The Intros Of The Six Million Dollar Man And Bionic Woman

STEVE AUSTIN PUNCHES A SHARK WITH HIS BARE BIONIC HANDS! They even get the sound effect right!

The 1972 novel Cyborg by author Martin Caidin led to a TV movie and series under the more familiar name The Six Million Dollar Man. The show would air for three seasons, from 1973-1978 if you count the pilot movies, and produced a spin-off called The Bionic Woman, not to be confused with namesakes from more recent years. We even got a bionic dog out of the other show, plus a set of reunions movies that further expanded the bionic roster.

I was going to do a My Favorite Intros on the show, but after seeing it…it really isn’t. It’s not terrible but neither intro is something I’d be jonesing to see if I wasn’t already interested in the show. What I didn’t expect, and it’s certainly not the first time for this site, I ended up learning that the intro I remember isn’t the only intro produced for this show, and the other one would not have reached any type of iconic…because it is dated as heck! There may be a reason I never saw this intro, but now that I have you get to as well.

Or you could not click on the video, but don’t worry. It isn’t some kind of nightmare inducing earworm of death. It’s just very dated. Additionally we’ll look at the more familiar intro for Steve Austin’s adventures and that of the sister show about his sometimes girlfriend. So that at least should be worth sticking around.

I’m not sure what the right order is, so I’m going to start with the one I remember from syndication. I saw a shorter version but that could have been the poster doing an edit.

It’s a lot of exposition but the presentation is handled well. The narrator sets up the situation along with clips from the first movie (adapting the first novel) showing what happened to him. This is followed by a “report” by Oscar Goldman about making him “better, stronger, faster”, but not harder. Sorry, Daft Punk fans. We see Steve being given his bionic parts (which apparently differ from the original novels), tested on the treadmill after being rebuilt…and that’s it. Outside of being a cyborg, we really don’t know anything about him.

I found a longer version I’m betting came from one of the movies that were later re-edited into episodes of the show for syndication. Syndication led to another alteration, in that crossover episodes with The Bionic Woman would get mixed into whatever show it best fit into.

This might have been from at least the first or second TV movie, but since they were re-edited for syndication by the time I saw them (I was either a baby or toddler when the show originally aired) I didn’t see this one. I’m not sure why “Cy’ Borg” is written the way it was. They literally had the title of the novel showing them the right way to spell it.

The only real addition here is an extended look at the crash that led to his becoming bionic. It’s actually a bit more boring as a result. What we really need is a better look at what he can do, and what he’ll be doing in the show. Be careful what you wish for, folks, because here’s why we’re all here. There is another intro I know I’ve never seen before, with a theme song supposedly by Dusty Springfield. I’d like to think she’s better than…this.

I know the other intros here don’t really give us much in the way of theme song (the outro does but outros are dying their own death compare to intros), but with this theme song we’d be better off. Once again, they seem more interested in the crash and bionics than seeing him in action…but we kind of see him in action, at least more than the show. We don’t see his bionics in action being cool, which is the biggest thing missing from this intro.

And that would continue into the other show. At least they stayed on visual theme, I guess.

Sure, we get a better look at WHAT has bionics but not what she DOES with those bionics. This is a crimefighting show, not a show about a professional jogger with an illegal edge and a strong handshake who jumps good. We see our hero and the two characters she shares with Steve’s show, but we know as much about Jamie Sommers as we do Steve Austin…which is nearly nothing. I found one with a different piece of music in the background but I don’t remember it and nothing else was different.

With intros like this it’s a good thing I knew enough about the shows before watching them to watch them. These are not worthy of the My Favorite Intros list, but they’re also not bad enough to be part of the My Not-So-Favorite intros list. They’re just…kind of meh, and for a show where two cybernetic on again-off again lovers working for an agency that sends them against criminals, androids, aliens, and friggin’ Bigfoot you think they’d have more exciting intros than these.