What if Alias' Sydney Bristow had superhuman hearing and mechanically enhanced limbs? And what if she didn't fight evil geniuses, but instead spent her multi-outfitted days as a high-powered ad exec or head of a Fortune 500 company?
Picture all that and you just might have the contemporary reworking of the 1970s sci-fi-action series The Bionic Woman that Battlestar Galactica executive producer David Eick and Alexander scribe Laeta Kalogridis are developing for NBC Universal Television Studio.
Prompted by the critical and ratings success of Battlestar Galactica, which airs on the Sci Fi Network, Eick said in Daily Variety Tuesday that he had been looking for another series in the Universal vault that seemed primed for a redesign.
(BSG's original version lasted only one season, from 1978 to 1979, but, as many space-themed adventure series are wont to do, it developed quite the cult following.)
Eick apparently found what he was looking for with The Bionic Woman, a spin-off the The Six Million Dollar Man that for three seasons starred Lindsay Wagner as tennis pro Jaime Sommers, who was literally put back together after a sky-diving accident and then used her talents--ultra-fast legs, super-strong arm, great hearing--to fight crime. And eventually marry Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin, of course.
But in the 21st century, much of the Bionic Woman is going to be left on the cutting-room floor, so to speak.
"It's a complete reconceptualization of the title," Eick told the trade, saying that their heroine won't necessarily be fighting high-concept crime. "We're using the title as a starting point, and that's all…It's using the idea of artificial technology as a metaphor for what contemporary women sometimes feel is necessary to do everything that needs to be done."
Cool, right?
Um, maybe. The Bionic Woman purists out there aren't so sure they like the sound of Eick and Kalogridis' "meaningful departure" from the original concept.
"What's the purpose in referencing Bionic Woman only to say 'Yeah, this is nothing like that.' How is this a spinoff?" wrote one fan on SuperHeroHype.com. "It's like making a tough and gritty police drama and calling it Punky Brewster."
Another concerned Woman-lover agreed. "The exciting aspect of the original show was the use of bionic ability in espionage and saving the world!" he said. "What has made Galactica so successful is that the relaunch kept the best aspects of the original storyline, then fleshed it out with character driven drama."
A third fellow was worried "that this is going to be some kind of post-modern semi-satire about suburban life. Desperate Housewives with more stunts."
NBC can only wish.
Maybe sci-fi fans will be surprised, though. Eick said that Kalogridis agreed to a meeting with him in the first place because he was pitching The Bionic Woman.
"She basically indicated to me that Bionic Woman, and the possibility of one day being able to do a [new version] on it, was one of the reasons she got into showbiz in the first place."
So their heart is definitely in the right place. It looks as if timing will probably be a factor, too. In 2002 the USA Network was looking at a new edition of the show, but plans obviously fell through.
The Bionic Woman's other half, the Six Million Dollar Man, hasn't had much luck, either, in his bid to return to celluloid.
Comic book and Star Trek lover Kevin Smith penned a screenplay in the mid-1990s for a feature film version; then, in 2003, Jim Carrey hopped on board to play the title role for Dimension films with Old School director Todd Phillips behind the wheel.
That project is currently indefinitely on hold along with seemingly every other upcoming Carrey film, and the rights to the story are reportedly tangled up in litigation between Miramax (Dimension's parent company before the Weinstein brothers left) and Universal, which produced the original series starring Lee Majors.