Bionic Woman

The NYT caught up with Bionic Woman series creator and producer David Eick to talk about the Wednesday premier and the general direction and style of the show.  Most notable to me, and disappointing, is his admission that BW will not be as dark as his other 1970s re-make, BSG.

According to Eick,

“I never thought this series should be as dark as ‘Battlestar’. It would be impossible to maintain the heaviness of the pilot, which is about a girl getting pulverized by a Mack truck, barely surviving and struggling to come to terms with this incredibly traumatic thing. You can’t do that story every week. Sometimes she has to feel that this is exhilarating, sometimes it’s terrifying and sometimes it’s just fun.”

Eick claims to have never seen the original BW and his original concept was to create a woman protagonist supporting her family through criminal means.

“It was about a female tycoon who, in the aftermath of an Enron-like debacle, retreats to her home and to her family, where she eventually launches a crime syndicate out of her kitchen,” he said. “There were all these shows with morally ambiguous male protagonists out there, like ‘The Sopranos’ or ‘House’ or ‘The Shield,’ and it seemed like the female heroes always were painted in primary colors.”

Thankfully, the network didn’t take to this idea.  No doubt his success with BSG led NBC to suggest BW.

Eick also talks about Katee Sackhoff’s character, Sarah Corvus, as the nemeses to Michelle Ryan’s Jaime Sommers.

[Sarah Corvus] has given in to the dark side of having nearly unlimited physical powers, a shadowy reflection of the temptations and dangers that come with Jaime Sommers’s new abilities.“Sarah was a good way of showing this as a cautionary tale,” Mr. Eick said. “And if you look at the storytelling tools of the great science fiction writers, it’s all about be careful what you wish for. H. G. Wells and Ray Bradbury are always talking about that which we create eventually destroying us unless we heed the warnings. And Jaime will have to make moral choices that may or may not move her down the path toward becoming another Sarah.”

And for those of us hoping their may be a Steve Austin in Jaime’s future, alas no.

Because the original series was a spinoff of the 1974 series “The Six Million Dollar Man,” which was based on a 1972 novel called “Cyborg,” there was an elaborate list of what could and could not be used in the new show. Basically, the Jaime Sommers name and the extent of her bionic abilities are the only specifics that can be used. Mr. Eick does not have rights to any mention of “The Six Million Dollar Man” or the title character, Steve Austin. And Jaime Sommers gets her bionic missions not from Oscar Goldman but from Jonas Bledsoe.

Although I have already seen the premier, reading interviews with the creators and cast make me excited for the series to finally premiere.

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