in a skydiving accident. Austin pleaded with Goldman to save her life, and she too was fitted with bionic parts (legs, one arm, and an ear). Eventually her body rejected her implants, and she died, at least as far as Austin was concerned. Fan outcry was so great, ABC demanded the series reorganize the start of the third season and run a two-parter bringing her back to life. So after Jaime was rescued by a radical medical procedure, she went to work for the OSI in her own spinoff series, ''[[The Bionic Woman]]'' (1976-1978), living undercover as a schoolteacher on an Air Force base when not on missions for the OSI. And Jaime herself became a recurring character on ''Six Mil'' during its third and fourth seasons, taking part in a number of crossover stories until ''Bionic Woman'' was cancelled by ABC in 1977 and moved to NBC, ending these crossovers for good.
''The Six Million Dollar Man'' was based upon the science fiction novel ''Cyborg'' by Martin Caidin, and the original pilot TV movie, aired in 1973, was written by Henri Simoun and an uncredited Steven Bochco ([[NYPD Blue]]). It was followed by two more TV movies produced by Glen Larson (''[[Battlestar Galactica Classic]]'') that attempted, without success, to recast Austin as a [[James Bond]]-like character. When the series returned as a weekly hour-long show in January 1974, it was now produced by Harve Bennett ([[Star Trek]]), who restored much of Caidin's original characterization to Austin (though Caidin's version of the character was rather different - he was more of an assassin, carried a poison dart gun in a bionic finger, and his non-seeing bionic eye was a miniature camera). Later, Kenneth Johnson, who later went on to be involved with the TV series ''[[The Incredible Hulk (TV series)|The Incredible Hulk]],'' ''[[Alien Nation (TV series)|Alien Nation]],'' and ''[[V]]'', joined as a writer and went on to create the character of Jaime Sommers and produce the spin-off. Johnson advocated a somewhat "kindler, gentler" show, and it was in a two-parter he wrote that the show's most iconic recurring character, Bigfoot, first appeared.
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.
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** [[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.]]}}
* [[The Board Game]]: Parker Brothers released no less than two: one named simply ''The Six Million Dollar Man'' and a more obscure sequel, ''Bionic Action''.
* [[Brought Down to Normal]]
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** It could be argued that Martin Caidin's version of Steve Austin from the novels falls into this trope.
* [[Cyborg]]
* [[Dead Guy
* [[Does Not Know His Own Strength]]: Austin makes a few clumsy mistakes in the early episodes, such as hitting a golf ball too far in "Wine, Women and War" and throwing a heavy door open too fast in "The Rescue of Athena One".
* [[Flowers for Algernon Syndrome]]: Steve Austin never lost his bionic capabilities, but the "bionic boy" who appeared in one of the early episodes<ref>no relation to Steve Austin's long lost son in one of the later TV movies, who also got bionic parts</ref> lost his bionic legs again by the end of the episode.
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* [[Stock Sound Effects]]: The Venus probe sounds suspiciously like your Kenmore washing machine....
* [[Superhero]]
* [[Tap
* [[Theme Tune]]: recognizable even today, as well as its SFX sounds.
* [[There Is Another]]: For the first season, Steve Austin thought he was the only Bionic man ever made. Then he came across OSI's little skeleton in the closet, Barney Miller/Hiller, whom it turned out had been given Bionic limbs before Steve.
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