ORBzine - Six Million Dollar Man TV Review
[Season 1 !Season 2 !Season 3 !Season 4 !Season 5 !Reunion Movies ]
Recurring Characters:
Also starring:
Pilot Movies 1973 (ABC's Suspense Theater)
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 0, Episode 1]
Shown 7 Mar 1973 The Six Million Dollar Man (90 min) (AKA Cyborg)
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 0, Episode 2]
Shown 20 Oct 1973 Wine, Women and War (90 min)
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 0, Episode 3]
Shown 17 Nov 1973 The Solid Gold Kidnapping (90 min)
1st Season Winter 1974
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is an astronaut who crashed and was rebuilt as a cyborg. The cost to the US Government was six million US dollars, a paltry sum to a modern government, hence the title. The cyborg is used as a Secret Agent by a fictional US government agent, and sent on missions that require his special skills.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 1]
Population: Zero
Shown 18 Jan 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 2]
Survival of the Fittest
Shown 25 Jan 1974
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is playing chauffeur for his boss, Oscar. His super-strength comes in handy when they need to change a car tire but there is no jack available. Unfortunately they are late for their flight, booked on a US military plane.
The good news is they are quickly booked onto a replacement flight, a Trans-pacific Military Charter flight 171 from Honolulu to San Francisco. The bad news is that the man in charge is secretly part of a group of assassins who have been paid to kill Oscar and thus derail some peace talks he was mediating.
The plane with Steve and Oscar, and other passengers including the disguised assassins, crash-lands on a remote desert island. Steve uses his super-strength to gather coconuts. The villains plot to kill Oscar and make it look like an accident.
There are a couple of female military personnel aboard, and both of them have names. Helen ( Laurette Spang ) has a conversation with Nursing Lieutenant Colby about medical supplies, thus ensuring this episode retroactively passes the Bechdel test!
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 3]
Operation Firefly
Shown 1 Feb 1974
Oscar has a new wireless laser cannon, powered by a chemical light system akin to those of the firefly. Unfortunately the scientist who built it has gone missing. Steve gets sent to Spain to find the man's daughter ( Pamela Franklin ). She is a psychic, and uses ESP to trace her father to Florida.
Oscar's secret weapons lab has been bugged by a villain, who turns out to be the representative of a weapons cartel. If the OSI do not buy his merchandise, he can always try selling it abroad.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 4]
Day of the Robot
Shown 8 Feb 1974
A humanoid robot has been built by a team led by a certain East German scientist (Lloyd Bochner - ). Their plan is to infiltrate a US military base and steal the secrets to a new missile guidance system. The audience does not get to see the robot's humanoid face, presumably so there will be suspense until the climax.
Steve plays tennis with his old buddy Fred Sloane (John Saxon - Nightmare on Elm Street ). They both get briefed by Oscar, presumably after getting a much-needed shower. The McGuffin of the week is a missile interception missile that can shoot down incoming short-range missiles with as little as 3 minutes warning. Fred has designed an microwave circuit card as activator of the ignition unit.
The robot does not have much in the way of built-in memory-banks. Instead it relies on a constant radio link to headquarters, where the technicians have the relevant data on a set of tapes. These tapes are reel-to-reel, not even cassettes like the fabled 1960s 8-tracks. Yes, even by the standards of the day this is out-dated technology. The robot's two camera-eyes transmit back HQ, where the villains watch on a bank of three CRT monochrome TV sets. Again, they might have been better off with two colour sets but there must be a limit to the amount of data the robot can transmit. All this begs the question - if they can build a complex radio-controlled TV unit the size of a human, why not just mass-produce it for missiles of their own? After all, their robotics are equal to Steve's 6-million-dollar bionics.
The villains replace Fred with the robot. Soon, Steve starts to get suspicious about his friend - while the villains start to get curious about Steve's bionic powers. While Steve takes his suspicions seriously, the bad guys do not treat Steve with the importance he deserves.
Predictably this leads up to a slo-mo battle between cyborg and robot. Has Steve finally met his match?
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 5]
Little Orphan Airplane
Shown 22 Feb 1974
Greg Morris from the 1960s Mission Impossible show is flying a civilian light aircraft over an African country, Quatarra. He is an Intelligence operative, and his cessna plane has a built-in camera. His mission is to document a military build-up in a hostile country next to a country allied to the USA. Unfortunately, his plane crashes ...
The OSI sends Steve Austin to the allied country, Mogumba. Their base, close to the front line, is attacked by hostiles who have strayed across the border. Steve's pilot is injured, so Steve has to fly himself. He lands behind enemy lines, where he meets some friendly nuns. Unfortunately, he does not speak a word of the local language. However, despite the fact that nobody recognises his face, everyone seems to have heard of Austin the Astronaut since he is famous for walking on the moon.
The local military are on the look-out for the plane and the parachute, both of which were spotted and reported by civilians. Steve must repair the crashed spy-plane, then get the nuns and the injured pilot to safety ASAP.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 6]
Doomsday, and Counting
Shown 1 Mar 1974
The Soviets are decomissioning a military base on an island in the arctic. One cosmonaut, Colonel Zhukov, pulls some strings and tries to get it converted to a space training facility. He wants to train a team of five Soviet cosmonauts and five American astronauts ... for an eventual Mars mission. With the help of his old friend, NASA's Steve Austin, he pitches the idea to the OSI and some Pentagon brass.
The soviet base was part of the early warning radar system, presumably replaced by more recent spy satellites. It has enough living space for 150 humans, and it has its own nuclear reactor. However, it turns out to be on a geological fault line. An earthquake strikes the island, trapping Zhukov's fiance ( Jane Merrow ) in the tunnels. Zhukov and Steve go down to save her.
It turns out that when the base was built, it had a failsafe device installed. A nuclear bomb, controlled by the computer, will go off in the event of a nuclear attack. Unfortunately the computer may interpret the earthquake as an attack ... It would have made more sense for the failsafe to be the first thing dismantled when the base was decomissioned, and that the real danger was the reactor itself. However, this episode was made five years before Three Mile Island (AKA China Syndrome ) and ten years before Chernobyl ...
Oscar stays in the island's command centre to support Steve. The Russian general stays too, in a show of solidarity. Captain Voda (Bruce Glover - Diamonds Are Forever ) lingers briefly, but he is simply there for exposition. His sinister presence is completely under-used.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 7]
Eyewitness to Murder
Shown 8 Mar 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 8]
The Rescue of Athena One
Shown 15 Mar 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 9]
Dr. Wells is Missing
Shown 29 Mar 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 10]
The Last of the Fourth of Julys
Shown 5 Apr 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 11]
Burning Bright
Shown 12 Apr 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 12]
The Coward
Shown 19 Apr 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 1, Episode 13]
Run, Steve, Run
Shown 26 Apr 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 1]
Nuclear Alert
Shown 13 Sep 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 2]
The Pioneers
Shown 20 Sep 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 3]
Pilot Error
Shown 27 Sep 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 4]
The Pal-Mir Escort
Shown 4 Oct 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 5]
The Seven Million Dollar Man
Shown 1 Nov 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 6]
Straight on 'til Morning
Shown 8 Nov 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 7]
The Midas Touch
Shown 15 Nov 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 8]
The Deadly Replay
Shown 22 Nov 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 9]
Act of Piracy
Shown 29 Nov 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 10]
Stranger in Broken Fork
Shown 13 Dec 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 11]
The Peeping Blonde
Shown 20 Dec 1974
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 12]
The Cross-Country Kidnap
Shown 10 Jan 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 13]
Lost Love
Shown 17 Jan 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 14]
The Last Kamikaze
Shown 19 Jan 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 15]
Return of the Robot Maker
Shown 26 Jan 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 16]
Taneha
Shown 2 Feb 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 17]
Look Alike
Shown 23 Feb 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 18]
The E.S.P. Spy
Shown 2 Mar 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 19]
The Bionic Woman (1) @
Shown 16 Mar 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 20]
The Bionic Woman (2) @
Shown 23 Mar 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 21]
Outrage in Balinderry
Shown 20 Apr 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 2, Episode 22]
Steve Austin, Fugitive
Shown 27 Apr 1975
3rd Season 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 1]
The Return of the Bionic Woman (1) @
Shown 14 Sep 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 2]
The Return of the Bionic Woman (2) @
Shown 21 Sep 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 3]
The Price of Liberty
Shown 28 Sep 1975
Six Million Dollar Man, The [Season 3, Episode 4]
Song & Dance Spy
Shown 5 Oct 1975
Reviewed 10th November 2000
The guest-star is Sonny Bono. This must have seemed a lot more impressive when the show was originally made.
Six Million Dollar Man, The [Season 3, Episode 5]
Wolf Boy
Shown 12 Oct 1975
Reviewed 12th November 2000
This is the sequel to a previous episode where Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) encounters a Japanese soldier who did not know that WW2 had ended.
A caucasian boy has been seen running wild in the Asian jungles. Majors and the Jap head into the jungle to find the boy and bring him back to civilisation. The boy has shoulder-length hair and wears a loin cloth, but apart from that there is no physical sign that he was raised by wolves!
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 6]
The Deadly Test
Shown 19 Oct 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 7]
Target in the Sky
Shown 26 Oct 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 8]
One of Our Running Backs is Missing
Shown 2 Nov 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 9]
The Bionic Criminal
Shown 9 Nov 1975
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 10]
The Blue Flash
Shown 16 Nov 1975
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) has a device installed in his hand that gives him a blue flash in his bionic eye when it detects microprocessors. He then goes undercover as a longshoreman (a docker), disguised with an earring and a fake moustache. In other words, this episode is like something copied from a more or less mundane and average cop show.
Of note, at the start of the episode we do not see the villains kill their victim - they drive him away, and later report his demise. What a pathetic piece of anti-violence censorship!
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 11]
The White Lightning War
Shown 23 Nov 1975
Reviewed
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 12]
Divided Loyalty
Shown 30 Nov 1975
Reviewed
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 13]
Clark Templeton O'Flaherty
Shown 14 Dec 1975
Reviewed
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 14]
The Winning Smile
Shown 21 Dec 1975
Reviewed
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 15]
Welcome Home, Jaime (1) X @
Shown 11 Jan 1976
Reviewed
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 16]
Hocus-Pocus
Shown 18 Jan 1976
Reviewed
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 17]
The Secret of Bigfoot (1) @
Shown 1 Feb 1976
Reviewed Sept 2000
This story was written and directed by Kenneth Johnson, creator of V and Alien Nation. In part 1 of this story, Austin helps plant seismic sensors in the Californian mountains. Austin comes face to face with Bigfoot (Andre the Giant - Princess Bride ). It turns out that the creature is not what it appears; it is controlled by shadowy figures in a darkened control room.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 18]
The Secret of Bigfoot (2)
Shown 4 Feb 1976
Reviewed Sept 2000
In the second part of the story, Austin meets Stephanie Powers in a bright blue jumpsuit with plunging neckline and huge flared ankles. Yes, the skintight lycra worn in Buck Rogers and the 25th Century was actually a sartorial improvement!
Ms Powers is an alien scientist - well, she is an ET but she looks human. Not even the plasticine nose that Trek guest-stars have, never mind the lizard make-up they used in V.
This story has some ludicrous pseudo-science and plot holes. Austin runs at high speed, although only one of his legs is bionic. There is an earth tremor, and the roof starts to collapse. Austin holds up the roof, even though only his arm and leg are bionic.
The Aliens' tech is also illogical. They have developed something called a TLC (Time-Line Controller), which allows time to pass very quickly or very slowly. The colonists have been there 250 Earth years, but aged only two years. They will be picked up in three years time - but three Earth years or when they have AGED three years?
Austin's boss discovers that there is going to be a massive earthquake along the West Coast's San Angelo fault. Hmm - the writers chose to use a fictionalised name for the San Andreas? So what do they use to ease the tension in the faultline? Not seawater, not even dynamite - no, they decide to use a 50 megaton nuke!
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 19]
The Golden Pharaoh
Shown 8 Feb 1976
Reviewed
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 20]
Love Song for Tanya @
Shown 15 Feb 1976
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) and Jamie help a wee gymnast girl.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 21]
The Bionic Badge
Shown 22 Feb 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 3, Episode 22]
Big Brother @
Shown 7 Mar 1976
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) takes some time out from his busy life as a USAF test-pilot and Secret Agent man to visit a poor innner-city neighbourhood. He has been called in to help out the Big Brother project, a real-life charity that is well-intentioned and unironically named by someone who never read 1984 . Yes, this is a generic filler episode that could have been made for any TV show of the period. Since Steve is so high-profile as an astronaut that he can give the project lots of publicity, it seems unlikely that he can ever go undercover as a Secret Agent again.
Steve adopts a teenage boy for a week, and takes him to meet Jaime Sommers ( Lindsay Wagner ). Well, Jaime is just hanging out at the boss's office when Steve drops by to sign some reports - presumably ones that he let a minion write for him. Maybe Steve has also delegated his sex life to the minion, which would explain why he and his fiance Jaime rarely see each other.
Instead of using his superpowers to save the world, Steve just tussles with low-level street thugs in order to show off to the teen boy.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 1]
The Return of Bigfoot (1) X @
Shown 19 Sep 1976
Reviewed Fourth Week, September 2000
Like the original Bigfoot episodes, this was written by Kenneth Johnston. Although Colonel Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is the star of the show, he is only a guest-star in the second episode! The reason is, it was a cross-over with Bionic Woman .
In the first episode, Austin has another encounter with the Sasquatch robot - this time it looks more like Richard Kiel than Andre the Giant. He was actually played here by Addams Family TV actor Ted Cassidy. The robot is now working for Colony rebels, led by John Saxon ( Planet Earth ). The nuclear power pack in Austin's legs bursts and he starts to die of radiation poisoning.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 2]
Nightmare in the Sky
Shown 26 Sep 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 3]
Double Trouble
Shown 3 Oct 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 4]
The Most Dangerous Enemy
Shown 17 Oct 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 5]
H+2+O = Death
Shown 24 Oct 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 6]
Kill Oscar (2) X @
Shown 31 Oct 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 7]
The Bionic Boy +
Shown 7 Nov 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 8]
Vulture of the Andes
Shown 21 Nov 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 9]
The Thunderbird Conection +
Shown 28 Nov 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 10]
A Bionic Christmas Carol
Shown 12 Dec 1976
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 11]
Task Force
Shown 19 Dec 1976
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) goes undercover, joining a team of military wash-outs who have been hired as mercenaries. The boss, Dave Harraway (Alex Cord - Genesis II ), thinks he recognises Austin from somewhere. Is it because Austin is a world-famous astronaut who is recognised fron the inner city to East Germany? No, it is because Austin was an officer at Harraway's court martial. What a coincidence!
Steve's handler, a veteran field agent, has been hospitalised off-screen. As a result, Steve's only contact with the OSI is a desk agent (well, a secretary) named Peggy Callahan ( Jennifer Darling ). She actually does a good job, considering. This kind of role is prevalent in the series because of the James Bond franchise. The only difference is that Bond girls are sexualised while in this family-friendly TV show the relationships are platonic. Although she gets a love interest in the local Sheriff, Steve prefers to have a bromance with one of the male mercenaries.
The mercenaries target is a new rocket, the Hornet. Oscar describes it as a guided missile, but it is the size of a Scud and not a bazooka.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 12]
The Ultimate Imposter
Shown 2 Jan 1977
Reviewed 25th November 2023
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) gets a behind-the-scenes tour of the OSI lab, and discovers that he is not the only scifi project that Dr Rudi Wells is working on. This is basically a back-door pilot episode for a new show that was never taken up, so Steve only pops up again briefly in the closing scene.
Joe (Stephen Macht - Galaxina ) is a volunteer who has received brain implants that will hopefully allow him to get info directly uploaded from reel-to-reel tapes via a 1970s room-sized supercomputer. The experiment is to upload the first chapter of the book of Genesis - about five kilobytes of information - in forty-four seconds. Well, that might be slightly faster than reading it, and more certain than trying to memorise it the old-fashioned way, but it does not sound great by twenty-first century standards. Something goes wrong, making the info transfer successful by altering his brain into the state that normal brains have during deep sleep. In other words, it would probably be easier just to use the learn-while-you-sleep audio tapes.
Joe's love interest, Jenny ( Pamela Hensley ), is one of Oscar's secret agents. She goes missing while on a mission undercover in the South American compound of a villain who is suspected of stealing printing plates from the US Treasury. The OSI is clearly doing what a CIA/Secret Service task force should be doing. Joe agrees to go undercover on a one-time basis.
It turns out that the villain is married, so Jenny's job in his compound is not to pose as one of the usual flock of poolside bikini bimbos. Instead she is a companion to the villain's tweenage daughter ( Kim Basinger ). Unfortunately they do not share any scenes, and this episode does not pass the Bechdel test.
Joe successfully memorises everything he needs to pass as a chemistry expert, and to escape from a high-security lockup. All useful stuff that would work in a TV show. In fact, the idea was used a couple of decades later in The Pretender (1996) . So what happened when the 1970s version was not taken up? Hensley went on to become best-known as a recurring guest-star in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century , a scifi show about a US astronaut who becomes a secret agent. Yes, not entirely unlike this show - but Buck has a robot sidekick instead of cyborg implants. Another guest-star in that show was Dorothy Stratten , who starred as the title character in the scifi movie Galaxina ... opposite Stephen Macht!
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 13]
Death Probe (1)
Shown 9 Jan 1977
Reviewed 25th November 2023
A UFO is detected landing somewhere in rural Wyoming, USA. A group of Russian spies go there to investigate, using fake OSI credentials. Oscar and Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) go along to investigate the UFO too, but spend most of their time hunting down the Russians.
One of the Russians is a female scientist who worked with Steve in a previous episode. She designed an indestructible robotic exploration vehicle that can withstand the inhospitable conditions on the surface of Venus.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 14]
Death Probe (2)
Shown 16 Jan 1977
Reviewed 25th November 2023
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) comes up against the Death Probe, a car-sized robot probe thing. His arm is damaged, and the US Army Medic (John de Lancie - Star Trek: TNG ) faints when he sees that the limb is robotic. The good news is that with this injury, Steve is weakened and must do everything one-handed. Since this adds a certain amount of suspense and jeopardy, it is certainly improved storytelling for a show about a two-dimensional character.
The Russian commander has a special weapon, a shoulder-fired anti-tank guided missile. He works hand-in-glove with the Americans to stop the probe, but Oscar still has him arrested for espionage. Since the legal definition of espionage is the theft of military secrets, and the Russian spies have not done that in this storyline, it all seems a bit contrived. The chances are that the KGB will just arrest a few US citizens, such as journalists and businessmen, and exchange them for the Russian operatives in US custody.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 15]
Danny's Inferno
Shown 23 Jan 1977
Reviewed 25th November 2023
Danny is a fourteen-year-old boy who experiments with chemistry in his back yard. He accidentally invents a super-fuel, but he does not document his experiments properly so he does not know for certain how he did it. Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) quickly wins the boy's trust, since Danny recognises him as a world-famous astronaut.
Some villainous businessmen want the fuel's formula so they can privatise and monetise it. They use a canister of the fuel as a bomb, and threaten to destroy Los Angeles unless the Government hands over Danny so they can make him show them how to make more.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 16]
Fires of Hell
Shown 30 Jan 1977
Reviewed 2nd December 2023
The OSI has sponsored an experimental new method of oil drilling that will allow them to exploit depleted oil wells. Well, this was written in the 1970s when the Oil Crisis was still fresh in peoples' minds. Perhaps instead of inventing Fracking the OSI should have invented a renewable energy source.
Oscar thinks saboteurs are attacking the oil well. Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) goes in undercover, and meets a couple of locals. Allison ( Heather Menzies ) leads a group known as SLAG - Save Lungs from Awful Gunk. As the local environmentalist group's leader, she is the obvious patsy for the saboteurs. Sheriff Buck (Bruce Glover - Diamonds Are Forever ) is on the payroll of the local politician.
The villains want to stop the oil drilling so they can exploit the land for mining uranium. Since this is before Three mile Island, which was contemporary to China Syndrome , the audience do not know how dangerous nuclear power could be. However, it must be obvious that a massive open-cast uranium mine would also be damaging to the local area. The town's bartender says the local environment is uninhabitable scrubland, and this view is never challenged by the other characters. However, the emphasis on economic development to save a ghost-town at the cost of untrampled nature is a bit questionable.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 17]
The Infiltrators
Shown 6 Feb 1977
Reviewed 2nd December 2023
Foreign athletes have over-stayed their visas and stayed illegally in the USA. This is not just an immigrants-are-bad story. They may be a team of assassins planning to attack the forthcoming US-China trade negotiations.
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) and Rudy nobble the US boxing champion with a set of rigged weights. As always, the show emphasises Steve's superhuman strength without mentioning that his elbow-joint is bionic but his shoulder would be easily dislocated under such physical stress.
Steve gets introduced to Boris Redsky, the boxing contest's organiser and the main suspect. The obvious target is Lena Bannister ( Yvonne Craig ), Redsky's assistant, who seems a lot smarter than all the men. After all, the actress used to play Batgirl!
The villains are onto Steve almost immediately, just like in the previous episode. They have a slightly different strategy, however. This time they go for the barroom brawl first, then try to arrange a workplace accident for him later.
Steve gets a few clues about the villains' target, and reports them back to Oscar - who in turn has them run through the computer for a match. This leads to a nail-biting race against time as the massive 1970s computer desperately tries to conduct a simple database search function. Their computer monitor has a sound effect like a dot-matrix printer.
Steve gets abducted, but escapes in the manner of The Incredible Hulk . Despite the villains' well-orchestrated heist plan, defeating hi-tech 1970s security measures, we all know they never have a chance.
The McGuffin is an experimental fuel cell for the US Space program. Well, the Soviet space program produced the Death Probe so no wonder they are looking for an upgrade.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 18]
Carnival of Spies
Shown 13 Feb 1977
Reviewed 2nd December 2023
Oscar summons Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) to meet an East German scientist (Lloyd Bochner - ). This is the man responsible for designing the East German air-defence network. The first time he has been allowed west of the Iron Curtain, he gave Oscar at the OSI a list of sites he wants to visit and celebrities he wants to meet. Top of the list is US astronaut Steve Austin. Not only were astronauts selected from the top USAF test-pilots, but Austin is the top OSI employee. Is Austin the real target? He must be well-known due to the Death Probe adventure.
The visit has been timed to coincide with test-flights of the new B-1 bomber. Well, there is stock footage of the B-1 in flight so it is obviously not much of a secret in real life.
The scientist fakes a heart attack, and gets swapped out for a ringer. His Stasi handlers smuggle him out to meet with some undercover agents. Steve gives tail, very amateurishly, so his status is clearly due to his superhuman strength rather than any actual skills he might have developed along the way.
The Stasi found a carnival-owner in California who needed a financier. They installed some of their own engineers as carnival staff, and converted the rides into a SAM system. The carousel is a radar system's dish, the centrifuge is a launching arm, and the calypso is a generator.
Steve recruits an ally - a pretty girl, as always, although as always she is not his love interest. She is blonde and, predictably, the villains' token female is a brunette. They do not have a cat-fight but they do have a conversation ... several, in fact, and since one is about the weather this episode turns out to pass the Bechdel test!
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 19]
U-509
Shown 20 Feb 1977
Reviewed 2nd December 2023
A US navy destroyer detects a submarine, the U-509. This is a German sub from the Second World War, somehow refloated and still working despite being obsolete for thirty years - like in Assault on a Queen (1966). The original cargo was nerve gas - well, Sarin was originally discovered in Germany in the mid-1930s. The salvagers threaten to carry out the original mission - killing twenty million people on the cities of the Eastern Seaboard of the US - unless the US government pays a small ransom of twenty million dollars. A bit like in The Rock (1996) , two decades later.
Oscar discovers the head extortionist's file. The man was an Allied submarine commander in the Second World War, and torpedoed four German troop transports off Tunisia. This act, the drowning of fifteen thousand enemy troops, is presented as a bad thing. Of course, the antagonist is British ... the storytellers would not portray an American killing a division's worth of Japanese troops in the same way.
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) SCUBA-dives down to the U-Boat, lets himself in through the airlock, and sneaks around trying to defuse the nerve gas system. Of course, the salvagers only have a five-man crew but they manage to catch him pretty quickly.
Rather than pay a small amount of money, the US Navy sends a destroyer in to sink the u-boat. In real life they would use a hunter-killer submarine and solve the problem with a single torpedo. They only limit it to one destroyer with 1940s depth charges because Oscar begs them to give Steve a chance. Also, it allows them to use stock footage previously used in 1960s war movies.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 20]
The Privacy of the Mind
Shown 27 Feb 1977
Reviewed 4th December 2023
Someone offers to pay the best neuro-physicist in the USA a million dollars for a few days of his time. He reports this approach to the OSI, and Oscar orders Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) to investigate by replacing the scientist and going undercover.
This seems like a recycled script from the TV show that was never picked up, based on the back-door pilot episode Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 12] The Ultimate Imposter. To pose as the scientist, Steve must learn ten years worth of science in only two days. Luckily, his bionic eye seems to help him speed-learn.
The villains want the scientist because of his speciality in brain-computer interaction. Yes, the kind of thing that allows Steve's mind to control his bionic body-parts - and which allows the Ultimate Imposter to speed-learn. The villains have decided to take this to the next level. They have kidnapped a Russian scientist - a beautiful woman, of course - and force the two scientists to work together. The aim is to build a mind-reading machine. Steve objects in principle, because he wants to protect The Privacy of the Mind.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 21]
To Catch the Eagle
Shown 6 Mar 1977
Reviewed 4th December 2023
Marsh (Gerald McRaney - Jericho ) and his partner, a couple of OSI scientists, are prospecting for uranium on a Native American reservation. One of the locals causes a cave-in, trapping the prospectors. Oscar orders Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) to rescue them.
The Native Americans are a 1970s Hollywood idea of what contemporary American Indians would be like. They call themselves Apaches, and obsess over traditional ceremonies such as arm-wrestling. To be allowed onto the Forbidden Lands, Steve Austin must complete grueling tests - like A Man Called Horse, but without the nipple-piercing.
Even without the bionic implants, Steve has a few skills of his own. He boasted a few episodes ago about horse-riding on a ranch in Arizona, so he can rope and ride a horse easily enough. That said, despite his USAF survival training he does not know what a teenage girl knows - never drink from a standing pool of stagnant water.
The Medicine Man wants to keep the OSI off the tribal land. Just like the villains of Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 16] Fires of Hell, the plan is to sell the uranium to the highest bidder. Who on Earth is buying all this uranium, apparently someone who can outbid the US Government, is not named but must be a great villain.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 22]
The Ghostly Teletype
Shown 15 May 1977
Reviewed
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is reading a pile of science reports in the OSI vault. One of the documents is somehow scanned, and the ink is mysteriously removed as the info is transmitted elsewhere. Steve is automatically suspected of espionage, and his status as an agent is temporarily revoked.
Steve goes to visit an old friend of his, a stage magician. Since this episode is a mystery, and most of the problems cannot be solved by Steve's super-strength, the magician actually does most of the work. The result is that this feels like another backdoor pilot.
The antagonists are a pair of twins who have telepathic powers. They can complete the scientist's work in a tenth of the time, but their shortcut means ignoring medical ethics. Their desperation is because they are aging at an accellerated rate, and will die of old age in a few years time.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 1]
Sharks (1)
Shown 11 Sep 1977
The OSI launches a submarine it has borrowed from the US Navy. Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is aboard, overseeing experimental equipment.
Cynthia ( Pamela Hensley ) and her henchman Williams (Marc Alaimo - Star Trek: DS9 ) have arranged for the sub to be sabotaged. When it sinks, they use controlled sharks to scare off the lieutenant (John DeLancie - Star Trek: TNG ) and his team of rescue divers.
Steve gets captured by the villains, which allows them to give him exposition. The original plan was to use the stolen submarine to prove it was possible to train the sharks. However, this changes to straight-up piracy. While this episode does not seem to share the sets with the previous submarine episode, Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 19] U-509, it certainly seems to share a source of inspiration.
Hensley and DeLancie both appeared in different roles in Season 4. Also, although DeLLancie and Alaimo do not share any scenes, this episode teases the posibility of a face-off between Star Trek villains Q and Gul Dukat.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 2]
Sharks (2)
Shown 18 Sep 1977
The US Navy surrounds the sunken submarine, using stock footage of World War Two destroyers. The Admiral wants to use depth charges, but Oscar was an Underwater Demolitions Team member in WW2 and comes up with the idea of using teathered magnetic mines instead. Yes, Oscar successfully check-mates the villains without Steve's help. In fact, the villains only get out of it by making Steve help them. Oscar would have been better off if Steve had not been involved at all.
Parker, the pirates' second-in-command, stages the sudden but inevitable betrayal that was looming since the previous episode. With the sub and its nuclear weapons, which were originally intended just to get attention, he now intends to use to extort the USA. Yes, just like the salvaged U-Boat with nazi nerve-gas aboard ...
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 3]
Deadly Countdown (1)
Shown 25 Sep 1977
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is recruited to pilot a space mission to a military satellite. The passenger will be the upgrade's designer, like Sandra Bullock in Gravity . This time it is a female English scientist, a thirty-year-old child prodigy who entered Oxford at the age of Seventeen. She is Dr Leah Russell ( Jenny Agutter ), played by an actress who was only twenty-five years old in real life. Lee Majors was a decade older than her, but as always on this show their relationship is platonic.
Gordon Shanks (Lloyd Bochner - ) has masterminded an attack on the NASA rocket. He was previously the East German mastermind of a secret test-plane. Presumably that was a completely different villain.
Somehow, Oscar suspects that someone will interfere with the mission. As a pre-emptive counter-measure, he pushes forward the launch date to six days time instead of ten. This means everyone will be rushed off their feet, with extra staff pulled in to fill in extra shifts. In such a busy environment, corners might be cut and mistakes might be made. If Steve Austin was injured or killed, it would clearly look like an accident ...
To delay the launch date, the villains hire a contractor to kill Austin. This contractor has a personal grudge, apparently spending twelve years in prison because Austin caught him selling secret components to foreigners. Clearly there must be terrible security lapses for such a person to get access to the OSI/NASA launch site.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 4]
Deadly Countdown (2)
Shown 2 Oct 1977
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) has to locate the kidnapped girl. Then the launch can go ahead, padded out with lots of stock footage from the 1960s Apollo moon launch program.
The villains plan to reprogramme the flight computer, presumably using the 1970s version of WiFi. If Oscar can locate the source in time, Steve can catch the villains red-handed.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 5]
Bigfoot V
Shown 9 Oct 1977
An attractive female scientist goes looking for Bigfoot. She sets up a radar array, which activates the Sasquatch robot (Ted Cassidy - The Addams Family ) and sends him into a frenzy. Her guide's partner, Geoffrey Lewis ( Out of the Dark (1988) ), decides to hunt and capture Bigfoot himself.
Steve and Rudi go along to investigate, hoping to get to Bigfoot before the girl or the guides. As always, Steve has no romantic intentions for the girl and instead wants to reignite his bromance with Bigfoot.
Rudi's plan is to discover the secrets of the alien technology that runs Bigfoot's bionics. However, all he really discovers is more mysteries. When Steve and Bigfoot fall in a river, the cold water paralyses both their bionics. It then turns out that the alienns had somehow arranged for Bigfoot's bionics to slowly convert into a biological system. Steve and Rudi only have a few hours to return Bigfoot to hibernation so that the process can be completed.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 6]
Killer Wind
Shown 16 Oct 1977
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) and Rudi are flying around in a civilian prop plane when the weather changes and a twister moves in.
A group of armed robbers get caught in the same storm. One of them is left to guard the van.
Steve gets Rudi to safety at a local diner. This episode gets brownie points for diversity: the waitress and her father are African American, while the local doctor is a woman.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 7]
Rollback
Shown 30 Oct 1977
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) goes undercover at a roller derby, a roller-skating game popular in the 1970s. He catches the eye of a corrupt team owner, Hendricks (Robert Loggia - ), who recruits him for a special mission.
In the previous Season, Six Million Dollar Man [Season 4, Episode 17] The Infiltrators saw a team of world-class athletes assembled to break into a secret OSI facility and steal US Government secrets. This time, the robbers are ex-convicts who can roller-skate. Hendricks has them all learn special skills - Steve has to throw darts at a fuse box in order to disable the defence system. Ironically, although Oscar is informed of the gang's skills he does not realise that they are optimised to take out the defences of his own headquarters!
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 8]
Dark Side of the Moon (1)
Shown 6 Nov 1977
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is back in the astronaut game, acting as pilot on a two-man mission to an asteroid. The passenger, a scientist, is prospecting for a rare mineral that will give Earth unlimited energy. Unfortunately the asteroid only has trace elements, which the scientist deems not economically viable.
Once they get back to Earth, it turns out that the lab tech analysing the samples is Steve Austin's girlfriend. There is no Game of Thrones type sexposition, but they are hanging out poolside in swimsuits. She has been selected to join the next space mission, to be on-site during the asteroid mining, so she and Steve can join the thousand-miles-high club.
The scientist hires a replacement pilot, an astronaut who will get a five million dollar backhander if he goes along with the scientist's evil plan. This means as assassin is tasked with getting Steve out of the way. Since it has to look like an accident, he prowls the NASA base sabotaging things - just like in a couple of episodes ago.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 9]
Dark Side of the Moon (2)
Shown 13 Nov 1977
The scientist secretly diverted the mission away from the asteroid, and landed on the dark side of the moon. Their mission is to conduct mining with nuclear bombs. The bad news is that this knocks the moon out of orbit, changing the tides on Earth and creating deadly storms - like the start of Flash Gordon (1980) .
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) arrives on the moon, and gets captured by the villains. His girlfriend is not the damsel in distress - she saves him, and actually uses science to do so. Yes, she is smart as well as beautiful. Looks like Steve will be the first man to get laid on the moon.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 10]
Target: Steve Austin
Shown 27 Nov 1977
The OSI's security has been severely penetrated. Well, this is hardly a surprise. About half the episodes involve a burglary or hijacking that means the villains have inside knowledge about the OSI security setup. This is the first time it is explicitly acknowledged.
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is selected to guard a science project that is being transported to a secret base in Nevada. His assistant is a young woman, a new OSI agent who is an expert in all forms of weapons and violence. To pass as civilians they are posing as a married couple. Despite Steve having a different girlfriend in the previous episode, he is now single and ready to mingle with her as his new love interest.
In the previous Season, the OSI shipment was guarded by a US Army unit and the villains replaced them with mercenaries. Now they use plastic surgery to replace Steve's assistant. Yes, somehow they knew she would be given the job a couple of months in advance. To overcome the security lapses, all Oscar had to do was insert an element of randomness.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 11]
The Cheshire Project
Shown 18 Dec 1977
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) once again has a new girlfriend, Jenny Fraser ( Suzanne Sommers ). She has been selected as test-pilot because she is the smallest, and the plane's cockpit is filled with experimental electronics - an electronic jammer that can render the plane invisible to radar. Once again someone is trying to sabotage the project.
Jenny's plane goes off-radar as arranged ... but never reappears. Steve becomes obsessed with finding out what happened. Everyone assumed the plane crashed or exploded. Nobody realises it must have been an inside job.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 12]
Walk a Deadly Wing
Shown 1 Jan 1978
Oscar has helped a Russian scientist defect. This scientist has developed a less-lethal device intended to incapacitate human targets without killing them. Those nasty Russians weaponised it by using it against aircraft, which would result in crashes and dead pilots. In reality, the US Military intended to use such weapons not to coerce their targets into surrender but to make killing them easier.
The Russian scientist is now working as a barnstormer in a flying circus in Arizona, USA. Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) goes undercover, joining the circus as his wing-walker. Unfortunately a Russian team are after the defector. They have his wife, and offer to swap her for the invention.
To add a bit of jeopardy, Steve's left bionic leg has started to freeze up. Yes, he is a bionic man with a limp.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 13]
Just a Matter of Time
Shown 8 Jan 1978
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) pilots a one-man orbital space-probe, to test a new fuel. Something goes wrong, and he ends up landing on a desert island .. like in Lost . He seems to have been gone for six years. The new OSI Director arrests him on suspicion of treason, and puts him in the custody of a sergeant (John DeLancie - Star Trek: TNG ). Is this a Buck Rogers in the 25th Century situation, or the Beware of the Dog one?
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 14]
Return of the Deathprobe (1)
Shown 22 Jan 1978
Armed men break into a steel mill where the OSI is experimenting with a new alloy. Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is sent undercover as a steel worker, hoping to catch the villains when they return.
The good news is that Steve discovers who the inside man is. The bad news is that the villains abduct the ambassador of a friendly nation, and hold him hostage in exchange for the traitor and the alloy.
The title of the episode gives away the big reveal as to the superweapon the villains are constructing. This version is remote-controlled.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 15]
Return of Death Probe [Part II]
Shown 29 Jan 1978
Shown 5th May 2001 - Saturday
The new Death Probe was built with stolen alloys and Russian plans. This means it has all the strengths of the original, but none of the weaknesses. To stop it are ... Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ), Oscar and two soldiers.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 16]
The Lost Island (Pt 1+2)
Shown 30 Jan 1978
Steve and Rudi join a US Coastguard search of the sea around Hawaii, where yet another OSI satellite has gone off-course. They cannot find it because it landed on a secret island that is shielded from view - like Themyscera in Wonder Woman . The inhabitants are descendents of aliens who crash-landed there - like the Bigfoot aliens who landed in the Rocky mountains.
The satellite's radioactive power source is damaged, and Torg (Jared Martin - War of the Worlds (1988) ) gets mutated by exposure to it. Yes, this episode also steals from that other 1970s superhero show - The Incredible Hulk .
The island community's elders send a beautiful young woman to Hawaii, to obtain an experimental healing serum from Brigham Young University. Why the name-check for the Mormon religion's educational wing? Well, this episode was made in the era when a major TV producer, Glenn A Larson , was also a well-known Mormon. His flagship TV show, Battlestar Galactica (1978) , was heavily influenced by Mormon culture. It seems this episode had similar influences.
In the second half of this two-parter, Steve has followed the young woman back to her island. Unfortunately Torg has started a low-key civil war, seeking to usurp the village elders' rule with his new philosophy of might-makes-right. His followers, exposed to the radiation, are recognisable by their Neanderthal features - bushy eyebrows and pointy ears.
Oscar orders Rudi to give Steve 48 hours to solve the problem. If Steve does not make contact within that time, the US Navy will go in shooting.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 17]
The Madonna Caper
Shown 6 Feb 1978
Reviewed 19th May 2001 - Saturday
Oscar is expecting delivery of a micro-dot that contains the Warsaw Pact missile deployment info. However, the only way it could be smuggled out is if it was painted into a masterpiece that the Russian government loaned to an art gallery in the USA. All this unnecessary effort, for something so small it was deliberately invented so it could be easily smuggled anywhere.
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) teams up with an art-thief babe ( Bibi Besch ) to break into the art gallery. However, once a thief, always a thief. Typically for a moralistic 1970s show, she has a selfless motive.
Steve must recover the stolen painting and return it to the gallery before the Russian Ambassador arrives with his art expert, played by Bruce Glover ( Diamonds are Forever ) - who played a corrupt Sheriff in the previous Season and a Russian Captain in Season One.
The Art gallery, with a massive collection of million-dollar artworks, only has two guards on the night shift. However, the plan relies entirely on one of the guards being fat and lazy.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 18]
Dead Ringer
Shown 13 Feb 1978
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is assigned to look for two Soviet agents who are on the loose in the USA. They are experts in bionics, so they may be targeting him.
Steve is injured in a car accident, and sees a creepy figure that looks just like him. Rudy refers him to a shrink ( Linda Dano ) who believes in the paranormal. Steve does not believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, even though he had a close encounter of the spooky kind in the final episode of the previous Season. However, he humours her as she tries to contact his missing soul. You see, her theory is that Steve's soul left his body during the crash that preceded his bionic upgrades, and would rather kill his body than return to it.
The final act of the story ties up all the plotlines and loose ends. This makes it all seem a bit far-fetched and coincidental. The only thing that really makes sense is Steve's interest in the shrink being more personal than professional.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 19]
Date With Danger (1)
Shown 20 Feb 1978
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) is given exposition by Oscar. Joe Canton, head of Communications at OSI, was caught embezzeling funds from a US defence satellite program. Steve checks the computer mainframe, which has 22 phone line connections to terminals in OSI offices worldwide. Steve discovers a twenty-third one ...
One of the possible leads is Datemate, a computer dating business in the building from Blade Runner . Steve breaks in to confront Emily ( Elaine Giftos ), the computer scientist who runs it. She threatens to hit him with a chair, until she recognises him as a world-famous astronaut.
This is an amazing look back at the world of the 1970s internet, with dial-up modems and command-line interface. Joe Canton gives Steve a typical 1970s copaganda spiel about the potential danger that computers represent.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 20]
Date With Danger (2)
Shown 27 Feb 1978
Steve gets concussed escaping from the hitman. When he gets taken to hospital, the computer messes up his medical records and has him restrained as a psychiatric case. Instead of treating his obvious head injury, they just sedate him. Unfortunately this kind of medical mistreatment happens regularly in the USA ... forty years later.
Steve gets a tip-off about the location of Cloche. However, the tip-off seems to come from the computer itself. After all, someone had it removed from Cloche's office and then deleted all record of the removal.
The computer's modus operandi is simple - fax someone an address and a reason to go there, then have something nasty waiting there. If this sounds familiar, it certainly resembles the X-Files episode written a couple of decades later by William Gibson himself.
In the previous episode, Steve used his bionics for super-fast typing. Now he rewires an electro-mechanical telephone exchange to prevent the computer from jamming the OSI. This gets him the computer's landline phone number, which can be traced to a street address.
Six Million Dollar Man [Season 5, Episode 21]
The Moving Mountain
Shown 6 Mar 1978
Steve is overseeing a NATO experiment to test a robotic Sherman tank. They would have been better off just copying the Death Probe, although this is probably the cheaper option. Unfortunately someone fires a guided missile at the tank, completely destroying it. The missile turns out to be one of six next-generation units somehow stolen from the OSI itself. Instead of just putting it on the back of a truck, the terrorists stole a Russian vehicle from a Soviet client regime and somehow rewired it to be compatible with the OSI missiles.
In a scene reminiscent of Anya Amasova's briefing in The Spy Who Loved Me , a female KGB agent is briefed by her General (John Colicos - Battlestar Galactica (1978) ). Her mission is the same as Anya's - recover the stolen weapon system. Even her backstory is the same - someone close to her was killed on a KGB mission, and she is partnered with the Western agent responsible.
Steve and the Russian woman start a romantic relationship. Evidently his fish-and-chips with Emily in the previous episode did not go according to plan. James Bond would know never to order red wine with fish - after all, white wine is much closer to vinegar.
Oscar is on-site at the NATO base, managing things. Rudi comes along as a technical do-it-all, rather than have a communications specialist or other flunky. This is almost as blatant a cost-saving move as the use of stock footage to represent the NATO military activity.
The terrorists' plan is to destroy a nearby OPEC meeting. Yes, the destruction of the Top Secret NATO robot Sherman was just a test-firing.
Six Million Dollar Man [Spin-off movies, Episode 1]
The Return of The Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman
Shown 17 May 1987
Six Million Dollar Man [Spin-off movies, Episode 2]
Bionic Showdown
Shown 30 Apr 1989
Six Million Dollar Man [Spin-off movies, Episode 3]
Bionic Ever After?
Shown 29 Nov 1994
Steve Austin (Lee Majors - Ash Vs Evil Dead: S2 ) and Jaime have been dating for twenty years. She has finally forced him to make a legal commitment. She is his perfect partner, since she is the only one who can match him physically. However, she starts to have physical problems with her bionic systems. It could be that her body is finally rejecting the implants, although this seems unlikely after two decades. Anyway, she accepts the inevitable and calls off the wedding.
Steve demands a mission to distract himself with. He heads off to the Bahamas, to rescue the hostages from the US embassy which has been taken over by gunmen. His fellow agent Kimberly ( Farah Forke ) comes long to help out.
One might see this as a take on the Die Hard series, but made on a television budget. The villain is a cut-price Hans Gruber rip-off, they have a water tower instead of a series of air ducts.