The Six Million Dollar Man The Complete Series Review

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(More customer reviews)Sometimes... Miracles DO Happen!
One of two that happened to me this year (The other was running into A Long-Lost Love at The Grocery Store after NEARLY A DECADE a la Steve & Jaime in RM1!) after YEARS of waiting was Universal Studios (Produced + Released via Time Life!) DVD Home Video Release of a Six Million Dollar Man Complete Series Mega-Set which was released EXCLUSIVELY to Region 1 after years of us Region 1 people basically getting everything (due to rights fights) later, worse, and incomplete as compared to "The European / Asian Versions!" which almost always featured better transfers, extended cuts, and often featured more bonus materials!
This MASTERPIECE RELEASE includes:
> A lovely keepsake box which has a "lenticular" cover which shows Steve manfully running in Slo-Mo as seen in the opening credits when you tilt the box up and down and which also replays Richard Anderson's infamous "Gentleman, we can rebuild him, we have the technology..." line (over-and-over again) whenever you open the box (it gets REALLY annoying) and there (fortunately) is a lil' slider-switch four-inches down on the audio unit within the box's back wall which allows you to turn this cute-yet-annoying feature off. All 5 Seasons are included in their own individual 5-7 disc DVD color-coded volumes -- which may be how the individual seasons will be released in 12 months when they may/may not be released and, if released, with an unknown amount of the Bonus Materials that were part of this set. There is also a Bonus DVD Volume, in this release, comprised entirely of Bonus Material DVDs including The Reunion Movies, the Extended 2-Parter/Syndication Versions of all 3 of the Pilot Movies, and many interviews/documentaries with Lee Majors, Lindsay Wagner, Martin Brooks, Richard Anderson, Kenneth Johnson, and many others who were involved with the production or whom have been very active in it's continued off-the-air fan-life. The disc-trees within the cases are this sets ONLY major weak-spot as they can easily break; they should have used the type of disc holders that CBS used for the Dynasty DVD Releases -- and some people are also reporting that some zooming/cropping may have been applied to the transfers of some of the episodes which I can't ascertain. I do think there was some of this used on The Return of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman as their faces look bigger in certain key dramatic scenes which actually does suss-out the acting a bit more. The re-mastering of the episodes was very well done and they actually look better in this release then they probably ever did during their initial broadcast/re-broadcast(s) and/or or previous Home Video Releases.
This release really is A Love Letter to The Fans (Thank you Universal, you rock, and you gave me by best birthday present EVER!) of these two series and also to fans of 70's pop-culture in general as these two shows were the two final hold-outs to not be released on DVD. Bionic Woman Season 1 is also now available and Season 2 and Season 3 are reportedly on the way as well. What's very gratifying, aside from us finally getting the goods, is that EVERYONE involved seems to now at last understand what a MASSIVE IMPACT that these two very special shows REALLY had, just how big they REALLY got, and that they are only now getting their well-deserved alcolades (and their stars their just residuals) for a television and film-maklng odyssey that has lasted over 30 years and a fandom which has lasted over 40.
My own personal take has always been that the secret to the initial and enduring following and popularity of these shows is that they were internally/externally powered by:
1) Something about a Super-Powered Man & Woman (Heroic Male / Female Archetypes in love with being with one another and working together as Jaime wasn't just "Steve's Girl" she was also his equally-matched counter-force/counter-point!) deeply appealed to the cultural and collective unconscious of those growing-up in the rousing mid-to-late 70's when The Women's Movement Achieved Critical Mass and the joint and the cross-over episodes showcasing what a powerful man and woman (and archetypal male and female energies) could look like when harnessed and in action together as equals that were perfectly balanced.
2) The highly compelling (And Very Odyssey-esque!) 30 Year Love Story between Jaime and Steve -- one that proved to be so popular/powerful that Universal later then had to pay-through-the-nose to resurrect Jaime in the face of fan grief/outrage over them (moronically) killing her off -- and also by exceptional characters who faced-down death, returned stronger, and in the process became better, stronger, faster... like all of us do in this life... occasionally in Slo-Mo and frequently with Bionic Sound Effects! Our greatest tragedies and greatest losses often become our greatest humanizers, strengths, and (sometimes) the genesis of our Super-Powers.
3) The love that the characters on-screen + cast and crew clearly felt for each other off-screen.
I don't think either series would work as well now as they did then if they were launched on television today, as something about running/jumping in Slo-Mo seems dated, cheesy, and uniquely 1970's but for some reason it really worked then and it continues to really work now for these two shows and (within this format) it doesn't seem inappropriate or dated at all though it would in any other context or show released today.
The set includes:
> All 3 Pilot Movies in both their Original and the (later) Extended 2-Part Episodes for Syndication Versions:
- The Moon And The Desert
- Wine, Women, And War
- The Solid Gold Kidnapping
> All 3 Post-Series Made-For-TV-Telefims (Never available on Home Video in Region 1 before now!):
- (1987) The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man And The Bionic Woman
[The Best of the three Telefilms + The Best Score (By Marvin Hamlisch!) and The Very Worst + Most Cliche 80's Doos and Threads circa 1987 (So you know just how bad that they are likely to be!).]
- (1989) Bionic Showndown
[A Very Worthy + Near-Seamlessly Produced Follow-Up / Companion Piece to "Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman" that also featured a Very Young Sandra Bullock as the second Bionic Woman!]
- (1994) Bionic Ever After
[The Weakest of the three which has (surprisingly) improved a bit with age and which does feature their wedding and a revisitation of old themes. The producers (sadly) royally messed-up by deleting The Joint Credit Sequence that they developed and used for the first two Reunion Movies which showed those timeless scenes of them running 2-gether in Slo-Mo through The Hills of Ojai in Their Bell-Bottoms + Their Bionic Implant Techno-Shots -- and also used an incredibly crappy and dated "digital" font for the opening credits.]
(* It should be noted that when you add-up both series and the TV movies this franchise has been on all 3 of the major networks at one point or another which is an ALMOST unheard of feat!)
> ALL of The Bionic Woman Episodes which includes all three of the Originating Bionic Woman 2-Parter Episodes, all of The Cross-Over Episodes, and all three of The Cameo Episodes that occurred on SMDM:
- (Parts 1 & 2) The Bionic Woman [With Available Commentary by Creator Kenneth Johnson]
- (Parts 1 & 2) The Return of The Bionic Woman
- (Parts 1 & 2) Welcome Home, Jaime
- (Parts 1 - 3) Kill Oscar [The Infamous 3-Parter that introduced the world to... The Evil Fembots!]
> The Bigfoot Episodes:
- (Parts 1 & 2) The Secret of Bigfoot [With Available Commentary by Creator Kenneth Johnson and an uncredited extended cameo with The Bionic Woman in Part 2]
- (Parts 1 & 2) The Return of Bigfoot [Which co-starred The Bionic Woman!]
- (Standalone) Bigfoot V
As a final note, Universal would be well advised to release themed Collector's Sets like Paramount / Star Trek later did for certain fan bases of certain themes (On Trek it was the Borg / Klingons / Q / Romulans / Vulcans / Time-Travel episodes!) and for these series it would make sense to do Collector's Sets based on The Reunion Movie Trilogy, All Six Million Dollar Man Episodes Featuring Steve + Jaime 2-gether 4-ever (A.K.A. The Steve-Loves-Jaime Episodes!), and The Bigfoot Episodes. I would also like to see an Ultra/Mega/Anniversary Series Box Set which features BOTH series in their entirety, current/new bonus materials, and more box, cover, and disc art featuring Jaime, Steve, Oscar, Rudy, and other Important Guest Stars as this set (though a miracle and quite lovely) was, graphically speaking, far too Steve-centric and this show was a hit because of his posse and guest stars as much as because of him.
As a final Very Special Bonus -- for you fellow obsessive fans -- (and because you now CAN own ALL the cross-over, guest-star, cameo, and reunion episodes if you get this Super Deluxe Mega-Set + The Bionic Woman - Season 1) I have listed-off the correct episodes in their correct broadcast order so that you too can now do the full Steve-Loves-Jaime 4-ever Bionic Marathon whenever you wish (see below):
SMDM -02-19 -41244 -03.16.1975 -Part 01 - The Bionic Woman
SMDM -02-20 -41245 -03.23.1975 -Part 02 - The Bionic Woman
SMDM - 03-01 -43020 -09.14.1975 -Part 01 - The Return of the Bionic Woman
SMDM -03-02 -43029 -09.21.1975 -Part 02 - The Return of the Bionic Woman
TBWM -01-01 -44403 -01.11.1976 -Part 01 - Welcome Home, Jaime
TBWM -01-02 -44404 -01.21.1976 -Part 02...Read more›

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Officially licensed complete Series of The Six Million Dollar Man.Includes exclusive new interviews with Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner.Also contains....All three pilot movies of The Six Million Dollar ManAll three reunion movies of The Six Million Dollar ManAll crossover episodes of The Bionic Woman17 exclusive featurettesAudio commentaries and other interactive featuresAll five seasons uncutLenticular Collector's box

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The Six Million Dollar Man: Complete Season One Review

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(More customer reviews)There are many things American companies do that puzzle me, but this has to be one of the top 5: Why would you (as a company) have a show that is so iconic that people who have never SEEN it would still recognize references to it, and NEVER release it to DVD -- even in the year when you attempt to revive the concept franchise by re-making the spinoff "Bionic Woman"? (I won't even discuss the incomprehensible decisionmaking process that decides to utterly change the entire basis of THAT show...).
When I purchased the first season of The Six Million Dollar Man, I expected it to be a purchase purely for nostalgia. In fact, I was braced to end up being UNABLE to watch the show (I've found it hard, for example, to watch MacGyver or Kung Fu, two other nostalgia favorites of mine).
To my utter surprise, in some ways this is a BETTER show than I remembered. The writing is tight, often clever, and LESS stereotyped than I was prepared for. (For example, the first major appearance by the Soviet Union's forces is not as adversaries!) Oh, there's stereotyping and events-of-convenience galore, but they're worked into the plots which are less simplistic than many of the follow-on TV action-adventure shows, and overall better acted. (The early movies are not entirely consistent with the series -- besides a change in some actors, the nature of Steve's relationship with Goldman and the OSI undergoes a fairly radical shift; for that reason I am focusing here on the actual TV first season rather than the movies)
It's clear that the producers, actors, and writers were still trying to "work into" the overall concept and try to figure out a way of keeping the action and the characters balanced. The actors -- specifically Lee Majors and Richard Anderson -- make it work. Steve is a man who has, with great difficulty, overcome the shock of becoming part man, part machine, something he had not asked for and not been prepared for, and has come to accept that he's been given a gift that carries terrible responsibility with it as well. Oscar Goldman is a quintessential spymaster who has, through his interaction with Steve, found himself forced to become more human than is, perhaps, encouraged in his field, in order to keep the friendship and loyalty Steve offers.
One very nice touch is that Steve Austin's background as an astronaut is, surprisingly, at least as important as his bionic secret for many of his missions. The "superstar" nature of astronauts, especially in the era of this show, is recognized and used appropriately. Being one of the astronauts who actually walked on the moon makes Steve special in a number of ways, including the ability (in what was a more relaxed era, surprisingly) to sometimes just gain access to locations and the confidence of people who would otherwise be terribly suspicious.
The adversarial relationship of the United States and the Soviet Union, as I mentioned, is present, yet is not overblown. Given the era and the setting, it would have been trivially easy and even understandable to demonize them, make the Soviet Union behind almost every plot, providing Steve with ready-made villains to trash. Instead, the worst enemies are invariably rogue organizations -- terrorists, obsessive scientists, conscienceless weapons dealers, spies with their own agendas -- and, often, simple nature and human error.
This is a world in which it's assumed that people are, at heart, not only mostly alike, but mostly preferring to get along. It's the exceptions, the men and women who don't CARE about other people at all, who cause most of the trouble in the world, and one man with dedication, a clear vision ...and perhaps some nuclear-powered additions... can often triumph and make the world a better place.
The bionics themselves are more carefully worked out than I had expected. While certain limitations are clearly originally intended purely for story-opportunity purposes, they're generally used consistently. Moreover, the classic opening animation can now be stop-framed and examined carefull, as we could never have done in the old broadcast days, revealing that the producers/designers had put a great deal of thought into the bionic capabilities. The numbers don't *quite* add up accurately, but they're not all that far off compared to what a slapdash and handwavy approach to the technology would have produced.
In the first season, many of the iconic features are still being "worked out". Occasionally we see Steve running, not in the classic slow-motion bionic run, but at the actual speed his running would require. These scenes merely reinforce the CORRECTNESS of the decision to make the 60mph running sequences slow-mo; in slow motion, Steve running looks dramatic. At what would be actual 60mph speed, he looks SILLY.
Similarly, the classic "bionic sound" is missing in most of the first season episodes, and in fact is first heard as a sound accompanying a humanoid robot, rather than one from Steve's bionics. It isn't until the second season that the standard sound effects (bionic strength use, "bionic jump" sound, and bionic eye) came to be regularly used.
Overall, this is a surprisingly good series even today. I really wish that we'd get a USA release of this -- especially for the WHOLE SERIES, as apparently even overseas only seasons 1 and 2 have been released. This means that many of the classic later episodes are STILL unavailable on DVD no matter where you order from.

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When astronaut and Air Force Colonel Steve Austin is almost killed in a horrific plane crash, the US Government decides to rebuild him with experimental cybernetic parts which give him superhuman strength, speed, agility and the ability to see considerable distances.To pay the Government back the $6,000,000 it cost to rebuild him, Austin becomes a secret operative for the Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI), using his superpowers to investigate crime, espionage, space aliens and fight injustice wherever it is found.

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The Bionic Woman (pilot) (1976) Review

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(More customer reviews)I love this movie, I grew up watching both the Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, my only disappointment is that you can't buy the individual episodes on VHS. I've searched for years but to no avail. I keep hoping that with the expanding list of released TV shows on VHS that someone will finally wake up and realize that Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers where 1970's icons! This movie is actually a two part episode of the Six Million Dollar Man that is used as a vehicle to introduce Jaime Sommers as his longtime sweetheart. I don't need to go into detail as to what happens to both Steve and Jaime but diehard bionic fans will know, but it is a touching reminder that we are all mortal, no matter what. The influx of fan mail after this episode aired inspired the tv industry to realize they had another gem on their hands and the creation of "The Bionic Woman" was realized. Come on Universal wake up and open the vault on these classic episodes...my only suggestion is keep Max (short for Maximillian...dollar amount pun intended) the Bionic dog in the kennel...I knew the show was in trouble and going to end when they brought that mangy mutt on board!

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