The Bionic Woman-Season 1 (1976)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Main Menu Audio & Animation
Rating
Year Of Production	1976
Running Time	670:11 (Case: 672)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered Multi Disc Set (4)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Gwen Arner Jack Arnold Tom Blank Phil Bondelli
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Lindsay Wagner Richard Anderson Martin E. Brooks Sam Chew Jr.
Case	?
RPI	$69.95	Music	Charles Albertine Robert Bryant John Cacavas

    When fans of the Six Million Dollar Man encountered Steve Austen's (Lee Majors) long term girlfriend, Jaime Summers (Lindsay Wagner), who would ultimately become his fiancé, they knew that her near death and amnesia wouldn't be the last they saw of her (ah, the classic two dramatic obstacles of American commercial TV - when does someone with amnesia not recover, or someone dead not come back to life in this comic book fairytale world?). They were right - enter the spin off series The Bionic Woman.

    Like Steve, Jaime is a bionic woman, having received her bionic implants after a near-fatal parachuting accident. Recruited by Oscar (Richard Anderson), Steve's own handler, Jamie is set up as a school teacher on a military base as a cover for her more clandestine activities as a super-powered spy (go America!).

    All 14 episodes of the first season are available in this set. You can find a full list of episodes and episode summaries at TV.com. All episodes are approximately 46 - 48 minutes long.

    Sadly, when watching this show, I can't help but see all the elements that Joss Wheedon was undoubtedly parodying with Buffy Summers in Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. Seriously, any fan of that show who comes to this show will undoubtedly spot the parallels and be unable to take it all seriously. Not that the Bionic Woman should be taken seriously - aimed squarely at the younger market, the show is a cross between Alias and more family friendly shows such as Wonder Woman, although in all fairness I found this to be a far superior show than Wonder Woman in terms of storytelling and execution.

    While still enjoyable in its own way, particularly on a rainy Sunday afternoon when you're doing the ironing, in all honesty I really think this is one for the fans on a nostalgia trip, and viewers without any nostalgic attachment to this show are better served by acquiring boxed sets of Buffy or Alias to whittle away those Sunday afternoon hours.

Video

    I watched the majority of this on my 42" Sony E-Series 3LCD Rearpro HDTV upscaled at 720p via HDMI. I sampled some episodes via 3LCD front projection on my 100" screen using my Sony VPL-HS60, upscaled at 1080i.

    Video is a standard 1.33:1 Full Frame. Colour is a little washed out, though this is partially a result of the film stock and lighting techniques of the time. It looks about as good as can be expected.

    Shadow detail can be a little grainy, but there is nothing overly distracting here. There is a fair bit of dirt on the print, but I would suggest that it has been cleaned up some because there is nothing glaringly bad. There is a bit of background aliasing.

    I spotted no dual layer pauses, either because of my equipment or (as is more likely the case) the pauses fall between episodes.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Audio is stock standard 2.0 Dolby Digital Mono. There were some minor sync issues that were clearly source faults. Dialogue is easy to understand. Music can sound a little "hollow" at times. There is no surround or subwoofer information.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus

    All menus are in 1.33:1 Full Frame. The disc home menus have various clips from the credits with a 2.0 Dolby Stereo soundtrack of the theme. All other menus are static and silent.

    From what I can tell, there is not a Region 1 release available of this series – they seem to be importing our Region 4 release. I guess we got the definite winner.

    The Bionic Woman is a real nostalgia trip for those of us around who remember it. However, it doesn’t match up all that well by today’s standards – newcomers are liable to find this laughable. That said, I thank Universal Home Video for continuing to release these old shows on DVD for the fans.

    Decent video and audio make this an acceptable package, though don’t come here looking for extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall