The Bionic Woman is an American science fiction action-adventure television series created by Kenneth Johnson based on the 1972 novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin and starring Lindsay Wagner, that aired on ABC from January 14, 1976, to May 4, 1977, and later on NBC from September 10, 1977, to May 13, 1978. A spin-off from the 1970s Six Million Dollar Man television science fiction action series, The Bionic Woman is centered on the fictional Jaime Sommers, who takes on special high-risk government missions using her superhuman bionic powers.
Wagner starred as professional tennis player Jaime Sommers, who becomes critically injured during a skydiving accident. Jaime's life is saved by Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) and Dr. Rudy Wells (Alan Oppenheimer, Martin E. Brooks) with bionic surgical implants similar to those of The Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin (Lee Majors). Through the use of cybernetic implants, known as bionics, Jaime is fitted with an amplified bionic right ear which allows her to hear at low volumes, at various frequencies, and over uncommonly long distances. She also has extraordinary strength in her bionic right arm and in both legs that enables her to jump great distances and run at speeds exceeding 60 miles per hour.Although 60 mph is the most commonly cited running speed for Sommers and Austin, the Bionic Woman episodes "Winning is Everything" and "Doomsday Is Tomorrow Part II" show her exceeding this. The Six Million Dollar Man also established that Austin was capable of exceeding 60 mph as well. She is then assigned to secret missions as an occasional agent of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, while teaching middle and high school students in her regular life.OSI has been shown to stand for Office of Scientific Intelligence and Information — the most frequently used is Intelligence
The series proved highly popular worldwide, gaining solid ratings in the United States and particularly in the United Kingdom (where it became the only science fiction program to achieve the No. 1 position in the ratings during the 20th century). The series ran for three seasons, from 1976 to 1978, first on the ABC network and then the NBC network for its final season. Years after its cancellation, three spin-off television movies were produced between 1987 and 1994. Reruns of the show aired on Sci-Fi Channel from 1993 to 2001. A short-lived remake of the series was produced in 2007.
Plot The character of Jaime Sommers first appears in a 1975 two-part episode of The Six Million Dollar Man titled "The Bionic Woman". In the first episode, Steve travels to his hometown of Ojai, California, to buy a ranch that is for sale and to visit his mother and stepfather, Helen and Jim Elgin. During his visit, he rekindles his relationship with high school sweetheart Jaime Sommers, now one of America's top 5 tennis players.
While she is on a skydiving date, Jaime's parachute malfunctions and she plummets to the ground, falling through tree branches, hitting the ground and suffering traumatic injuries to her head, legs, and right arm. Steve makes an emotional plea to his boss, Oscar Goldman, to save Jaime's life by making her bionic. When Oscar balks, Steve commits Jaime to becoming an operative of the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). Goldman ultimately gives in and assigns Dr. Rudy Wells (played at this point in the series by Alan Oppenheimer) and the bionics team to rebuild her.
Jaime's body is reconstructed with parts similar to Steve's, but later Oscar jokes that hers cost less than Austin's six million dollars because her parts were "smaller" (despite the show's German name, Die Sieben Millionen Dollar Frau, or The Seven Million Dollar Woman). Like Austin, her right arm and both her legs are bionic, but instead of a bionic eye she has a bionic ear. Jaime's legs are capable of propelling her at speeds exceeding 60 miles per hour (having been clocked at more than 62 mph in "Doomsday Is Tomorrow" and outpacing a race car going 100 mph in "Winning Is Everything") and jumping to and from great heights. Her right arm is capable of bending steel or throwing objects great distances. Her right ear gives her amplified hearing such that she can detect most sounds regardless of volume or frequency. These bionic implants cannot be distinguished from natural body parts, except on occasions where they sustain damage and the mechanisms beneath the skin become exposed, as seen in Part 2 of the episode "Doomsday Is Tomorrow", when Jaime sustains damage to her right leg. Jaime discovers on vacation in the Bahamas that her artificial bionic skin cannot suntan with exposure to sunlight.
After Jaime recovers from her operation, Steve tries to break his agreement with Oscar that she will serve as an agent for OSI. Jaime agrees to undertake a mission for Oscar despite Steve's concerns. During the mission her bionics malfunction, and she experiences severe and crippling headaches. Dr. Wells determines that Jaime's body is rejecting her bionic implants and a massive cerebral clot is causing her headaches and malfunctions. Soon after, Jaime goes berserk and forces her way out of the hospital. Steve pursues and catches her, and she collapses in his arms. Soon after, Jaime dies on the operating table when her body shuts down.
The character was so popular that ABC asked the writers to find a way to bring her back. In the first episode of the next season, it is revealed that Jaime had not died after all, but Steve was not told. He soon discovers the truth when he is hospitalized after suffering severe damage to his bionic legs; he sees Jaime before slipping into a coma.
As Steve later learns, Wells' assistant, Dr. Michael Marchetti, urged Rudy (now played by Martin E. Brooks) to try his newly developed cryogenic techniques to keep Jaime in suspended animation until the cerebral clot could be safely removed, after which she was successfully revived. A side effect of the procedure causes Jaime to develop retrograde amnesia, preventing her from recalling previous events including her relationship with Steve. Any attempt to remember causes her headaches and pain. Realizing that he is the primary trigger for her painful memories, Steve reluctantly asks Oscar to transfer Jaime to another medical facility away from him. There, she undergoes a successful surgery to restore her memory—she remembers everything except her love for Steve and the skydiving accident that led to her bionics. When they meet again, she tells Steve that they can start again with friendship and that it can be a whole new beginning for them. Steve agrees.
Jaime retires as a tennis player and takes a job as a schoolteacher at an Air Force base in Ojai, California. She lives in an apartment over a barn located on the ranch owned by Steve's mother and stepfather, both of whom are aware of Steve and Jaime's bionic implants and their lives as secret agents. Season three opened with the two-part episode "The Bionic Dog", in which Jaime discovers Max, a German Shepherd that has been given a bionic jaw and legs and can run at speeds up to 90 mph. His bionics pre-date Steve's and Jamie's, as he was a lab animal used to test early bionic prosthetics. He was named "Maximillion" because his bionics cost "a million" dollars. When he was introduced, he experienced symptoms suggesting bionic rejection and was due to be put to sleep. Jaime discovered the condition was psychological, stemming from a traumatic lab fire that injured him when he was a puppy. With Jaime's help, Max was cured and went to live with her, proving himself to be of considerable help in some of her adventures. The original intent was to create a spin-off series featuring "the bionic dog", and at the end of the two-part episode that introduced him, it was implied Max would stay with Jaime's forest ranger friend Roger Grette in the Sierra Mountains and Jaime would visit occasionally. However, the network rejected the proposed spin-off series and Max stayed with Jaime instead, making several appearances throughout the third season of The Bionic Woman.
Production and broadcast To maintain the show's plausibility, creator/executive producer Kenneth Johnson set very specific limits on Jaime Sommers' abilities. He elaborated, "When you're dealing with the area of fantasy, if you say, 'Well, they're bionic so they can do whatever they want,' then it gets out of hand, so you've got to have really, really tight rules. [Steve and Jaime] can jump up two stories but not three. They can jump down three stories but not four. Jaime can't turn over a truck but she can turn over a car." These limits were occasionally incorporated into episodes, such as "Kill Oscar", in which Jaime is forced to make a jump that's too far down for her bionic legs, causing massive damage to them and nearly causing her death as a result.
The series premiered on ABC in January 1976, as a mid-season replacement for the sitcoms When Things Were Rotten and That's My Mama. With fourteen episodes airing from January 1976 to May 1976, it became the fifth-most-watched television show of the 1975–76 season—despite running for only half the season—ranking behind Maude, Laverne & Shirley, Rich Man, Poor Man, and All In The Family, and slightly ahead of The Six Million Dollar Man. Season two ran from September 1976 to May 1977 with 22 episodes and finished with good ratings (number 14 overall, slightly behind The Six Million Dollar Man). Season two also had its most notable episodes, "Kill Oscar", in which Jaime fights the fembots, and "Deadly Ringer", for which Wagner won an Emmy Award. Although the show performed well during season two, ABC elected not to renew the series, feeling it was no longer attracting the kind of demographic that ABC wanted (ABC head Fred Silverman was notorious for his focus on demographics).Herbie J Pilato, The Bionic Book: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman Reconstructed (BearManor Media, 2007), p. 332. NBC picked up the show for a third (and final) season, which ran from September 1977 to May 1978 with 22 episodes and featured a new character, Chris Williams (Christopher Stone), as a recurring love interest for Jaime. This was due in part to the change of networks, which prevented further crossovers by Jaime's former love interest, Steve Austin; however, in a situation still considered unique, Anderson and Brooks continued to play their roles in both series, despite the network differential. A new bionic dog named Max was added for the show's third season.
The series proved popular worldwide, particularly in the United Kingdom, where it was shown on the ITV network and achieved unusually high audience figures for a science fiction show. The first episode of the series ("Welcome Home Jaime") was shown on 1 July 1976 and was the most watched programme of the week. It was watched in 7 million homes, giving it an average of 14 million viewers. Two weeks later, the show's third episode (Angel of Mercy) also became the most watched programme of the week. Its success continued with a further 10 episodes scoring in the top 20 during 1976. (By contrast, The Six Million Dollar Man never once entered the top 10 rating during its five seasons, though this was most likely because the show was never broadcast across all ITV stations at the same time. The second season also proved popular, with seven episodes finishing in the weekly top 20, the highest of these being the episode The Vega Influence on 12 May 1977, which reached 8 with 14.8 million viewers.Television's Greatest Hits, Network Books, Paul Gambaccini and Rod Taylor, 1993. The third season was not broadcast simultaneously across all ITV stations in the UK, however, and therefore no episodes reached the weekly Top 20.
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