"Steve Austin... a man barely alive..."

[seawasp]

Recently I acquired the first two seasons of the classic '70s TV show The Six Million Dollar Man. I had an ulterior motive for doing so -- my wife Kathleen decided she was going to run a FTF RPG based on the show Torchwood and in a burst of inspiration I asked whether it would work to have Steve Austin drop in on Torchwood through the Rift. (it works very well, actually)

This gave me the excuse to actually buy a couple seasons of the show. We've been watching them since they came in when we get the chance.

It's astonishingly good overall. The show started when I was 12, and ran until I was 16, so -- seeing as it (and its spinoff The Bionic Woman) were just about the only SF game in town on TV -- it wasn't surprising that I'd have fond memories of it. But having seen other shows I remembered fondly not do so well (the biggest other exception being Airwolf, biggest disappointment being MacGyver, which while I couldn't point to any one specific problem just failed to grab me again), I was braced to discover unwatchability.

Instead, despite undeniably cheesy and dated moments, these are overall usually tightly plotted, well-paced episodes which often evade the stereotypes one might expect. The first major appearance by Russian characters ... features not a single one of them as a villain, but all of them are instead sympathetic characters, even noble, who are simply unfortunately opposed to our heroes under some conditions (and not, really, in the situation presented to the main characters). There's some continuity -- our characters remember, and refer to, events that happened in prior episodes.

Steve's bionics remain as advanced now as they were in 1974, however -- a technology we'd love to have, and still can't make today; some parts are basically physically impossible, something I couldn't have realized as a kid (e.g., the 20:1 zoom bionic eye; the physics of optics would require Steve to extend a three-foot lens assembly from his head to do that). And they still have their odd "but that shouldn't work that way" moments (although for the purposes of the Torchwood game there was an easy explanation: Rudy Wells had reverse-engineered alien tech, and it incorporates some interesting things like a reinforcing stabilization field that keeps the user stable when using the bionics). Yet the focus of the show remains the characters we encounter, even if the plot invariably forces Steve to use his bionic capabilities to solve the problems.

Watching shows of this era does make you realize how very dependent on situation many plots were. Quite a few of these could have been solved trivially today, by making a cell phone call. One has to remember when watching Steve desperately running through a city to reach somewhere in time to prevent an assassination that in 1974 there probably WASN'T any good way for him to reach Oscar Goldman in transit, unless he was carrying a specially made portable radio and had it switched on.

There are little details I didn't remember; for example, the iconic and unforgettable "bionic" sound effects didn't make their appearance immediately, and aren't in regular use even at the beginning of the second season (the bionic eye sound effect has become reliably present, but not the main bionic effect (that was, in fact, first used not for bionics, but for one of the robots Steve fought). I also thought the first Bigfoot episode was earlier in Steve's run, and that the really wierd stuff didn't show up until later (in point of fact, by the third episode we're dealing with someone who has reliable ESP).

We're having a lot of fun watching these!

Comments

[cateagle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was a fun show and I remember it fondly. The novels by Martin Caidin that inspired it and then spun off it were of mixed quality, but still decent reads. I worked with the former pilot who was flying the lifting body whose crash is seen in the title credits; he had to leave piloting after he lost his eye due to an infection he got while in the hospital for the injuries suffered in that crash.

Still, that's one series I'd be tempted to get sometime.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I also enjoyed that show very much as a kid. It was, however, one of the shows where I first noticed how often the problem du jour could only be solved an application of exactly the superpower our hero happens to possess. Steve Austin never runs into a problem that could only be solved by turning invisible or stopping time or reading someone's mind. And the Invisible Man (et al) never run into problems that require superhuman strength....

But still, yeah, I watched it religiously.

Actually...

[seawasp]

... I think that you misinterpret. Steve Austin doesn't have invisibility or time stopping, so whatever problems he encounters he doesn't try to solve with those powers. Similarly the Invisible Man doesn't try to solve problems in the same manner as Steve Austin would.

In stories, of course, you rarely present your protagonist with a problem they CANNOT solve, but you may hand them one that they have to approach very differently than the first glance would indicate.

Re: Actually...

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

As a general rule, yes, I agree. But I'm referring mostly to a lot of mostly mediocre television shows.

Plus, I vividly remember seeing a few episodes of Bionic Woman that were re-uses of a $6M Man scripts--word for word and scene for scene, pretty much. Only when Jamie had to find and eliminate the bomb, instead of a blinking light she spy from afar (as Steve dealt with), the bomb conveniently had an audible beeper to indicate that it was armed.

Re: Actually...

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

TVTropes refers to this as an Eigen Plot.

[ckd]

I just remember one episode where he has to stop the bad guys from getting away in a helicopter, so he grabs one of the skids and holds on with his BIONIC STRENGTH!

Apparently he also has BIONIC GRAVITY! because unless he weighs a whole lot more than I think he does, the helicopter will just take off with him dangling from it....

Yep...

[seawasp]

... that's one I remembered to. The worst part of that scene was that RIGHT NEXT to his foot was a TIEDOWN RING. All he had to do was hook his foot into it to brace him. (I had always assumed that there was actually a simple linking structure between the two legs and the arm -- too simple to bother showing in the graphics; this explained how he could lift cars, etc.)

On the other hand, this time through, once I noticed how his bionics work in general, that sequence actually makes perfectly sense. He can pick up and even throw things that outweigh him by several times, instead of picking himself up and BEING thrown.

He can brace himself with his meat arm while pulling a safe out of the wall... but he can't lift any more with that arm than normal. When using his bionic strength he can take impacts that would normally kill him... but taken unawares, he can be knocked out as easily as any other reasonably fit man.

That's where I got the idea for the reinforcing stabilization field. It locks him down relative to what he's trying to do and minimizes potential for harming himself.

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

Huh-- I just picked up the novel the show was based on!

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Um, my camera has a *digital* zoom after the optical zoom. Not sure but I think it goes it's about 4:1 - so no three foot extension is needed...


Did you get the original pilot movie where he *doesn't* run at 60mph? If I recall, the book at the time wanted to make it "as realistic as possible" and they followed through with the movie where it showed sweat stains on ONE side of his body...

Yes...

[seawasp]

... but a digital zoom is useless for real zoom, actually.

All that "digital zoom" does is the same thing as enlarging a picture in photoshop. Which doesn't get one one tiny bit more detail.

Re: Yes...

[mouser.livejournal.com]

My point is I don't know how many "pixels" the human eye displays, but if the "$6 million" option package has more you might well end up with a 800x600 monitor displaying a 7200x5400 picture (i.e. 9:1) - zooming means taking a smaller chunk and displaying it at 1:1...

Re: Yes...

[seawasp]

Well, the EQUIVALENT resolution of the human eye at the fovea (the area where the center of our field of view is, and thus the one we focus directly on) is about 81 megapixels.

So as 20:1 zoom refers to linear dimensions, the number of pixels needed for digital zoom to work would be about 400 (20 squared) times 81 or 32 GIGApixels -- an array 180,000 pixels on a side,hich would have to fit in no more than about a half-inch diagonal space.

That's SERIOUS resolution -- and I think we've now completely broken it on the OTHER physical side -- that is, the diffraction-limited performance of the optics of the eye (size and so on) would not permit you to actually achieve resolution on pixels that small.

Alien super-magic technology for sure. Rudy must've stolen everything from Roswell.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

The digital zoom is smoke and mirrors. Actually not mirrors, because that would imply real optics :) But fundamentally all it's doing is making the pixels bigger, with a little handwaving to smooth things over.

If you really want more information in the image, you need physical optics to get it. Digital manipulation can only work with what's already there.

But getting back to the topic... we watched the show when I was a kid, but I was young enough that I mostly only remember little bits and pieces. The iconic "running in slow motion" scenes, the bionic-things-going-on sound effect, that kind of thing. But I'm glad to hear that it stands up to re-watching.

[julesjones]

I loved that show when I was a kid, but had wondered whether it would stand up to rewatching. Maybe I should see if I can rent the DVD...

And yes, it can be rather odd watching 70s shows and having to remind yourself that they did not *have* various bits of technology that would invalidate the plot now.

[seawasp]

The annoying thing is that YOU CAN'T GET THE DVDs HERE (in the USA). There has yet to be an American release. I have to buy them from the UK or Holland.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the report. I was curious if The Six Million Dollar Man and Airwolf would stand up to rewatching/watching, since I had enjoyed episodes I watched way back when.