Thanks again to S.C.I.F.I. World (aka the Sci-Fi Channel's new daytime programming lineup), I was available to procure a few more episodes of the perennial favorite, "The Six Million Dollar Man." It seems that this show and it's cousin, "The Bionic Woman," will probably be the very first shows to air so spastically in syndication. Six episodes each for every month. And it's not that I'm complaining, but it's just so damn odd. Unsettling to my little mind that only accepts the terms such as Daily, Monthly, and possibly Weekly.
But enough of my obsessions.
I suppose this show marks a first for Sci-Fi on television. For decades before the cathode ray intruded our senses, the subject of cyborgs was a creepy issue: usually, the monsters were the ones with the physical deformities. You know, the second face on the same skull, the loss of either height or arms or various other limbs that rendered them freakish and, by definition, horrible and evil. What hero, then defined as a muscular white six foot tall ex-Football Player with all his limbs and a clean complexion, would be weakened by the loss of limbs?
It made no sense in that limited part of the word. In fact, if a character were less-than-perfect, they were automatically denoted to either Secondary Hero, Comic Relief or Background Fodder/Plot Convenience. So, before the '70s hit, your local run of the mill hero was a perfect specimen of the human race.
Perfect specimen of the Y Chromosome half of that race, natch.
Which brings us to our subject today: Steve Austin, test pilot, all-American male hero/astronaut is horribly injured when one of his test machines wigs out on him and smashes him into the desert sand at a few thousand miles per hour. Earlier in history, he would have either died a hero or survived 'miraculously' uninjured. But, thanks to the more liberal (and realistic) view of shows being produced in that day, Steve Austin was indeed lucky to survive. Of course, his legs were gone, as well as one of his arms and an eye. But, thanks to some odd government agency/scientific organization called O.S.I., Steve is repaired with atomically powered limbs.** In short, he is classically considered a monster, except his skin still looks normal. Of course, the pilot deals with this in more detail, but it proves my point. This was the show that made 'cyborg' a household name and changed attitudes from 'classic hero' to 'modern hero.' Sacifices, sadly, MUST be made in this new fictional world.
But enough of my jabbering, we're here to review an episode, and since I'm too lazy to rewatch the episode "The Bionic Woman" again, let's settle for "Return of the Robot Maker," one of the episode that aired about three days ago. I originally dismissed writing this episode because of a mistake in the title: when watching this episode, one tends to believe it's a sequel to a previous episode. In fact, look at the title again. "Return of?" You can't really have a return unless you were there in the first place. But, sadly, I'm mistaken. After checking a valuable resource page and the IMDB itself, I have found we have a case of "Oh, Look, Mr. (Name Here) Has Come Back From An Adventure We Did But Never Showed On the TV Series." It's a clever attempt for the main actors of the series to have a certain kind of rapport with the antagonist but to get past that rocky initial first appearance. Well, settle down deep, here we go:
Oscar Goldman, head of OSI, is kidnapped by Dr. Dolenz, that old friend of ours,*** and replaced by a robot in his exact image. Why? Well, because something happened to Dr. Dolenz in the past. Because, remember, he's an old, old friend of ours. Anyway, we now get an episode where the robot attempts to ruin Oscar's life by killing off Steve Austin by assigning him a mission to break into an impenetrable bunker in the middle of nowhere as a 'test.' Funny, the robot double didn't tell those inside the bunker about the 'test.' So, guess what? Steve is a rabbit loose on a live firing field! And, to his credit, he does pretty good until a high-powered machine gun takes him down. Luckily, he's wearing a bullet-proof vest (and standing a good enough distance so that might actually work in a real situation, Kudos to the writers on that one). But Steve, however, recovers and eventually finds out and rescues Oscar, battles the superpowered Oscar Double, and takes Dolenz into custody because, remember, he's an old, old friend of ours.
Yeah, it's a simple plot, drawn over an hour a bit thin at times, but it works. It's not as thought-provoking as the two-part "The Bionic Woman" or the other Oscar-Gets-Replaced-By-A-Double/Six Million Dollar Man-Bionic Woman Crossover creatively titled "Kill Oscar," but it does it's job. Plus, the show was only nearing the halfway mark of it's second season, so cutting it some slack would be good. It would get better down the road.
Plus, the last few minutes are the best and show what limited special effects can do to enhance your enjoyment of this episode. Let me explain:
After all the mess from Steve's battle with the Oscar Double is being cleaned up, the real Oscar picks up his Double's head. We cut to a close-up of the Double's head, only see that it's really Richard Anderson's head on a bluescreen. To do this, the FX crew on the show must have made Richard Anderson (Oscar) wear a blue shirt, put him in front of a bluescreen, then filmed it while somebody held onto his hair like it was holding it up. When processed, the background looks absolutely fake, but if you look at it long enough, it's quite freaky. Sure, Richard Anderson (as the head) isn't staring into the camera, just a bit off the side, but it's still oddly disconcerting. Almost fakey enough to look at, but just that quality of creepiness that adds a bit of juice to the whole episode. I wish I had a screen grab of this scene, because it'll bother ya after a while.
Well, that is, until the camera cuts away to show the real Oscar holding the robotic head. Or, rather, the real Oscar holding an obviously mannequin head. The show's negative gets EXTREMELY grainy during this short, three-second sequence, as if they were trying to mask this. They don't succeed. Even at three-seconds, it's blows the creepiness factor that was established a few seconds previous. Oh, well. At least the episode ends with another glimpse at the creepy shot, and the episode ends.
Even as I write this, I still get a weird chill from seeing that. Creepy, creepy, creepy. Like it could almost come out and GRAB YA!!
Or not. Still, it beats CGI.
RATING: Standard script, standard Double story within a perfectly good series. The creepy scene earns it a point up but the grainy-we-try-to-cover-it-up denotes it a half a point. But it's still a good way to enjoy bionics without getting too involved in it. So, enjoy the creepy scene. Two and a Half Stars out of Four. Creepy, creepy, creepy....
**Yeah, I know, atomically-powered limbs??
This is one of those little questions that require a great deal of strength
from our friend, Suspension of Disbelief. Of course, this is doubly
strange for all of our bionic heroes since this would mean that their eye/ear
bionics' power source would be close to their BRAINS. Man,
I hope those things are LOADED with lead. Go
back!
***I should note that the part of Dr. Dolenz,
that
old, old friend of ours, is being played by constantly working actor
Henry Jones, who passed recently. Jones is one of those faces you
recognize but can't put a name too. This site knows him best as the
enigmatic time-traveller Mr. Pem on the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
episodes "A Time To Die" and the final episode "No Way Back." Maybe
one of these days I'll get back to writing constantly and do both those
fine episodes. Sadly, Mr. Pem only uses a stopwatch to travel
as opposed as a police box. Go Back!!
*Well, my mistake. After looking through my episode guide again, it turns out that Dr. Dolenz did appear in the final episode of the first season, called "Run, Steve, Run" in which he created some 'bionic' robots. Go fig. Well, since the IMDB wasn't aware of this info as well, I don't feel that bad. So, I guess the old, old friend of ours cliche will have to wait another day. Oh, well. Go back!!! And no more review writing at 3am for me.