It’s the first one I remember doing that. They started with showing sped up motion but apparently felt slow was the new fast.
Was $6 million a lot for a defense contract back then? It seems comically low now, like you couldn’t get Lockheed to redo your kitchen for less than $10 million.
I recently watched one of the early episodes that was playing on some free TV service and it was pretty bad. So much television back then was just terribly written and acted. I loved it as a kid, though – I had the Steve Austin doll action figure, with the eye you could look through, the button in the back to lift up his arm, and the cool, peel away skin so you could see his bionics. I remember picking up my sneaker with his bionic arm, using that button in the back.
I remember my 10-year-old self thinking the SMDM action figure was the greatest Christmas present ever. The fake skin patch on the arm could be removed to reveal bionics. The hole in the back of the head that let you look through his bionic magnifying eye!
I think he had peel-away skin on his leg, too.
I had that action figure too, and also his rocket ship. The neighbor kid had “Maskatron,” Steve’s evil robot duplicate!
The slow motion was used, as others have said, because they tried speeding up the footage and it looked ridiculous.
But the slow motion had another advantage. It, along with the tttt-tttt-tttt, nuhh-nuhh-nuhh sound effects, was easily imitated by kids who were pretending to be the Six Million Dollar Man. The fact that I could “duplicate” his superhuman feats in my backyard made it so much cooler to ten-year-old me.
I suspect it was a technique borrowed from Kung Fu movies, but Six Million Dollar Man is the first I remember it being used for running.
And, yeah, there were different sound effects for different action so
I like to imagine what 6MDM would be like if Steve Austin had only lost one leg…
Running in circles. Really fast.
Did anyone else ever find themselves thinking, “In order to do that with his bionic arm, he really needs to have a bionic spine!”
I saw this on the show Kung Fu for fighting action, never any running that I recall. Not sure if it was used in any movies prior to that. I don’t know if they used it in the first season or the pilot movie of Kung Fu either, but I think it would have preceded the $6 Million Guy if it did.
Not every epiode, but it changed many times. I remember 2 or 3 episodes where Steve’s disembodied head rose from the wreckage. (not as gross as it sounds!)
From memory, the opening;
Looking good at NASA One.
Roger.
We have separation.
Gotta blowout, pamper 3.
Get your pitch to zero.
Pitch is out I can’t hold altitude.
Direction alpha holders on, prep selectors emergency
Flight com I can’t hold it she’s breaking up she’s breaking…
I find it interesting that the footage is of a real crash. And the pilot walked away uninjured.
Or…did he??
Sado-masochistic dominance man?
Not at the time, but when I got into college studying engineering. His bionics would just rip themselves loose from his torso.
I remember one where Steve pulled a helicopter down using bionics. In real life, he’s just do a fast one armed pullup.
I wanted this post separate, because it had a more serious thought.
What if…the 6MDM was real, in 1976. He was only secret because it was new technology. Cutting edge. Eventually, bionic replacement limbs would be available for anyone. (without super strength of course.)
So all those gulf war vets with missing limbs would be back to their old selves (not better. stronger. faster)
This should have been the ultimate goal of the bionics program. Which is why you can’t have a modern update of the show, because the world would have diverged massivly between then and now.
From the show’s Wiki page:
The crash footage during the opening credits is from the M2-F2 crash that occurred on May 10, 1967. Test pilot Bruce Peterson’s lifting body aircraft hit the ground at approximately 250 mph (402 km/h) and tumbled six times,[4] but survived what appeared to be a fatal accident, though he later lost an eye due to infection.
Ah, the blissful innocence of youth. I was a little older when the show came out, maybe 10, and I freakin’ loved it.
When I’ve tried to nostalgia-watch as an adult, all I can think is “how come, when he jumps to the ground from a great height, his bionic legs aren’t violently driven upward into his meaty human torso? Or when he lifts something heavy like a car with his bionic arm, how come it doesn’t rip from his shoulder?”
That should be damper 3. He wasn’t announcing a problem with his astronaut diapers.
That said, I’m not too proud to admit that, as an adult, I’ve used “blowout, damper three” to describe intestinal distress to my wife.
Over 45 years later and it still sounds like “pamper” to me. 
We had a cheap tv. (B&W no less! Didn’t get channels higher than 13)
I looked it up. Ashamed I forgot “coming forward with the sidestick”. I always liked that one. Used to have the whole thing memorized (why? Why not!)
Circuit breakers in! Roger!
Me too.
What really freaked me out was, a few years ago, I was channel surfing, and came across a movie with Lee Majors as a pilot, and the shots I was watching were clearly the shots of LM in his flight helmet and suit from 6MDM. I was freaking out trying to figure out what I was watching, and it was this. They re-used a few shots for the opening credits of the 6MDM.
Surgeon: “But, Mr. Goldman, the left leg is uninjured…”
Oscar: "You heard me! Off with them both! And while you’re at it, pluck out an eye…”
Bro should’ve read the release before he signed it (with his remaining arm)