Yeah, I recognized him from Firefly. But I missed the part about him being the dad, I wondered why they had him all olded up. I also missed the accent. le sigh
I give it a “meh” too, maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention but wasn’t the explanation for her bionic parts actually that she had nanites implanted, but they called them anthracites or something like that? Or were the nanites just to help with the healing and help her body cope with the bionic parts.
In the middle of a big fight scene between the protagonist and the lady from BSG:
Protagonist: How am I doing now?
Lady from BSG: Not bad. Not bad at all.
The show is… not good.
-FrL-
Ah. the Bamber/Sackhoff thing was my mistake. I grabbed a name from BSG quickly because I was leaving the house and wanted to get my thoughts down.
I concur that it simply as compelling as it could have been, and not enough stress was placed on the protagonist’s issues with being whatever she is. The actor is Ok, in my estimation, but just not strong enough.
But, yeah. Yay for the villain.
BAD GUYS RULE!!!
How does having “top clearance” let you order an instant $50 million worth of surgery? This isn’t like going into the office to borrow a projector for your movie night. The pace of Summers getting her prosthetics is all wrong. In the span of a faux ski weekend, she gets her midichlorians and is running at highway speed? What the hell…? At least wait a few weeks to make sure she survives the car “accident” without internal organ or brain damage. Martin Caidin’s novel Cyborg was pretty clear on this - Steve Austin spent months in hospital after his crash and months learning to adapt to his new limbs, running a conventional mental cycle with bouts of depression and a suicide attempt. If the surgery is so ridiculously easy that we can pull someone out of a car wreck and patch them up in a few days, why aren’t members of the super-secret Femme Nikita-ish spy organization volunteering for it?
Remember that show Now and Again where Joe Schlub gets hit by a subway and has his brain covertly transplanted into an superpowerful android body by a shadowy government agency with apparently no congressional oversight? Same thing, only they’re trying to make Bionic Woman even darker and mysterious and even more divorced from hard fiction. The sister is forbidden by “court order” to use a computer with an Internet connection? No doubt she has mad hacker skillz, to come into implausible play sooner or later, like hacking into spy satellites that can read the washing instructions on the clothing labels of terrorists, once you hit the “enhance” button.
The fight scenes are too rapid-fire to make clear what the hell is going on. Robo-Starbuck noted that Summers had one normal arm. Didn’t that arm get broken during the fight? For that matter, wouldn’t pre-programmed combat skills that weren’t customized for a fighter with one normal arm be a huge liability?
I’ll watch one or two more episodes, but I’m not hopeful. I can’t even tell if a bionic German shepherd will help or hurt at this early stage.
I was disappointed. Instead of remotely plausible bionic limbs, they went with the Jake 2.0 nanotechnology (e.g. magic). No trauma, no agonizing therapy while she learns to use her new limbs, as far as I can tell, not even any downside to the experience. Three days after the accident, she’s all back to normal except for the glowy legs. In other words, they removed everything that was cool about the Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman – the fact that they were terribly damaged people but were restored by cutting edge, but not impossible technology. Instead, you’ve ended up with a magic, pouty dark-haired ass-kicker – Dark Angel with even worse acting.
Might have worked if the acting and writing were better and they took themselves a bit less seriously (frankly, I thought Jake 2.0 wasn’t all that bad, particularly compared to this.) But they have to throw in every cliche in the book, including the secret government organization with the big bat cave with the elevator in the middle.
I give it half a season before it’s cancelled.
Wasn’t this the fight scene where the original BW called “timeout” and smoked a cigarette?
The guy in jail was supposed to be the boyfriend’s dad? Somehow I missed that. Whatever, one of the few things this show has going for it is that many of the supporting actors have bionic hotness.
I know the show has undergone massive retooling, even since the pilot was so drastically altered. NBC put a lot of money and promotion into the show, and they know it’s bad, so they really want it to get better. At least one of the original producers was replaced, there was some turnover in the writing staff, and they are trying to keep Katee Sackhoff around more. If the show gets picked up for a second season, she will be done with Battlestar Galactica, so they want to make her a series regular.
I say they should kill off their current lead and make it the show all about Sackhoff, Miguel Ferrer, and Mark Sheppard driving around in a van being awesome and kicking ass. That’s a show I would watch five nights a week.
If the legs are robotic she wouldn’t need to pump oxygen to them.
What bugged me about that was that Jamie’s BF was supposed to be 39 years old (they said it when the ambulance picked him up). How the hell was Badger old enough to be his father? Unless there’s a plot point there and Badger knows something about delayed aging?
I’ll Be Back…
…with your dessert
I was assuming that all the bionic add-ons were tied in to her physiology. Perhaps that was a bad assumption.
How do you suppose the integration between bionics and normal systems was achieved? Are the legs just sort of glued on? Is there no physiological relationship between the two? I’m not trying to be a smartass. I just don’t understand.
What powers the legs, for example? Can they literally run forever, regardless of whether she replenishes her energy supplies?
I was very disappointed with the show. The ads were misleading, the acting was (mostly) bad, and the show never really sold me on the whole premise…like others have said, the whole thing was just too easy. If they had showed some difficult rehab or some training, I might have bought into it a little more than I did. I don’t think I will be watching this again.
Holy Crap! thanks for that, JThunder that little half-remembered tidbit has been running through my brain for weeks.
Thanks for the blast from the past!
He was a really randy 4 year old?
With bionic sperm, no less.
Also holy crap! I haevn’t thought about that in years. My brother had one, along with a bunch of other Adventure team stuff I inherited when he outgrew them. The Atomic Man had a weird bionic kung fu grip hand that rotated 360 degrees, and you could spin the little wheel in his arm to make him spin his hand held helicopter rotors to fly…until his wrist got tired and started flopping around. The rotating hand seemd weird to me even then.
This very issue was addressed in the Vegetable Documentary Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, the Android Anti-Tomato soldier was only given one bionic leg, he could run very fast in circles (actually pivot around his bio-leg) and jump really well in one direction, off to the side…
As the implants were coming online, most of it was generic “audio lock, visual lock” etc. When she was speaking with Sarah Corvus in the bar the first time it flashed “lock” in red. Then in the alley when the conveniently ever-present male mugger ready to molest any lone female he can find started walking towards her, the readout said “weapons (something) threat” and as he got closer and pulled out his knife the readout changed to “weapons threat 100%.” Then she kicked the conveniently ever-present male mugger ready to molest any lone female he can find’s ass.
Anyhoo, I liked it. It’s a re-imagining like BSG, so you have to chuck any sentimental loyalty you had for the original.
I preferred deaf younger sister to the new pissed off hacker grrl little sister, but I suppose her mad hacker skills will come in handy later in the season.
One scene I was hoping they’d delete was the one with the little girl and her mom driving down the highway with Jamie running at bionic speeds along side. Little girl: “I just thought it was cool a girl could do that.” :rolleyes: Look, she’s bionic. It’s fake. Wanna inspire girls? Make them scientists. Sheesh. You think boys can run 50 MPH through the forest, little girl?
I have to agree I’m a bit disappointed with the actress playing Jamie. Kinda generically good looking; there’s nothing really unique about her.
Katee Sackhoff as Sarah Corvus on the other hand, stole the show for me. As far as I’m concerned right now, it’s all about her.
Me: “Oh, here comes the Superman moment. ‘Mommy, that lady is running faster than the car!’ ‘Haven’t I told you to stop telling lies?’”
Kid: “Mommy, that lady is running faster than the car!” Mom: “What did I tell you about making stuff up?”
Yeah, man. Plus, welcome to the twentieth century. (Yes, I meant twentieth.)