For IMWANers over a certain age the Six Million Dollar Man needs no introduction. For those under…a certain age, here’s one: In 1967 a test pilot named Bruce Peterson crashed a lifting body prototype (A type of high-speed glider used in the development of the space shuttle) called the M2-F2 and narrowly escaped with his life. He required many months of hospitalization, surgeries, and physical therapy before being restored to health.

Peterson’s ordeal inspired aviation writer Martin Caidin to write a novel entitled Cyborg, in which astronaut Steve Austin is maimed in a similar accident and rebuilt as a superhuman with bionic enhancements. The novel served as the basis of a TV series starring Lee Majors that was a great hit in the 1970s. It was the biggest sci-fi series of the decade.

Our household was one of those that watched “The Six Million Dollar Man” regularly. I was very young at the time, so my memories of the show, especially in the earlier seasons, are very patchy. But I definitely recall what a popular phenomenon it was. I remember seeing boys at school having slow-motion “bionic” fights, and playing with bionic man action dolls. For a while there you couldn’t get away from it.

On a recent trip to the city I ran across a used DVD set of the second season of “The Six Million Dollar Man.” So I thought “Why not?” Here goes:

Nuclear Alert
An arms dealer has assembled a nuclear weapon from stolen components and plans to sell it to the highest bidder.

The title sounds a bit…uninspired. Unfortunately that’s a good description of most of the episode. There’s very little bionic action. Steve Austin spends most of his time breaking locks and stuff, which makes for one of the less photogenic uses of his powers. The most interesting thing about the episode is the “atomic bomb,” which is covered with hokey blinking lights of the sort that you saw covering most TV computers of the day. This was, of course, before most people had ever seen a real computer up close.

Things come alive at the climax, when…well, I won’t spoil it. Let’s just say that the main villain—a (very) poor man’s James Bond antagonist type--won’t ever try assembling a nuclear weapon again. From what I’ve read, he’d probably already have had a terminal case of radiation poisoning from assembling his homemade atomic bomb anyway.

As in every episode the opening title sequence shows Steve Austin’s origin. The ghastly crash shown in this sequence is actual footage of Bruce Peterson’s M2-F2 accident. I suppose in an odd sort of way it’s appropriate, since that’s where the whole thing started. But it’s truly horrifying to realize that there was a human being in that crash, and a bit appalling to think of footage of a real-life near tragedy being put to such use. No wonder Bruce Peterson is said to have hated this show!

It was the first prime television show I became an avid viewer of. I knew when it was on, and I never missed it. I think it's hard for later generations to understand how truly awesome it was for us. There was nothing like it before -- we didn't have the overload of science fiction stuff on TV.

And Steve Austin was like a superhero-ized version of James Bond.

The Pioneers
An astronaut undergoing a suspended animation experiment accidentally gains superhuman powers upon awakening and goes berserk.

Now this episode is more like the ones people tend to remember! I have vague memories of the early scenes, where the unfortunate astronaut awakens, stumbles out of his crashed spacecraft, and begins lurching around the woods like a Frankenstein’s monster. They artfully keep the viewer from getting a good look at him early on, to give the impression that he has indeed become a monster. I remember it seeming scary to me. Maybe that explains why I don’t recall anything from later on—it could be I didn’t watch the rest!

When we do get a good look at him he turns out to be rather shaggy but not at all scary-looking actor Mike Farrell, later of “MASH” fame. He alternates between making all sorts of primitive snarling and grunting noises (Probably not one of Mike Farrell’s prouder moments) and lucid periods where he comes across as sympathetic.

But of course Steve ends up having to fight him, and the stage is set for a trademarked Bionic Man Battle. This consists of the antagonists attacking each other in slow motion with a variety of papier-mache boulders and breakaway railroad ties. A fight that must have taken about a minute is stretched out to several minutes of screen time.

The slow motion was a standard trick used whenever Steve was running at super speeds or engaging in a super battle to suggest his super powers without using much in the way of actual special effects. I suppose the idea was to mess with the viewer’s perceptions and create a kind of suspension of disbelief. The show’s great success indicates that it worked well enough at the time. To today’s more sophisticated (Or perhaps simply more jaded) viewers it looks exceedingly quaint. But it’s part of the fun of watching.

Note that the recurring role of Dr. Rudy Wells, the man who created Steve’s bionics, is played by Alan Oppenheimer. He’s best remembered now for doing lots of cartoon voices on shows like “Battle of the Planets” and “He-Man.” The Six Million Dollar Man’s bionics were designed by Skeletor!

That happens to me all the time when I wake up from suspended animation.

This was my number one show as a kid. I absolutely loved it. Had all the action figures (not DOLLS, kid! ) and even the space capsule.

Oooooo...space capsule.

Is no one but me going to take care of this? How long must this drag out before someone posts the intro?

That was a definite must watch when I was growing up.

For me, too. And Farrah Fawcett was married to Lee Majors at the time - the power couple of the the '70s.

Hi, Daphne!

Apparently even coffee doesn't help!

BTW, my only other memory of the episode from when I was little I was that I misheard the astronaut's name, David Tate, as "David Tape." And I wondered why he had such an odd name.

Johnny Carson: "I just ran into Lee Majors the other day---he looks like a million bucks! [pause] Man, has he let himself go!"

Pilot Error
A small plane on which Steve is a passenger goes down, and Steve has to get it back home safely.

An appropriate title—much of the episode is a catalog of mistakes. First, Oscar Goldman tries to pressure Steve into slanting his expert witness testimony for the benefit of a former Air Force officer turned influential senator who is undergoing an investigation for a fatal plane crash. Then the man under investigation chooses to FLY to the hearing meant to establish whether he is a competent pilot. The authorities let him do it! And Steve decides to go with him!

Bad mistake, since it turns out the pilot IS incompetent, due to a medical condition that produces a kind of seizure at a most inconvenient time. While the plane is stranded in the middle of the desert, the senator’s scuzzy right-hand man makes a half-witted attempt on Steve’s life (Long story there).

Then, when they try to fly the repaired plane out of the desert, the pilot flakes out again and Steve must take the controls. But he was blinded in the original accident! So he must try to land with the aid of the senator’s non-pilot son and a flight controller. This sequence is by far the best part of the episode. It’s suspenseful, clever, and full of interesting technical details about the aircraft and flight control of the day.

Note that Steve, who has nary a fight in the whole episode, makes very little use of his powers. Instead we see him employing his skill, coolness under pressure, and resourcefulness to pull off a landing despite his temporary blindness. It’s a fine demonstration of how Steve Austin is hero material quite apart from his bionic enhancements. The ending, where everybody makes up and Steve learns the identity of the air traffic controller who guided him in, is really quite sweet.

That air traffic controller, BTW, is a young woman, played by one Suzanne Zenor. I’ve noticed that “Six Million Dollar Man” episodes seem to be strictly rationed to only one female character apiece. Usually the token woman serves as a damsel in distress. Here she gets to be a skilled, cool-headed professional, who is also an appealing character. Wish we could have seen more of that on TV in those days.

The Pal-Mir Escort
Steve escorts an ailing diplomat on her way to receive a nuclear (!) pacemaker implant, and must deal with multiple attempts on her life.

The stateswoman in question is tremendously important, because her diplomacy is her war-torn nation’s only hope for peace. The nation is obviously supposed to be Israel—the character’s accents, dialog, and even background music all make that clear enough. The assorted anonymous assassins don’t look like stereotypical Middle-Eastern terrorists, though.
This isn’t a particularly gripping episode, although the scenes of Steve turning a motor home into an off-road vehicle while fleeing bad guys in a helicopter are fairly exciting. Steve also demonstrates his skills as a gunslinger—that is to say, he is adept at disarming bad guys and slinging their guns long distances as if they were plastic toys. Every time he throws something in slow motion there’s this sound effect that’s apparently supposed to sound like an artillery shell whistling through the air. It brought back memories.

Hi, Chris! It's nice to be back.

Thanks, Jay.

BTW, does anybody know what all the technical jargon in the crash sequence actually means?

When he says "I've got a blowout!" I think he's saying he's messed up his space suit.

It always stuck me as odd that Oscar Goldman is in the title sequence watching the lifting body crash. Why is the head of the OSI interested in watching some lifting body test? It jerks me out of the exciting sequence every time.

I can never forgive them for how they resolved the Death Probe cliffhanger.

And how they did it again in a sequel two-parter.

The Seven Million Dollar Man
Steve accompanies a new bionic operative on his first mission, and quickly realizes that he has become dangerously unstable.

One would suppose that losing multiple limbs and then being rebuilt as a bionic superhuman would pose a severe psychological challenge for anybody. Steve Austin obviously came through it all right in the long run. But his colleague proves another story altogether. Monte Markham gives an interesting performance as an intelligent, articulate man who is nonetheless experiencing wild mood swings that turn him into a dangerous loose cannon. The exploration of the problems a cyborg might be expected to have isn't exactly subtle and convincing. But then this was a done-in-one TV episode. Nowadays they would make this a season-long story arc, probably leading to a season cliffhanger. It's like the difference between a Silver Age comic book issue and a contemporary superhero story "written for the trade."

Inevitably the two Bionic Men fight the mother of all Bionic Battles. In a lengthy sequence we see them hurl assorted objects at each other, hurl each other into walls with camera-shaking speed, and trade slow-motion blows, all to the accompaniment of a variety of weird sound effects. Some things are just beyond parody....

Oscar Goldman lies to Steve early in the episode to conceal the new cyborg's existence. He's been lying a lot, I've noticed. For example, when they sent up the two astronauts for the suspended animation experiment in "The Pioneers" he and Rudy concealed what they were doing from their superiors on grounds that they'd never be allowed to perform such an experiment with even willing human subjects (And it turns out their superiors would've been right to refuse, too!). Oscar needs to watch that sort of thing. It could come back to bite him.

Straight on Until Morning
Steve sees a UFO--and learns that dangerous aliens are running loose nearby.

Actually the aliens--a small exploration party that has crash landed--seem to be benign in intent. However their radically different body chemistry creates serious problems. Whenever one of these humanoids touches a human, the human suffers severe radiation burns and the alien contracts a mysterious, quickly fatal illness. It makes me wonder whether in reality their crash left them severely irradiated and they just didn't realize it, although that admittedly doesn't explain why one alien doesn't get sick.

At any rate, Steve has a Marvel superhero-style misunderstanding fight with a telekinetic alien who throws boulders at him. Then he makes peace and tries to help the last survivor get home. It so happens that all this is taking place near a launch pad (Where? It's obviously not Florida) from which a space probe is about to be launched to the dark side of the Moon--right where the aliens are scheduled to rendezvous with their mother ship. All Steve has to do is talk Oscar into helping him. Convenient, isn't it?

We see lots of stock footage of a Saturn rocket being prepared for launch. The ready room at the top of the gantry does not match the footage at all--apart from a few computers along one wall there's no equipment in the room, the nose cone is surrounded by garden-variety construction scaffolding, and there's not a technician in sight. It must have been one of NASA's "better, faster, cheaper" missions, with heavy emphasis on "cheaper."

Interesting that so many of these episodes lack real villains. So far Steve has dealt with two decent men cursed with power beyond their control, a foolish but hardly villainous senator, and now some aliens who only want to go home. It's almost like those contemporary superhero cartoon shows on Saturday mornings, where the heroes weren't allowed to fight anybody and therefore tended to learn that their antagonists were merely misunderstood.

My only childhood memories of this episode are of the beginning and the ending. At the beginning there's a scene of the aliens swimming ashore that I recall struck me as quite spooky. At the end there's a shot of Steve looking wistfully up into space, wondering how his alien friend has fared. Even when I was a child that image seemed poignant to me.