411 Retro TV Review: Bionic Woman
Posted by Brendan Newton on 09.28.2007
Another re-imagining of a 70s sci-fi show from David Eick...
You know how some goofs will call in to a radio show and introduce themselves as a “Long-Time Listener, First-Time Caller”? Well, it usually annoys the hell out of me. That being said, I’m using a variation on it to introduce myself in this, my first (and hopefully not last, har har) review for 411mania. I’m a Long-Time Reader, First-Time Writer, must’ve been addicted to this site since 2001-2002 or thereabouts. Used to be mostly into the Wrestling side, but as my wrestling fandom has waned I’ve spent more time in Movies/TV. Hence that being the Zone I’m writing for.
Anyways, the show I’ve got on tap is the new re-imagining of the cult 1970s series, The Bionic Woman, called simply Bionic Woman sans the “The.” I must admit that the original show was a good few years before my time, and I never caught any re-runs of it, although I think I saw part of the set at Universal Studios as a kid, so I’m going in almost completely blind. Which can be a good thing when it comes to remakes; in my opinion there’s no better program on TV today than the current Battlestar Galactica, but I know people who refuse to watch it due to memories of the cheesy original. It will be interesting to see if the same thing affects Bionic Woman’s viewership, and whether or not it will be able to distance itself from the original as dramatically as the new Galactica has. Comparisons to Galactica are certainly inevitable; in addition to being another re-imagining of a 70s cult series, Bionic Woman is Executive Produced by David Eicke, one-half of Galactica’s creative team, features several Galactica alumni in its’ cast, and is also filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia (my alma mater, the University of British Columbia, puts in an appearance).
From the beginning, Galactica’s creators were at pains to emphasize the different tone, themes, and atmosphere of the new show as compared to the original. Bionic Woman is no different, as the pilot opens in a bioethics class where Dr. Will Anthros (Chris Bowers) is discussing the latest in body augmentation with a class that includes his bartender girlfriend, Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan). The point seems to be clear; while all of this bionic engineering stuff may have been far-out science fiction back in the 70s, it’s close to being the stuff of real life thirty years later. “The world’s further along than anyone wants to admit” Will later tells Jaime. Will’s characterization surprised me, as usually in movies and TV the Professor who’s having an affair with the student-age girl is played as a sleaze. Here, though, he genuinely cares for Jaime despite her somewhat dead-end job and difficult life; her mom’s dead and her father, an irresponsible alcoholic (who’s still alive, mind you, meaning that he’ll almost inevitably show up sometime down the line, assuming the show lasts), abandoned her teenage sister (played by Lucy Hale, think Buffy‘s Dawn Summers with computer skills in terms of her character) to Jaime’s care. Will doesn’t even flinch when Jaime informs him that she’s pregnant, and they’re soon joking about what to name the baby. That’s when their car’s hit by a truck driven by a mysterious blonde woman (Katee Sackhoff) in a stunning, fast-moving accident sequence, the first real highlight of the show.
Jaime wakes up to discover that not only has she lost the baby, but it turns out that Will’s heavily involved with a top secret bionic augmentation program. Will’s father, Anthony, (played by Firefly and Galactica’s Mark Sheppard, a very welcome presence and a great villain as always) created the technology with military purposes in mind (“he saw the combat applications immediately” Will remarks bitterly), although it’s not clear who now oversees the Bionics project. What is clear is that things went wrong and Anthros Senior ended up in a high-tech prison, leaving Will to ambivalently carry on his work. Anthony’s efforts, aided by his mysterious brother, to get out of the jail where he has been held underground for the past ten years form a subplot throughout the show, including a cameo by Galactica’s Aaron Douglas, and his successful escape at show’s end implies that he’ll play a significant, memorably villainous role in the series. I’m definitely looking forward to how his character unfolds. The bionic technology uses nanobytes called “anthrocites” in their creator’s honour which regenerate and enhance the human body. In a desperate attempt to save Jaime’s life, Will has equipped her body with the anthrocites, leaving her with the usual superhero bag of tricks; superhuman speed and strength and preternaturally rapid healing, as well as a bionically enhanced eye and ears. After the impressive accident sequence, the second thing that struck me about the show was the special effects used for the anthrocites. Appearing as glittering bright lights in Jaime’s blood vessels, they manage to look like a biological, natural part of her body while also having an artificial, technological sheen to them, thus making the combination of biology and technology perfectly believable. Most importantly, they don’t look at all fake or cartoony.
The downside of Jaime’s bionic upgrade is that Will’s higher-ups on the program aren’t sure whether or not they want a bionic woman on the loose given the project’s past problems, one of whom appears to be the same blonde woman that instigated the car crash. Besides Will, the main project members are played by a reliable group of actors who give typically strong performances, among them Crossing Jordan’s Miguel Ferrer and Third Watch’s Molly Price, both of whom are great actors who kept me watching their otherwise mediocre programs for years. The most interesting project character besides Will, however, is Jae Kim (Will Yun Lee), another young project member with emotional ties to the blonde woman, who is gradually revealed to have been Sarah Corvus, the original recipient of the bionic engineering. Lee is fantastically intense in all of the scenes in which he appears, especially those in which he is at odds with Will. Clearly there’s a lot to explore with this character, another reason I hope this show lasts.
Thankfully, the scenes set at the project’s facility, which go back and forth between Jaime adjusting to her new body and smouldering at being treated like a guinea pig, and the project members debating what to do with her, don’t drag on for too long as I was concerned they were going to. The scenes were starting to drag, with a lot of talk but no action to move the story forward, when to my relief Will decisively helps Jaime escape, thus jump-starting another great action-special effects scene, which is thus far what this series does best. Again, we get a cool close-up look via CGI at Jaime’s bionics in action (this will hopefully be a regular series feature, as they’re well done and are the sort of thing that could become a series’ “trademark”), followed by a great scene of her eluding her pursuers through a forest at super speed. The remainder of the episode details Jaime’s efforts to mend the impact her unexplained absence has put on her already strained relationship with her sister, to adjust to her newfound powers, and going through a series of confrontations with Will, the rest of the bionics project team, and with Sackhoff’s Sarah Corvus character, who thus far walks the line between conflicted villainess (she shoots Will, whose survival is still up in the air, but in a key character moment holds off on shooting Kim, apparently due to the past romantic connection between the two) and an odd sort of mentor figure to Jaime. Either way, the two have a spectacular bionic showdown in atmospherically pouring rain (yep, it’s filmed in Vancouver all right) that keeps up the great special effects work and leaves me looking forward to fight scenes to come between these two as well as the development of their relationship. In the end, Jaime has come to a very tentative truce with both the project and Sarah, but one suspects that that won’t last for long. Certainly I’ll be back to see where it all goes next week.
Beyond that, however, it’s really too early for me to pass judgement on whether or not this show will have long-term legs, and whether or not it’s a show that should survive. It does have a lot going for it; as mentioned above, the anthrocite special effects and fight scenes are all really well done. If the show doesn’t get too bogged down in talk, it could be a really fun action show that doesn’t take itself too seriously. That being said, it’s a fantastic cast of well-seasoned actors; Eicke and Co. managed to bring in some really good supporting players in addition to Michelle Ryan, who fits the role of Jaime well. Lucy Hale’s character of Becca didn’t get that much time for her character to develop in the pilot, but given the hints that she’s something more than just a slightly bratty younger sister (her computer talents) and the unresolved details of the Sommers’ family life, one expects that the character will be fleshed out in future episodes. It will be interesting to see how much she learns about her sister’s new life and gets involved, and how fast the creators choose to have all that develop. Sheppard, Ferrer, and Price are all reliable performers and do well here with the supporting roles that they’re given, all of which, one hopes, will be fleshed out and developed if the show lasts. Kim’s character is another strong point, particularly his relationship with Sarah. Katee Sackhoff is a standout, and hopefully her character will show up regularly to battle and/or advise Jaime. As always Sackhoff is able to be badass, hot, and to create a character with depth all at the same time. These characters all have a lot of potential for development and growth. The show’s writing seemed somewhat bland, however. There was nothing cringingly bad about the dialogue; the lines were there, romantic when they needed to be romantic, mysterious when they needed to be mysterious, etc. There was just nothing that really grabbed me or stood out in my mind as a great, quotable line. For me, good writing is key to a great TV series, so that turned me off a bit. That being said, the pilot episode as a whole had a certain blandness to it that pilot episodes sometimes do; call it that new-show smell. We the audience don’t know or care about these characters any more than the actors and writers really do, and the world of the show as a whole doesn’t feel “lived in.” Also, since a lot of the pilot was given over to establishing the premise of the show (the accident, surgery, discovery of powers, etc., which again I’m glad the creators didn’t spend too much time on), it’s understandable that the show would seem somewhat bland. Really, this episode’s about rushing through the exposition and the setting up of the plot, so that the series proper can being next week. I’ll give the writers the benefit of the doubt until then, as hopefully the show can only get deeper and more involving from here.
-Brendan Newton
The 411: Decent pilot episode with great special effects and action, very talented cast, but the writing and general atmosphere of the show are a bit bland. The show has the potential to be a lot of fun, but subsequent episodes will have to be more involving than the pilot was if it wants to suck in viewers.
