Of all the networks, NBC seems to be a bit ahead of this technology curve. At least for the upcoming fall season. They’ve made three of the pilots for new shows available in a few different ways. I watched them on my cable system’s On Demand system the other day.
We see remakes all the time on the big screen. It doesn’t happen quite as often on the small one. At least not outright ones that aren’t Superman.
Why? Probably because there’s no way to avoid comparison with the original and TV executives are even more fickle than movie studios. The new Battlestar Galactica caught a heck of a lot of flack (even from me) before it hit its stride five hours into the series. It has since blown away just about everything else on TV.
The Bionic Woman is a remake (some would say “re-visioning” in order to avoid the negative connotation) of one of my staple shows growing up. The original was action-packed, light and fun, just like so many other shows of the late 1970s and early 80s. A lot has changed since then. This new version embraces those changes fully.
No longer is Jaime Sommers a tennis player injured in a sky-diving accident. Now she’s a bar tender, barely making ends meet as she tries to finish college and take care of her younger sister. The high point in her life is her (slightly older) boyfriend, Will, a surgeon working for a private company. It’s that last connection that comes in handy when their car is demolished by a tractor trailer.
Jamie is brought into the program Will heads. In order to save her life, he rebuilds her with a combination of high-tech mechanical prosthetics and nanotechnology. This leads to her getting the trademark bionic legs, arm, and eye. The super hearing kicks in a little later.
The big problem is, she’s not the first person to undergo the procedure. Sarah Corvus (played by Galactica‘s Katee Sackhoff) was the first, but ran into some… difficulties.
Without question this show has more grit than the original ever thought of having. It’s got a very human edge, to it, as well. Much like the new Galactica took some key points from its previous incarnation, the new Bionic Woman has kept true to the core idea but made it something more.
This is a show to watch this season. If it does well–which I think it will–who knows what other super heroes of the 70s we’ll get to see next. In an odd twist of irony, maybe a new version of The Six Million Dollar Man will spin off of Bionic Woman.
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