Bionic Woman, The

▪ American television show

      American television show, a spin-off of science-fiction thriller The Six Million Dollar Man, about a bionically enhanced secret agent. The show aired for three seasons, first from 1976 to 1977 on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network and then from 1977 to 1978 on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) network.

      The show's eponymous character, Jamie Sommers (played by Lindsay Wagner), was a professional tennis player. She first appeared in a 1975 episode of The Six Million Dollar Man (Six Million Dollar Man, The) as a former love interest of cybernetic agent Steve Austin (Lee Majors). As the two reignited their romance, Sommers suffered a debilitating skydiving injury. Austin prevailed upon his handlers at the U.S. government's Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) to rehabilitate her with robotics. Sommers emerged with two bionic legs that could outrun a speeding car, an arm that could bend steel bars, and an ear that could hear a whisper from a mile away. In exchange for the operation, Sommers became an agent of the OSI.

      The original story ended with Sommers's apparent death, but the character was so popular that the show's producers soon revived her, and in 1976 she spun off into her own weekly series. The two shows frequently interacted and shared co-stars, most notably OSI director Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson). Sommers's exploits included going undercover as a beauty pageant contestant and foiling a plot launched against Goldman by “fembots”—evil robots disguised as OSI secretaries.

      The Bionic Woman and its parent show were canceled in 1978, although Sommers and Austin later reunited for several television movies. In 2007 NBC aired a reworked version of the show, featuring a darker tone and a different background story; however, the series was canceled after only a few episodes.

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