We have the technology...

Last night before bed I watched episode two of the Bionic Woman. It’s hard to tell at this stage if it’s actually going to go anywhere, so I shall give it the benefit of the doubt for a couple more episodes.

Being a “re-imagining” by the same people who brought us the revamped Battlestar Galactica¹, I am prepared to give it a chance, but I have to say that it doesn’t immediately grab the attention as BSG did. Michelle Ryan continues to hold the title part together well; I’m not worried about the ability of the cast, Miguel Ferrer plays the standard gruff boss acceptably enough (though I keep unconsciously comparing him with his RoboCop days). I do find myself wondering, however, how long it will take for the plot arc to surface properly and if it will be worth the effort when it does. There is only so much mileage in having Katee Sackoff’s Sarah Crovinus² (the prototype and now rogue bionic woman, played rather psychotically and not entirely unlike her performance as Starbuck) as the background baddie.

Of course, there is also the inventor of bionics who seems also to be a baddy on the run for reasons not yet explained…

The re-imagining hasn’t addressed much of the improbable physics that the original series displayed, though the bionics are not now bolt-ons, but limbs artificially grown on a synthetic frame with microchips here and there. I suppose that goes part of the way to explaining why the arm doesn’t drop off at the shoulder when she picks up something very heavy (something that troubled me even as a spotty teenager lusting after Lindsay Wagner) and some of the terminology could have been better thought through. I mean, it’s one thing giving the inventor of bionics the surname “Anthros”, quite another naming the little (presumably “nanites”) machines he invented to sit inside the bloodstream and repair it and the bionics “anthrosites”.

To my mind this is an opportunity lost. It sounds much too much like anthracite: we could have had a steam-powered heroine who had to stop from time to time to chow down on coal to keep her bionic boilers going.

I think that would make for a proper “re-imagining”.

And where have the bionic sound effects gone? They were great.


¹Which I notice was playing on the TV of the deserted house Jaime was investigating. I suppose they don’t have to pay anything if they already own both series.

²That character name rings a bell from somewhere. It seems very familiar to me.

We have the technology...

Last night before bed I watched episode two of the Bionic Woman. It’s hard to tell at this stage if it’s actually going to go anywhere, so I shall give it the benefit of the doubt for a couple more episodes.

Being a “re-imagining” by the same people who brought us the revamped Battlestar Galactica¹, I am prepared to give it a chance, but I have to say that it doesn’t immediately grab the attention as BSG did. Michelle Ryan continues to hold the title part together well; I’m not worried about the ability of the cast, Miguel Ferrer plays the standard gruff boss acceptably enough (though I keep unconsciously comparing him with his RoboCop days). I do find myself wondering, however, how long it will take for the plot arc to surface properly and if it will be worth the effort when it does. There is only so much mileage in having Katee Sackoff’s Sarah Crovinus² (the prototype and now rogue bionic woman, played rather psychotically and not entirely unlike her performance as Starbuck) as the background baddie.

Of course, there is also the inventor of bionics who seems also to be a baddy on the run for reasons not yet explained…

The re-imagining hasn’t addressed much of the improbable physics that the original series displayed, though the bionics are not now bolt-ons, but limbs artificially grown on a synthetic frame with microchips here and there. I suppose that goes part of the way to explaining why the arm doesn’t drop off at the shoulder when she picks up something very heavy (something that troubled me even as a spotty teenager lusting after Lindsay Wagner) and some of the terminology could have been better thought through. I mean, it’s one thing giving the inventor of bionics the surname “Anthros”, quite another naming the little (presumably “nanites”) machines he invented to sit inside the bloodstream and repair it and the bionics “anthrosites”.

To my mind this is an opportunity lost. It sounds much too much like anthracite: we could have had a steam-powered heroine who had to stop from time to time to chow down on coal to keep her bionic boilers going.

I think that would make for a proper “re-imagining”.

And where have the bionic sound effects gone? They were great.


¹Which I notice was playing on the TV of the deserted house Jaime was investigating. I suppose they don’t have to pay anything if they already own both series.

²That character name rings a bell from somewhere. It seems very familiar to me.