Techtite's What Went Wrong --- When Entertainment Goes Awry!

Of all the 1970's TV "classics," The Six Million Dollar Man always seems to get the short end of the stick. For one thing it's practically the only 1970's TV sci-fi show to not yet be released on DVD: why? Furthermore: no remakes. Seriously? Even a 1970's one-season wonder like Battlestar Galactica was given a remake. To be fair; that remake did surprisingly well. This remake ---of an original series concept lasting four times longer than the original Galactica--- didn't do well at all.

What Went Right? Let's start with the fan base of the two original series. The Six Million Dollar Man

A simple Google of the words "Bionic Woman" leads to no less than 3,120,000 entries. This includes fans of the original series, fans of the new series, and even fans of both. There's just something cool about the idea of a person with the strength of an invulnerable robot. When you think about it; it's surprising that it took this long for someone to green light a remake.

The first thing any series needs is a good lead cast. Lindsay Wagner will always be the definitive Bionic Woman, though if you were going to remake the series, Michelle Ryan was a good choice. As for her "boss"; while Richard Anderson's "Oscar Goldman" is part of classic sci-fi TV infamy, the remade series had a brilliantly re-imagined version of Jamie's "boss," Jonas, played perfectly by Miguel Ferrer. In an amusing piece of trivia: Miguel Ferrer played a similar boss of a human cyborg, in the original Robocop movie. Furthermore: Ferrer was the boss of Bridget Fonda's version of "La Femme Nikita," in the movie Point of No Return. Given how many aspects of the new Bionic Woman saluted the La Femme Nikita series, Ferrer was perfect for the role in many ways. Mind you; the other characters were hardly miscast, though I don't want to ramble, and these were the two lead roles. Let's just say the series was very well cast, which isn't easy to do.

It's hard to put into words the series' best asset, though I guess you could call it the series potential. Here's the kind of potential I'm talking about. Consider the popularity of Heroes, which is basically a series about average people who suddenly have super powers. Consider the popularity of Lost, which is about technologies beyond comprehension (among other things, though you'll see where I'm going with this, soon enough). Consider 24, about a secret organization, led by a seemingly unstoppable super agent, who always saves the day at the eleventh hour (literally!). Now consider a series where an average woman suddenly gets implanted with technologies beyond her comprehension, which is used by a secret organization to stop evil plots from happening, against seemingly impossible odds. Was there any doubt this series was a great concept? Well, put those doubts to rest. The series had great potential, just not great execution of that potential...

What Went Wrong? Let's be fair: the first big problem was the writer's strike. Nobody wanted Jamie Summers to be cancelled as quickly as 14 episodes! Yet that's as many as the series was allowed thanks to the writer's strike. As soon as the writer's strike was over, they had to decide to either bring the bionic woman back for an episode or two, or just (pun not intended) pull the plug. They chose the latter, sadly.

The first reason I'd say for this series' failure: it didn't follow the Bionic Woman formula. Sure; Battlestar Galactica was "re-imagined," though imagine if that re-imagining had Adama in a submarine during WW2 on Mars. Here's the simple formula of a good Bionic Woman remake. Woman gets in an accident. Woman gets bionic limbs. Woman learns with great power comes great responsibility. Woman stops crimes that no regular human can. This was hardly rocket science. As funny as it sounds: it wasn't even bionic science. It was an action drama about a super-heroine. Was this so difficult to imagine?

That last question is obvious, given the series' cancellation. Why couldn't they simply give us a Bionic Woman? Well, someone seemingly felt that the fan base of the original series was too small, so they decided to throw in a few more monkey wrenches into the bionic soup. The re-imagined Bionic Woman was saturated with a menagerie of popular action and sci-fi show concepts. The organization Jamie works for is seemingly pulled right out of La Femme Nikita, so they might be good, though maybe not, though maybe some members are good and some are bad, though maybe not...and so on. Jamie Summers' bionics included artificial intelligence that controlled her actions: a plot concept right out of Robocop. Jamie's little sister is a plot device right out of the final seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sounds like a good formulae so far, right?

Here's the problem: every time the series seemed prepped to salute a classic sci-fi story concept, the story was quickly abandoned, for no discernable reason whatsoever. Jamie's seeming need to obey her A.I. programming instincts? Abandoned. Jamie's ambivalence towards her new "bosses" who might be seedy? That, too, was quickly abandoned; regardless of people she cares about dying all around her. That doesn't even make any sense.

Speaking of "not making sense": How could any series add a "little sister" character, with more ineptness than Buffy the Vampire Slayer...? Well, suffice to say: Bionic Woman did. Say what you will about Buffy's kid sister: at least she was an integral part of the story, and not a clueless moron who seemingly ignores the fact that everyone who introduces themselves as a "friend" of her sister's nearly gets her killed. Not that Jamie's sister was a worthless character idea, per se; it's the scripts that made her so. The premiere portrayed Jamie's sister as an electronics whiz who could seemingly be very beneficial to the newly cybernetic Jamie. This plot arc was...you guessed it: abandoned!

None of this mattered as much as what the series abandoned entirely: namely, a new Bionic Woman series. The show was so busy saluting this or that other sci-fi series, it barely had time to decently salute Bionic Woman at all. Even the classic bionic sound FX were deleted. Sure, they were campy, even in the 1970's. That's still no excuse to make Jamie's bionics a boring non-event. Think of any number of super power stories in the past three decades. Think of the classic opening scene of Trinity kicking serious butt in the first Matrix movie. Think of the classic high-octane cyborg battle in the second Terminator movie. Think of how cool that scene was when the bad terminator crammed the good terminator's arm in a huge gearshift, forcing him to literally break his arm off to continue the fight. Then watch the premiere of this series, where two "bionic women" fight. Boringly.

She had a super bionic eye...did the writers?

This brings us to the core problem with this series. If you're going to make a series about a bionic cyborg, you'd expect scripts that showcase the importance of such bionics. She barely ran...so what good were her bionic legs? All her fights could've seemingly been won with a martial arts lesson...so what good was her bionic arm? As for her bionic ear: she used it as...a cel phone?!? I'm serious! She'd hold her ear like it was a cel phone earpiece, asking something like: "Hello? Control? What should I do?" How about: use your bionics for something interesting.

To add insult to injury: supporting characters. Not that they were badly cast; just badly treated. In short: most of them died...in just the first few episodes! She begins the story with an amusing fianc�e character, who happens to be the bionics whiz who refused to see his fianc�e die, so he himself performed the top-secret bionic surgery on her. So basically "Doctor Frankenstein" made his own fianc�e into a would-be "monster," all for love. This would've been a fascinating story arc...until they kill the fianc�e off in the series premiere! They then gave Jamie a "mentor" to train with, who soon becomes her closest friend...only to kill him off too, just in time for sweeps. Out of maybe half a dozen recurring characters, every character is either too shady for Jamie to take a liking to, and the ones she does like...die. If Jamie isn't allowed time to grow to like any of the characters, what chance does the audience have? Think about it.

To make Jamie's script-written antics even more boneheaded: she seemingly allied with...her enemies?!? Oddly: yes. She knows who killed her fianc�e, yet for some stupid reason she sees this "evil bionic woman" as a sister of sorts. Let me tell you; I've heard some pretty boneheaded story arc concepts in sci-fi history, and this one takes the cake. So she is kinder to the woman who slaughtered her fianc�e, because she has bionics, too? That's like a World War 2 General saying "Yeah we could kill Hitler though he's got a gun so that makes him one of us." Imagine how totally boneheaded that sounds, then imagine how boneheaded it is for Jamie to feel a "kinship" to a psychotic assassin, for no other reason than she has bionics, too. How idiotically inane!

Then there's the budget. Okay, you got me there...sort of. Maybe the budget of the series could not allow for cool FX each and every episode...though what about the opening credits? That's what's cool about opening credits: for a one time fee, fans can enjoy the FX at the beginning of each and every episode! They could've paid a one-time-charge for a CGI-filled opening that would begin every episode with a bang (think of the cool opening credits of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex). Remember the cool opening credits of the original Bionic Woman series? We'd see high-tech animated blueprints of all her bionic limbs, see them attached to her body, then see her use them, one by one. Anyone could begin watching the series at any time and know what the show was about in just two minutes. Bionic legs of speed, bionic arm of strength, and bionic ear of super hearing: check, check, and check. This "new" series began with a woman in silhouette breaking though glass and then looking in the camera as if she's a bad-ass. A viewer might presume that the series that follows such a boring opening credit sequence is going to be horribly ho-hum...and it was.

Maybe someday someone will give Jamie Summers the remake she deserves. How ironic: this series concept is now barely alive, yet can be rebuilt. Remember how the original six million dollar man opening said, "We can rebuild him; we have the technology!" That's the problem here. They didn't "rebuild" the series properly! Nor did they give the concept the super powered "jolt" that would befit a bionic woman series. This Bionic Woman lacked such power, and that's what went wrong.

Article by Techtite, copyright 2008; all rights reserved. Title graphics, and pix not of reviewed product, are created by Techtite, copyright 1999-2008; all rights reserved. Screen captures and publicity photos are only for the purpose of this commentary, and by no means represent any affiliation with Techtite.com and the distributors of that product. For further "legalese" & disclaimers, click here...

What Went Wrong?

Bionic Woman (2007)

Commentary by Steve Akyuz