Time Life | 1974 | 6080 mins. | NR
Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better. Stronger. Faster.
Box sets are a dime a dozen these days. It seems like one or two arrive almost every week claiming to be a must-have. Upon closer inspection, few are no more special than the countless sets of television series seasons that emerge on a weekly basis.
Time Life’s newly released, The Six Million Dollar Man: The Complete Collection is a box set in the true sense of the word. The sturdy box has a sensor that plays the series’ opening narration when you open it (I admit when I first received the set a couple of weeks ago, I probably opened the lid half a dozen times, just to hear Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) utter that famous phrase). And on the cover there’s a 4.5×6″ lenticular graphic of Steve as he’s learning just how fast he can run, and he appears to move as you change angles.
This set includes all 100 episodes of the series, spread across 40 discs. Inside the box, you will find individual plastic DVD keep cases for each of the five seasons plus another one of bonus features, which is great for safe keeping and allows you to remove the seasons from the larger box if space is an issue.
Due to legal issues, The Six Million Dollar Man had never been released in the United States until now. Time Life has made the most of this release; in addition to all the episodes, we get the pilot movies, five crossover episodes of The Bionic Woman, and all three reunion movies, as well as several featurettes and interviews. There are also six episodes that receive audio commentaries to boot. It should be noted however, that as of now, the set is only available through Time Life for $239.95, payable in installments.
Now, for a bit about the series itself; based on the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin, The Six Million Dollar Man was made into a television show after a series of television movies proved a ratings success. Steve Austin was an astronaut who crashed during an experimental aircraft test run and was barely clinging to life. At that point the government decided to use secret funding for a secret bionics project to create the next generation of covert operative–an agent with bionic limbs that give him superhuman strength and enable him to run 60 miles per hour, along with a bionic eye that allows him to see details over a mile away. Col Austin awakens after his operation to find there’s a price to pay for his second chance at life: taking on specialized missions for the OSO (Office of Strategic Operations). By the time the series debuted on January 18, 1974, the office was changed to OSI (Office of Scientific Intelligence) and the boss was Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson), while the doctor was Alan Oppenheimer.
With his bionic eye, arm and superhuman speed, Col Austin was ready to take on all comers. Anyone who was alive during The Six Million Dollar Man’s original run will remember that he became a pop culture icon, as part of one of Hollywood’s hottest couples at the time. Married to Farah Fawcett-Majors when the series debuted, Fawcett guest starred in four episodes as three different characters. Those appearances no doubt helped her get the part of Jill Munroe in Charlie’s Angels two years after The Six Million Dollar Man debuted.
Plenty of other famous faces of the 1970’s appear as guest stars: Boxer George Foreman, football players Dick Butkus and Larry Csonka, and “The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.” as an alien, among others. Also look for Andre the Giant, Kim Basinger, Noah Beery Jr., Sonny Bono, Gary Collins, Mike Farrell, Lou Gossett, Erik Estrada, Earl Holliman, Gerald McRaney, Don Porter, Cathy Rigby, Rodney Allen Rippy, Pernell Roberts, Dale Robertson, Dick Sargent, William Shatner, Suzanne Somers, Rick Springfield, George Takei, Ray Walston, Carl Weathers, and more.
There’s no denying that watching these episodes is like stepping into a television time machine. Thankfully, this time machine is plenty entertaining. For fans of The Six Million Dollar Man, this set is the ultimate gift.
The Six Million Dollar Man is presented in full frame transfers that provide the best possible picture quality we can expect from a series nearing forty. Picture quality fluctuates between episodes. Some episodes are very clear, while others have moments of softness. At the same time, there are also plenty of places where the transfer is strong enough to reveal mismatches between stock shots and live. The more recent episodes come across as clearer and sharper than the earlier ones, although I should note that the original TV movie has been given quite a good transfer here. And the reunion movies all look solid.
The audio is a no-frills Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, which again is par for the course for a Seventies’ TV show. It’s flat rather than dynamic, but that’s to be expected.
There are far extensive special features. Here’s a list:
Season 1
–6 discs (all episodes plus bonus features)
–Full-color booklet with message from Lee Majors, an essay on the series from film buff Mark O’Neill, photos, and a listing of episodes, credits and bonus features
–Real Bionics featurette
–An Iconic Opening featurette
–Season 1 VIPS: A Celebration of “The Six Million Dollar Man” Guest Stars
–Interactive Bonus Feature: Bionic Breakdown (clips that illustrate facets of the bionics)
–OSI Mission Debriefing: Executive Producer Harve Bennett
Season 2
–6 discs (all episodes plus bonus features)
–Full-color booklet with message from Lee Majors, an essay on the season from Matt Hankinson, a contributor fo the Rittenhouse Archives’ trading cards and The Bionic Book, photos, credits and a listing of episodes and bonus features
–“The Bionic Woman” Pts. 1&2 commentary by writer Kenneth Johnson
–The Bionic Sound Effects featurette
–Season 2 VIPS: A Celebration of “The Six Million Dollar Man” Guest Stars
Season 3
–7 discs (all episodes plus bonus features)
–Full-color booklet with message from Lee Majors, an essay from Paul K. Bisson (founder of The Bionic Fan Network and The Bionic Wiki), photos, and a listing of episodes, credits and bonus features
–Audio commentary for “The Blue Flash” by director Cliff Bole
–Audio commentary for “The Secret of Bigfoot” Pts. 1&2 by writer Kenneth Johnson
–The Search for Bigfoot featurette
–Season 3 VIPS: A Celebration of “The Six Million Dollar Man” Guest Stars
–OSI Mission Debriefing: Writer-producer Kenneth Johnson
Season 4
–9 discs (all episodes, including two-hour installments “The Bionic Boy” and “The Thunderbird Connection,” plus bonus features)
–Full-color booklet with a message from Lee Majors, an essay from D.C.-based writer Brendan Slattery, photos, and a listing of episodes, credits and bonus features
–Audio commentary for “Vulture of the Andes”
–The Six Million Dollar Fans featurette
–Season 4 VIPS: A Celebration of “The Six Million Dollar Man” Guest Stars
–OSI Mission Debriefing: Actor Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman)
Season 5
–7 discs (all episodes plus bonus features)
–Full-color booklet with a message from Lee Majors, another essay from Slattery, photos, and a listing of episodes, credits and bonus features.
–“The Six Million Dollar Man”‘s Best Villains and Best Fights featurette
–Season 5 VIPS: A Celebration of “The Six Million Dollar Man” Guest Stars
–OSI Mission Debriefing: Actor Martin E. Brooks (the third to play Dr. Rudy Wells)
Bonus Features
–Reunion Movie: “Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman” (1987)
–Reunion Movie: “Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman” (1989)
–Reunion Movie: “Bionic Ever After?” (1994)
–Syndicated version of the pilot TV movie “The Moon and the Desert” in two parts
–Syndicated version of the second pilot movie, “Wine, Women and War” in two parts
–Syndicated version of the third pilot, “The Solid Gold Kidnapping” in two parts
–TV Goes Bionic: The Origins of The Six Million Dollar Man featurette
–The Bionic Age of TV: The Success of The Six Million Dollar Man featurette
–The Pop Culture Effect featurette
–Bionic Action . . . Figures! featurette
–The Stunts of the Bionic Age featurette
–OSI Mission Debriefing: Lee Majors
–Top Secret: OSI, NASA, and Bionics featurette
–The Reunion Movies: Life after the Series featurette
–Meet the Cast: Lee Majors and Steve Austin
–Meet the Cast: Lindsay Wagner and Jaime Sommers
–Meet the Cast: Richard Anderson and Oscar Goldman
–Meet the Cast: Getting to Know Dr. Rudy Wells
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