The Six Million Dollar Man

Amidst the wreckage of an experimental NASA aircraft (M3F5) which crashed at a Southwestern desert airfield (Edwards Air Force Base), military investigators found the battered near-dead remains of astronaut Colonel Steve Austin, who piloted the vehicle before its malfunction. Coming to his aid was a special government project headed by Dr. Rudy Wells who had perfected a series of artificial limbs/organs that could reconstruct Steve Austin's body into a Cyborg... part machine, part human. The operation replaced Steve's right arm, both his legs, and a left eye. After adjusting to his new body, Steve's new legs enabled him to run at incredible speeds; his new arm with his nuclear power source gave him the strength of a bulldozer; and his new eye not only approximated but transcended normal vision. The price tag for this operation was six million dollars, thus the title of the show THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN. Now the Bionic Man, Steve worked for the government Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI) headed by Oscar Goldman and used his special skills to fight the enemies of our country.

Month's later Steve's girlfriend Jaime Sommers was injured in a sky diving accident. With Steve's intervention, OSI equipped her with artificial legs, a right arm and right electronic ear. Unfortunately, Jaime died after her body rejected her bionic parts but was brought back to life via cryogenic suspension methods as THE BIONIC WOMAN. The resulting trauma to her body left her with no memory of having known her fiancé Steve. She, too, eventually worked for the OSI in between teaching school in Ojai, California.

Others to benefit from bionic technology included Andy Sheffield, The Bionic Boy, a paralyzed teenager who had both legs replaced; Maximillian "Max" the Bionic Dog, a German shepherd injured in a laboratory fire equipped with a bionic jaw and four bionic legs at a cost of $1 million (Max became Jaime's pet); and a bionically rebuilt race driver, Barney Miller, a "Seven Million Dollar Man." He was the only living man stronger than Steve Austin. The SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN were inspired by the novel Cyborg written by Martin Caiden.