The Six Million Dollar Man: Series 2 (Box Set) (DVD)

...welcome to my review of the second season of The Six Million Dollar Man.

With Season 2 originally being broadcast in the US from the 13th September 1974 through to 27th April 1975. The Six Million Dollar Man had captured audiences across the nation. Season 1 had been a veritable success in terms of network rating and potential merchandising sales in the US bloomed and exceeded expectations. Therefore it was only reasonable that another ...
...lot changes were afoot with the ambiance of the series, new things were being experimented with within the broadcasted episodes and potential spin off’s were being planned. Already the marketing and merchandising from Season 1 had a range already on the shelves of toy shops, mainly including the 12” action figures of Steve Austin, Oscar Goldman and Maskatron, which was the robot from the fourth episode of Season 1 called ‘Day of the Robot’. Note: ... more

Hello and welcome to my review of the second season of The Six Million Dollar Man.

With Season 2 originally being broadcast in the US from the 13th September 1974 through to 27th April 1975. The Six Million Dollar Man had captured audiences across the nation. Season 1 had been a veritable success in terms of network rating and potential merchandising sales in the US bloomed and exceeded expectations. Therefore it was only reasonable that another run would be commissioned by the network to follow this up with. This season showed a lot changes were afoot with the ambiance of the series, new things were being experimented with within the broadcasted episodes and potential spin off’s were being planned. Already the marketing and merchandising from Season 1 had a range already on the shelves of toy shops, mainly including the 12” action figures of Steve Austin, Oscar Goldman and Maskatron, which was the robot from the fourth episode of Season 1 called ‘Day of the Robot’. Note: In the episode the robot never had a name itself, but the toy did. This not only caused confusion but is still something that is strongly debated today on forums.

In Season 2 of The Six Million Dollar Man an opportunity that was grabbed by the production team to take a giant bionic leap forward with the characters and stories as the foundations had successfully been laid in Season 1.

---The Episodes---

The box set contains all 21 episodes from the Season, these are….

Nuclear Alert
'The Pioneers
Pilot Error
The Pal-Mir Escort
The Seven Million Dollar Man
Straight on 'til Morning
The Midas Touch
Deadly Replay
Act of Piracy
Stranger in Broken Fork
The Peeping Blonde
The Cross-Country Kidnap
Lost Love
The Last Kamikaze
Return of the Robot Maker
Taneha
Look Alike
The E.S.P. Spy
The Bionic Woman – Part 1
The Bionic Woman – Part 2
Outrage in Balinderry
Steve Austin, Fugitive

As I said at the beginning this was a season that a certain amount of experimentation took place. For example in ‘Nuclear Alert’ you see Austin running at full speed across a field, that is the only time we see him do that for virtually the rest of the series, in some episodes the bionic noise is not even used which although I felt it was missed, that this was made more of an attempt to up the atmosphere without distraction of knowing when and where Austin was going to use his bionic powers. On the whole little areas like these are successful, but generally there is a bottom line of no continuity, however on the flip side it was good to see different directors having different approaches that does show an individuality to each story.

Some of the stories on the other hand are the exact opposite to the previous Season. I believe the budget for Season 2 was upped considerably. This is evident in what we see the characters do and the plotlines in some of the episodes. Austin is sent out to locations such as the Mediterranean and also the Pacific Islands for a story called ‘The Last Kamikaze’, this involves the loss of an experimental nuclear weapon on an island, Austin is sent in to recover and discovers a Japanese officer who still thinks the war between Japan and America is still happening. For me this was one of the finer episodes in the box set as Steve had to persuade the Japanese pilot of how peace was founded and what it took to achieve, this episode is quite moving.

Another fine episode is ‘Return of the Robot Maker’ where Dr Chester Dolenz makes another welcome return. This time he (surprisingly) quite easily replaced Oscar Goldman with a near perfect robotic replica. Throughout the story the newer effects are used to the max such as the jumping sound and also the introduction frame jumping where frames are missed out to take into account the power of Austin’s abilities.

On the other end of the scale the episode called ‘The Pioneers’ is something else. The plot involves an alien race landing on Earth, unknown to them the Earth is a place that affects there health, and when local farmers who witnessed the aliens in the small town get involved this only adds to the mix. For me I felt that this was not one of the best episodes to watch, although Lee Majors delivers the lines well enough for the story to be taken seriously, but you do feel that the plot is a little far fetched. Unfortunately as the other seasons progressed more and more, the science fiction approach was bought into the stories and I know that a lot of fans feel the same way as I do that this effectively turned the focus of the series in the latter seasons. This was the first story that involved aliens on Earth, yet more were to follow on a regular basis.

This season will mainly be remembered for one thing – The Bionic Woman. Lindsay Wagner plays Jamie Sommers, Steve Austin’s sweetheart. This is a two part story and the only one this season. Having two-part stories was a regular thing with producer Glen A Larson. In every series he produced he had a number of signature trademarks. These were two part stories, people taking on the hero’s identity as a doppelganger and always top high profile guest stars. If you don’t believe me look at episode lists for Knight Rider, Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century which was also produced by him. The story revolves around Austin and Sommers, when Sommers has a near fatal sky diving accident, Austin pleads with Oscar Goldman to save her. To do this he must make her Bionic in the same way that Steve is. This is done, but Oscar takes advantage of this and enlists Jamie as part of the OSI as another Bionic operative. Although Jamie is now Bionic, her body rejects the Bionic implants and at the end of the episode, and due to this she dies. Due to the feedback from fans who wanted to see the character of Jamie Sommers return, it was the follow up two parter story in an upcoming Season that led to the spin off ‘The Bionic Woman’ being commissioned, which lasted three seasons on its own.

The season itself has a number of sequels throughout, ‘The Deadly Replay’ and ‘Steve Austin, Fugitive’ being among the best as these are rounding the story arc off from the previous stories or in some cases planting a seed for upcoming seasons, where the story will either continue or be completely concluded. On other stories you get to see and learn the background of Steve when he was in the US Air Force and meet up old colleagues used to work with as well as the occasion female friend which he seemed to have a lot of anyway.

What did impress me the most is that this Season moved on from Season 1 as you see Steve in full control of his powers and also Steve with a loss of his powers in a position of being quite vulnerable, for example loss of memory in ‘Stranger in Broken Fork’ or blinded in both his normal and Bionic eye in ‘Pilot Error’. What I found interesting was that you learn that the character of Steve Austin is totally against killing in any form whether it is human or animal, this is a total 180 from the source novels. In the novels that the series are based upon Austin was a cold blooded killer who never looked back, and although in hindsight you don’t expect to see the hero ripping heads off the bad guys in a prime time slot, it did surprise me to see Austin in ‘The Pal Mir Escort’ using a gun to good effect. Usually the character uses his brain and brawn to good effect by immobilizing the bad guys with a twisted piece of metal that he embeds into rock.

One problem for me is the continuity, I believe as what can only be described as a cost cutting exercise, or stay with budget has meant that the use of clips from other episodes has been used to fill the gaps, in some cases these are easily noticeable as the character has shorter hair and the landscape is slightly different. This distracts from the story that is being told, and in the case of stock footage is either used correctly in the right manner or blunders to the point where a 737 takes off from one airport but lands at another in a different livery and airline name. I can see the point of doing this as footage so that it can be used again, and this explains as to why Lee Majors always wears the khaki shirt and khaki strides as most of the episode footage has him in this outfit throughout.

---Guest Stars---

Some of the guest stars in Season 2 stand out as names we still know today, some don’t, there are three stars that stand out against the rest. The best remembered is the grill master himself, George Foreman. Foreman plays an OSI agent in ‘Look Alike’. In the story he has a 70’s style afro and ends up fighting the bad guys in a boxing ring. And who said the Americans don’t do irony!! In slow motion you can see the power that this man has as a boxer, it is frightening and even though he is hitting stuntmen, you do tend to feel that the odd punch that actually connected really hurt, slow mo brings this across in a very powerful manner.

Farah Fawcett, who was Majors wife at the time, makes another return appearance. This was a strange bit of casting as Fawcett was cast in a Season 1 episode ‘Rescue of Athena One’ as a female astronaut called Kelly Wood, this time in a separate episode she is playing an TV reported who called Victoria Webster who secretly films Austin saving the day in ‘The Peeping Blonde’. Alan Oppenhiemer plays Dr Rudy Wells for the last time this season. In Season 3 he was replaced. From this Fawcett went on to Charlie’s Angels.

In the episode ‘The Seven Million Dollar Man’ we get to see what happens mentally when a Bionic upgrade goes wrong and the subject does not make mentally through to the other end like Austin did. The character is called Barney Miller, a racing driver who had a high speed accident, and is resurrected with Bionics. The character is played by Monte Markham, an actor who is well known stateside but has been in nearly every long running franchise since the late sixties when he appeared in the fourth Magnificent Seven film as well as characters in DS9 and a regular cast member in Baywatch. When the Bionic Man TV series was conceived he was on the shortlist to play the lead character of Steve Austin.

---Packaging---

All 21 stories are crammed onto 6 discs; this means there are either 3 or 4 to a disc. The discs are packaged two per case and look good on the shelf as a total of 3 slim cases are used. The cover design is better than Season one as Lee Majors is on the front cover in a recognizable Steve Austin hero type pose. Although this is an improvement from before I really wish they would put some better pose, perhaps a montage of pictures with him running or jumping that really capture the essence of the series. Also there is no explanation of what the episodes are only titles, so if you haven’t seen any before and watch this for the first time then you won’t know sure as to what the story is about as there is no synopsis at all.

Again there are no extras at all within the box set and that really is a shame. But I think the TV gold is watching the episodes on there own. Although a documentary would be nice. Hint!

---Overall---

Here’s a question for you. Have you heard of the phrase jump the shark? This is a phrase that originated from one of the latter episodes of Happy Days where Fonzie, jumped a shark on water ski’s, out at sea. Frankly I cannot remember why. The fact that this was towards the end of the series showed that the writers were running out of ideas to use and were using what can only be described as weak storylines. Even though this is only the Season 2, you can see that certain stories are what the writers will use as a building block for further episodes as they are left open ended. This is a shame as it is these stories that the series will be remembered by, what does save the episodes is the fact that most of the 21 episodes have a reality based plot, and are great fun to watch. As I said with Season 1 the nostalgic factor is high and still entertains to the extent that you know how the story will work out, but have a great amount of fun just sitting there watching it unfold..

Also it was good to see that the episodes lasted for at least 45 to 50 minutes, these days with the scheduling for breaks and the advertising allotted to the program, some don’t last much more than 41 minutes in a scheduled hour.

The box set is still a worthy addition to anyone’s collection who can remember them from when they were shown on ITV. I picked mine up from the sale at Virgin for £17, originally when released these were £35 to £42.99 in price. I thought that this was quite steep for what you get even though this is the first time that a lot of the episodes appear on DVD. At the moment I cannot find any release date for Season 3 at all, so finger crossed it will be released soon. I personally found this slightly inferior to Season 1 as there was a learning curve taking place throughout the life cycle. Season 2 attempts to build on that but in some cases doesn’t do the story justice. In most cases it is successful and tells a good story, but in others it really is a mixed bag as to where the story goes.

Until next time and thanks for reading… Tim 

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