Director: Michael Dinner
Cast: Michelle Ryan (Jaime Sommers), Chris Bowers (Dr Will Anthros), Katee Sackhoff (Sarah Corvus), Miguel Ferrer (Jonas Bledsoe), Molly Price (Ruth Treadwell), Will Yun Lee (Jae Kim), Mae Whitman (Becca Sommers), Emma Lahana (Sally Crane) & Aaron Douglas (Supermax Prison Guard)
A barmaid is involved in a car crash, and her scientist boyfriend saves her life by equipping her with bionic limbs...Writer-producer David Eick knows a thing or two about cyborgs, having spent the past few years working on Battlestar Galactica. Now, he's heading his own show, based on the kitsch 70s sci-fi series that starred Lindsay Wagner as a tennis player given a bionic upgrade, but with a contemporary punch...
British actress Michelle Ryan (EastEnders/Jekyll) takes the lead as Jaime Sommers, updated from a tennis player to a barmaid; how's that for 30 years of women's lib? Jaime is dating dishy young scientist Will Anthros (Chris Bowers), whilst taking care of her younger, deaf sister Becca (Mae Whitman). Life is all roses, until Jaime makes the cliched mistake of announcing her pregnancy, resulting in a terrible car crash...
Fortunately for Jaime, her boyfriend is involved with a top-secret research project into bionic replacements, so after life-saving surgery involving the injection of "anthrocytes", Jaime wakes up as the eponymous Bionic Woman, with synthetic legs, arm, ear and eye.
So far, so predictable; and that's the main worry with this Pilot. Everything you expect to see updated is handled deftly, but whenever the script diverts to something original (such as a shadowy past for the company regarding their "first bionic woman"), it begins to drag or become unfocused.
Interestingly, the script gives Jaime a younger sister called Becca, who has been dealt a double blow in life: she's not as beautiful as big sis and she's deaf. As if to rub it in, her disability is even more pronounced in comparison once Jaime becomes bionic! But it seems the creators got cold feet over their disabled/superabled siblings, because Becca's deafness has been dropped from the show. The transmitted Pilot will have Mae Whitman replaced by Lucy Hale, and her character rewritten as a "budding computer hacker".
While it's certainly true the deaf sister aspect is the least interesting thing about the Pilot, atleast it's fresh compared to the computer hacker cliche! I actually find it quite distasteful that a show involving dream technology for disabled people, chooses to drop their one disabled character! It would have been nice to explore the jealousy between Jaime and Becca, particularly because Becca would have been more grateful for having super-hearing.
The script by Laeta Kalogridis and David Eick is well-paced, but predictable and prone to jumping from cliche to cliche. Jaime's car crash rescue by helicopter is straight from RoboCop, her rooftop leaps are pure Spider-Man, and a climactic punch-up in the rain evoked memories of Matrix Revolutions. They even wheel out a knife-wielding goon in a dark alley for Jaime to beat up.
The cast also seem chosen to be apeal to genre fans, with RoboCop's Miguel Ferrer behind another cybernetic project as Jonas Bledsoe, and three actors from Battlestar Galactica have small roles...
Indeed, BSG's Katee Sackhoff is perhaps the most interesting element of the Pilot as Sarah Corvus, an evil bionic woman. Sackhoff clearly delights in stalking around the screen with slicked-back blonde hair. Her rooftop rumble with Jaime is the undoubted highlight of the Pilot -- if only for her fun introduction: "without being too melodramatic about the whole thing, I'm Sarah Corvus. The first bionic woman. Ta-da."
As the lead actress, Michelle Ryan has a big task ahead of her, but she acquits herself well here. Her American accent is very good and she exudes girl-next-door sexiness that should prove a big draw for male fans and young girls. She can also act tough whilst looking pretty and vulnerable, which is all that's really required for this premiere.
There is a noticeable vein of decade-late Girl Power in the writing, which is kept in check most of the time, but noticeably distracts when a little girl sees Jaime super-running, but finds her mother doesn't believe her. "I just thought it was cool a girl could do that, that's all," the tot replies somberly, causing eye-rolls around the world.
As you'd expect, the special effects are good throughout, with only the aforementioned running sequence causing any real embarassment. The effect for Jaime's bionic eye is particularly cool; a night-vision sniper rifle with telescopic zoom and Terminator-style screen readouts. The car crash and rooftop fist-fight are the main injections of adrenaline.
Overall, Bionic Woman is certainly not a disaster, but there are plenty of concerns with the original elements Eick has included. But when the episode focuses on a woman exploring and reacting to "super powers", it's a lot of fun. The script just gets bogged down in its serious moments and contains lapses in logic: Jaime has a higher I.Q than Ferrer's boss, but works as a barmaid? Jaime can draw Sarah Corvus post-trauma, but fails to recognize Sarah in her bar? Was it because she wore lipstick?
So yes, there are problems, but Michelle Ryan is good, Katee Sackhoff is great, and the visuals are lively. The 70s original was hardly a work of perfection either, and I have faith David Eick can smooth out the wrinkles and deliver a fun, spirited adventure for audiences.
