Category: Bionic Woman

I remember when a new sci-fi show was set to air in the fall and the most you could hope to see in advance was an article in USA Today or Starlog with a few static press photos and an interview with the producer.

Today, you can just take a quick trip (or a slow-motion sprint to the tune of your own ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cha) over to This YouTube clip to find a peek at NBC's Bionic Woman.

I remember when a new sci-fi show was set to air in the fall and the most you could hope to see in advance was an article in USA Today or Starlog with a few static press photos and an interview with the producer. Today, you can just take a quick trip (or a slow-motion sprint to the tune of your own ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cha) over to this YouTube clip to find a peek at NBC's Bionic Woman.

I'm guessing this five minute clip was cut together from the original pilot, maybe to sell the show to a roomful of suits and sponsors, since it lacks a certain polish. There's some awfully generic sound effects in a fight scene near the end and the whole clip features music so typical of modern movie trailers that it will provoke involuntary eye-rolls from all but the most impressionable 11 year olds. Of course, there's plenty of decent visuals and interesting story elements on display that I found plenty to smile at.

We'll know for sure when it premieres next month, but this newBionic Woman looks to be something of a cross between the Hulk (the Bill Bixby show, not the Ang Z-z-z-z-z movie) and the original RoboCop. The echoes of the latter are all over the clip -- partly due to the fact that Miguel Ferrer (the celluloid father of the 'borg in blue) appears to have a supporting role in Bionic Woman, but also because actress portraying the titular femme, Michelle Ryan, has something of that emotional coldness that Peter Weller had in that Verhoeven classic. Must be the cold blue eyes the two share. At any rate, it works, and helps add to the perceived tone, which at least in this clip feels very much like a B-movie.

I like B-movies. There's a great seat-of-the-pants momentum to flicks like RoboCop, Tremors, and Evil Dead, where the writers and directors seem to be shooting the story straight from the hip, not thinking and certainly not caring what a critic might write in a review one day. I can respect that kind of blind, giddy, outrageous enthusiasm. And from the looks of it, Bionic Woman might have a good deal of that same enthusiasm, although I worry that come September 26th, it'll prove a little short on giddy.

As much as I love the new Battlestar Galactica, I don't want to see that same deadly serious tone transposed onto a show about, let's face it, a woman who has the bionic gams that her haul off and kick some serious ass from time to time. So I can't help but worry, at least a little, that some of the family baggage seen in that YouTube clip feels a wee bit like "a very special episode of Growing Pains."

Soif you haven't already,watch the clip. And see if you think Bionic Woman has been eating all its sci-fi B-movie cheese...or if it's been gorging itself on a steady diet of tee-vee melodrama, the kind that builds tragic, angst-riddled twenty-somethings.

This post was authored by Jim Titus, a man worth significantly less than Six Million.

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