Lindsay WagnerThe Bionic Woman: The Complete Series [DVD]

Great show very underrated.

WAS A GOOD SERIES WHILE IT LASTED. HAS CROSS-OVER EPISODES AS WELL.

The Blu Ray transfer of this series is nothing short of astounding. It is shown in its original 4:3 ratio and not stretched wide, but large enough on the screen that you forget there are small bars on the sides. The sound is also great. With that said, this series is a classic to us old enough to remember it. While the technology compared to today seems outdated, the stories were way ahead of its time and well made, and the acting was great. Jamie Sommers was the first TV superhero who was female and had her own show. I loved the crossover episodes with Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin, but that stopped later on in the series. Both shows were on ABC, but they cancelled The Bionic Woman and NBC picked it up. They later added the German Shepherd Maximillian. Max was The Bionic Dog, and as I am a dog lover, made the series all the more enjoyable. The characters of Oscar Goldman and Rudy Wells, and the actors who played them, were the only actors to be on two shows on competing networks at the same time. Their acting, as was all the cast, was great. It was also great to see the old time actors again. They had great guest stars. This collection also includes the three reunion movies that came out later. This set is a must have for your collection.

Check all of the discs immediately upon purchasing them. I waited and four of them would not even play. Before watching the series, I thought that Lindsay Wagner was not as beautiful as the other girls that were all applying for the same actress positions at the same time in the three programs Charlie’s Angels, The Bionic Woman, and Wonder Woman such as Lynda Carter, Jaclyn Smith, and Cheryl Ladd. The pictures of “Jaime Sommers” on the box and on the opening credits do not do her justice. By the time, I watched the episode Biofeedback, I wished that it was me that she was kissing. If I am ever fortunate enough to have a wife, I would love her to kiss me like that! It is a very nicely done show that is family friendly throughout. I had watched it many years ago when I was a small child but I did not remember any particular episodes. I liked the series so much that I also purchased a set for my niece. It is so much better than anything on television these days. I loved watching each episode and wished that there were more. I was sad that I had finished watching the series. Maybe I will purchase the movies also. By the end of the second season she was wearing her hair differently and looked nicer and wore nicer outfits including a jade green one in an episode with Maximillion. I had wished that she would have gotten back together with Steve Austin the Six Million Dollar Man, since she was with him at the beginning of the series in the cross over episodes until she had suffered memory loss. There were some things that were a little far fetched like throwing a stuffed animal teddy bear at a sniper and disarming him. Altogether it is a great series that I would highly recommend to family and friends to watch instead of the programs being created today that all have brainwashing and reprogramming agendas. If you love nostalgia and loved growing up in the 1970’s and seeing the classic cars and enjoy family friendly programming then give this series a try. You will not be disappointed.

This DVD pack of Bionic Woman contains the whole 3 seasons of the show.It is in English with subtitles in English.There are about 400 million people who speak Spanish in this world, but it has no Spanish subtitles. They are missing out all that target audience for sales.

The Apollo Moon-landings wound-down in the early 70's and kids were left primed but without a ready-supply of dynamic new astronaut adventures.Fictional Steve Austin stepped into the TV void as the Six Million Dollar Man, a Moon-walking astronaut badly injured in a crash and rebuilt with super-powered mechanical parts and deployed as a super spy/agent.Eventually he returned to his home-town and rekindled romance with his high-school sweet-heart, Jamie Sommers, now a world-ranked professional tennis player.Before the wedding, she was badly injured near death and Austin prevailed on his spy-master boss to also save her with bionic repair.While not the highly-trained military test pilot/astronaut Austin was, Jaime neverthless gamely became an occasional government agent/spy out of a sense of duty and gratitude when not working as a junior high teacher at a military base.In the 70's this show was huge. Internationally huge. With only three broadcast networks at the time, 30+ million people might be watching an episode, a level of attention even big hits in today's fragmented market never approach.The DVD is a good implementation. The first two episodes in particular have worthwhile commentary tracks by Kenneth Johnson, creator of the series. He does an outstanding job explaining how the show came to be and was developed, providing a well-planned commentary track. Other extras interview Lindsay Wagner, etc.For parents:"The Bionic Woman" offers a relatively benign alternative to the super-heroes presented to kids nowadays. It doesn't try to teach/indoctrinate kids with anything, but just presents action and adventure stories.The restrained violence is always initiated by the bad guys. The only lesson going on is by example ... the heroine following through on her committments and trying to stop the bad guys from hurting others, often with cleverness and smarts as well as bionic strength.Very different from current shows targeted to pre and young teens: "The Flash" (constant angst, family replacement, and psycho-analysis) or "Super Girl" (family replacement, identity politics, alienation, detailed depictions of how to develop lesbian relationships, etc.). And of course all the vampire shows.On the negative side, there's an episode where Jaime goes undercover as a chain-smoker. She has ~3 different boyfriends during the series, a couple of which suddenly appear and disappear in single episode yet with implied intimacy. There is some disrespectfulness and mouthing off shown on the part of some of the students in her class.For adults:The first 6 episodes might be the most engaging for adults, with their focus on the ultimately bitter-sweet love story with Steve Austin, her becoming bionic, a cyborg, along with the final episode.People today, with their 5K high-def screens have come to demand a higher degree of versimilitude from shows than audiences in the 70's -- who probably didn't demand TV shows be windows into a reality that looks even more compelling than actual reality due to always optimal lighting, and were willing to use some of their own imagination instead of having everything done for them.Guest stars in a couple episodes could be a bit wooden (mostly the youngsters), but Lindsay Wagner carries the show with a sweet and compelling character that probably defined the "California girl" for many in the 70's.(I wonder if folks at the time ever imagined the show would be "for the ages" available at home on things like VHS and DVD, etc., or if they just expected the original airing, and a rerun in the summer before it disappeared forever..)The bionics themselves are a little mysterious. If there were such a thing, the magic would be where they transitioned into the human body. In the show, there are no scars, and people cannot tell the difference even when the limbs are examined closely.Rudy Wells, the scientist who developed bionics in the show, evidently achieved a monumental triumph of the ages. Of the $6 millon, $5.99 million must have been spent on the simulated tissue covering ... indistinguishable in appearance, touch, and motion from real tissue.Note: due to money-printing inflation, $6 million in 1973 dollars equates to $32 million in 2016 dollars.When the bionics are damaged, the close-up shot of the limb suddenly looks like that of a cheap plastic mannequin that would be spotted as artificial from 20 yards away. ("Wow, THAT's what split the 4-ton boulder in half?!"). Once it is repaired, it suddenly looks indistinguishable from human again. I guess the tissue simulation circuits got turned back on.Of course, even if Jaime's petite bionic limb could lift a 600-lb barbell over her head with one arm, the arm is still attached to human shoulders and spine, which would fracture and collapse under much less a load. So best not think about the bionics too much, though hard for the scientists and engineers in the audience. In fiction, you have to grant at least one improbable premise else it wouldn't be fiction, and this is it.Other main characters are Oscar Goldman, Jaime's spy-master boss, and Dr. Rudy Wells, the inventor of the bionics.Interestingly, by chance I notice the actors who play these roles in the Bionic Woman (Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks) are look-alikes for David Atlee Phillips and Edward Lansdale, two actual CIA officers of that era frequently cited as being involved in the assassination of JFK. Do an image search on their names. The resemblance to Oscar and Rudy is uncanny. Wonder what was going on there!Oscar Goldman is the prototypical and ultimate Government Man, connected to everything, knows everybody, runs everything. Representative hilarious dialogue:Oscar: (dials phone)"This is Oscar Goldman. We need to evacuate the West Coast immediately.That's right. Keep me informed."(hangs up the phone)Or they pull up to a remote facility 6 hours drive into the middle of nowhere:Guard: "I've been ordered not to allow anyone in but Oscar Goldman."Oscar: "I AM Oscar Goldman"Guard: "Oh, sorry sir! I didn't know."(opens the gate to the super-secret facility)Generally, all he has to do is announce that his name is Oscar Goldman, and no matter where they are, everyone immediately knows who he is and will launch any effort he suggests.Dr. Rudy Wells is also the swiss-army-knife of scientists. In addition to inventing bionics, he has the time and expertise to be the go-to guy for every top-secret cutting-edge effort: weather-control, earthquake control, super-bombs, spacecraft launches, missile development, super-radar. You name it, if its science, he's on top of and personally involved.These things can be kind of fun in themselves.Somewhat jarringly for modern audiences, Oscar sometimes refers to Jaime as "Babe" and occasionally platonically kisses her on the lips as she departs for a mission. Of course, any boss who did that today would be up on harrassment charges instantly and probably jailed for assault, so it can make for some interesting the-way-things-were moments.Special effects are fine, though can be uneven by modern standards. Jaime might be running through a forest fire that is pretty much a bunch of barely disguised flame pots. But then later scenes have them on a train barrelling through an entire forest on fire that are as intense and realistic as anything you could expect.Plenty of stunts remain impressive and leave you wondering how they could have done that; bionically punching a shark that goes tumbling under water, bionically wrapping a metal bar around a swimming shark, Max the bionic dog fighting a wolf, many others.A large number of missions to remote, supposedly tropical countries ended up looking much like Southern California desert scrub. But they shot in some very impressive locations too; vast structures that seemed to go on forever, not even sure what they are, probably power plants.Now that I live in LA, only about 1.5 hours or so from Jaime's place in Ojai, I found myself trying to identify locations appearing in the show, but with little success. One can recognize the mountain back-drop, but 40 years seem to have mutated the LA skyline and freeway systems. Perhaps one scene was even in my neighborhood, though hard to be sure and hard to believe it could be so little changed after 40 years.This DVD set contains the cross-over episodes with the Six Million Dollar Man, but does NOT contain the later TV movies from after the series ended.