Wednesday 5 August 2015

193 The Six Million Dollar Man



First  watched  : 1974

In  1974  a  new  word  from  the  world  of  engineering  became  ubiquitous  across  the  playgrounds  of  Britain. "Bionic"  was  coined  by  Jack  E  Steele  in  1958  and  referred  to  the  application  of  biological  phenomena  to  engineering  design. In  1972  the  science  fiction  writer  Martin  Caldin  turned  the  idea  on  its  head  in  his  novel  Cyborg  where  electrical  implants  and  prosthetics  made  his  human  protagonist  a  superman.

This  idea  transferred  to  TV  as  The  Six  Million Dollar  Man  where  astronaut  Steve  Austin  was  rebuilt  after  a  crash  with  new  legs, a  right  arm  and  mechanical  eye. This  made  him  super-strong , super  fast  and  telescopically  sighted. Obviously  government  agencies  found  a  use  for  him.

With a  limited  budget  for  special  effects,  Steve's  feats  were  filmed  in  slow  motion  with  a  scraping  electronic  sound  which  made  it  very  easy  to  spot  who  was  playing  him  in  the  yard.  As  that  would  suggest  it  was  phenomenally  popular  , particularly  among  young  boys  for  whom  it  performed  the  same  function  as  those  Charles  Atlas  ads  in  the  Marvel  comics, the  stuff  of  endless  daydreams  and  revenge  fantasies.

Austin  was  played  by  hunky  Lee  Majors  whose  acting  gave  the  impression  that  his  non-bionic  parts  were  actually  made  of  wood  but  no  one  was  watching  it  for  that.  Later  on  he  picked  up  a  girlfriend  Jamie  Summers  who  got  her  own  spin-off  series. The  show  was  abruptly  cancelled  in  1978  partly  because  Majors   was  being  awkward  about  a  new  contract. However  he  soon  bounced  back  ( presumably  in  slo-mo )  in  The  Fall  Guy.    

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