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Bionic Not
01/05/2008 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
An appraisal of the Bionic Woman by GF Willmetts. Buy Bionic Woman in the USA - or Buy Bionic Woman in the UK  Having watched the new 'Bionic Woman' series, lasting only eight episodes, it's not difficult to see why the original had more going for it and not just the 'The' prefix. Oddly enough, this has nothing to do with the cast. They can live or breath depending on what the format offers them. The real problem is the format template and contemporarising to the point that it is more ensemble than about the lead character. If it gets too messy too soon then alarm bells should have been ringing.
In the early 70s, bionic surgery was seen as innovative and something of the near future. Indeed, it still is today. There have been some great strides connecting nerve tissue to electronics but there's still some ways to go before they parallel the likes of the Steve Austin and the original Jaime Sommers even today and concealing everything in natural limbs. Saying that, even the least technically-minded could appreciate these cyborgs were a technological product not some magical process that could be plugged in and off you go.
The new 'Bionic Woman's bionics are described as nano-technology but depicted as so much magic and the make-over glossed over as done in a few weeks. If anything, even with an acknowledged note that they might not last for more than a few years, it's just seen as a magical process. I doubt if nano-technology would ever be capable of such abilities as this anyway even with television's need to speed things along. Without that element of realism, a basic foundation starts to shudder. Viewers need Science Fiction not fantasy.
A few decades ago, if a TV series had a computer came up with the answer, we would all nod our heads sagely, see it as a plot device to move things on and go with the flow. With everyone here reading owning computers and knowing that they are only as good as the people who programmed them, its not a subject that can be faked any more. If anything, the public is a lot more savvy with technology and its capabilities.
Advanced bionics is still a long way away and would still look advanced if it was done as it was shown in the 70s. Whether it could make a cyborg have truly super-human attributes would be even more advanced. Anyone who has read Martin Caiden's original 'Cyborg' novel knows that it wasn't just a matter of attaching an arm and legs but also re-enforcing the spine and rib-cage. Terrestrial technology has yet to get this clever but its getting there. The specs of the original bionic couple could be updated but would still apply today without resorting to something even further into the future.
If anything, had the new show actually followed a similar route but then used modern effects to depict the technology in use, let alone any problems associated with the treatment would have added immensely to the belief of possibility that it could be applied. It was never about how much money was paid to create a cyborg but about whether or not you believed man and technology could live within the same body. Having the new Sommers 'creator' being one individual and then killing him off adds to the implausibility. After all, the days of the solitary genius are long gone. Any complicated project needs a team of people backing the innovator. Even Rudy Wells had his team of specialists experts.
The format of the new series was rather like 'Alias'. Granted Sommers was still learning what is needed for fieldwork but she was already equipped beyond any normal operative. I mean, she was even telemetrically linked to her headquarters through her eye and no one thought to question watching her going to the bathroom. Why not go full hog and give her an in-built earjack telephone although that would probably have brought it closer to Leslie Stevens' 1972 series 'Search'. There wasn't any need to take anyone along with her. Just give her instructions. If anything, having normal people along who couldn't hope to keep physically up made little sense and would hold her back.
Adding the family element by giving Sommers a sister made it more an inconvenience than humanising her. A lot of shows want to mix normality with the extra-ordinary. The family life as well as the working life. However, this tended to come over more as a millstone with no explanation of who looked after her sister while she was on assignment. The latter episodes did something to remedy this but it was clearly an after-thought. If nothing else, it shows things weren't thought through far enough and too much dependency on other templates.
It had to avoid regular family life cos there were parallels to shows like 'Medium' and UK's 'Torchwood' already beat them to the punch with having a boy-friend at home not knowing about any clandestine activities. Having a boy-friend who knew what was going on would harken back to the original series. You can see this being played through the numbers and making the boy-friend the creator as well and getting rid of both for good measure. Whether this fault could be placed solely in the show-runners' hands or making it palatable to what the studio wants is never made that clear. It might have been a bit of both. Whichever, it became a messy encumbrance.
One clever idea was having the first bionic woman prototype as more experienced as well as being a psychopath and it would make sense to go for someone mentally more stable. I saw alarm bells ringing from everyone before the series aired that Sommers' dropped out of college to look after her sister would hardly have made her a good option for bionic surgery. That's just making her too ordinary even if it was probably thought it would give a stronger association to a 'normal' viewer.
In many respects there seems to be a desire to distance the new series from the material that inspired the re-make. In some respects, that does make sense but why keep the name 'Jaime Sommers'? New younger viewers won't have any emotional baggage that way. Older viewers would have been happier with a new name to go with a new character. If anything, its made 'The Bionic Woman' original series something you want to go and re-watch simply because it did a better job with the concept. At least it had its lighter moments.
Lastly, Sommers wasn't extra-ordinary enough. With films and other TV series depicting super-human activities, having someone leaping up high buildings or seeing long distance is more acceptable these days. There was little imagination used to step up the game in terms of what she could do other than exceed what the original Jaime Sommers' abilities. It lacked the power or problem-solving attitude and ultimately became gung-ho fighting without the sound effect. Whether this would please a junior audience or not clearly didn't reflect in the viewing figures but it certainly needed a lot more or different thinking to make the most of it.
This neatly brings us back to the overall format being at odds with what was needed to be achieved. Even without the writer's strike, this series would have had a hard problem reaching a second season without some serious changes in its format.
If ever there is a third attempt at doing a 'Bionic Woman' series then some serious attention needs to be addressed in proper advice regarding cybernetics and addressing how such a bionic character is used as a field agent. The original series might have ignored things like some basic training but speed jumping it like they did with the new version doesn't necessarily work neither. Making over an old successful TV series needs a lot more work than just chucking ingredients together and assume it will come out as a cohesive whole.
GF Willmetts
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