First watched : 1974
In 1974 a new word from the world of engineering became ubiquitous across the playgrounds of Britain. "Bionic" was coined by Jack E Steele in 1958 and referred to the application of biological phenomena to engineering design. In 1972 the science fiction writer Martin Caldin turned the idea on its head in his novel Cyborg where electrical implants and prosthetics made his human protagonist a superman.
This idea transferred to TV as The Six Million Dollar Man where astronaut Steve Austin was rebuilt after a crash with new legs, a right arm and mechanical eye. This made him super-strong , super fast and telescopically sighted. Obviously government agencies found a use for him.
With a limited budget for special effects, Steve's feats were filmed in slow motion with a scraping electronic sound which made it very easy to spot who was playing him in the yard. As that would suggest it was phenomenally popular , particularly among young boys for whom it performed the same function as those Charles Atlas ads in the Marvel comics, the stuff of endless daydreams and revenge fantasies.
Austin was played by hunky Lee Majors whose acting gave the impression that his non-bionic parts were actually made of wood but no one was watching it for that. Later on he picked up a girlfriend Jamie Summers who got her own spin-off series. The show was abruptly cancelled in 1978 partly because Majors was being awkward about a new contract. However he soon bounced back ( presumably in slo-mo ) in The Fall Guy.
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