Ep35—To Build a Six Million Dollar Man

Seen on the Small Screen Podcast

Steve Austin.
Astronaut.
A Man Barely Alive...
So it begins...one of the most iconic television series of the 1970s. The only irony is these opening lines are nowhere to be found in the pilot episode, The Six Million Dollar Man, today's offering by bionic lovers Becky, Jake, and Sammy, the "laser-eye" kitty. When test pilot and all-around good guy Steve Austin runs into a mishap while flying an experimental craft for NASA, he finds himself in rough shape. Enter Dr. Rudy Wells with an idea and Mr. Oliver Spenser, a representative from government with six-million buckaroos to burn. Combine the two and we get Steve Austin repaired and back on his feet, breaking all sorts of treadmill records as the world's first bionic man. But what's the price tag? It's Steve being dropped into the middle of a desert crawling with terrorists and nothing but the will to survive when everyone wants him dead, including his boss...Mr. Spenser? Yep, 'fraid so. Can the newly commissioned bionic man overcome the depression of being different from the rest of humanity? What could Sammy the cat's meows and rubbing of the mic stand mean in regard to this television classic? And could a crossover with The Six Million Dollar Man and Stephen King's The Shining be the very idea Hollywood needs to jumpstart another golden age of cinema?