THE THREE "SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN" PILOTS (1973)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Back in the day, when watching the TV-film THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, I remember mildly liking it, but I never would have predicted that it would spawn a pop-culture icon. 

The origin of America's cyborg with the sunny disposition doesn't start out as blissfully cheery as the episodes of the ongoing teleseries. I have not read the best-selling Martin Caidin source novel, but I would imagine the first pilot follows the book in depicting the plight of civilian astronaut Steve Austin. He's nationally known for being one of the men who walked on the moon, but he's something of a "bad boy," seen first keeping the army brass waiting for his arrival. As many people know from the oft repeated opening of the TV show, Austin is injured while testing an experimental craft, so that he loses an arm, an eye and both legs. His attending doctor Rudy Wells (Martin Balsam) has researched the concepts of bionics for just such an emergency, but it's an expensive operation. Enter Oliver Spencer (Darren McGavin), head of a covert American spy agency. On behalf of the government Spencer gives Wells the authority to rebuild Austin into a six million dollar cyborg-- all, notably, without any consent by the patient.

Austin isn't particularly pleased with the fait accompli, and I assume the script takes away his power to choose to simplify getting from point A to point B. Then, even though Austin didn't make a deal with the devils of the government, Spenser still plays Mephistopheles, coaxing Austin into becoming America's first cyborg agent. After a short period of initial resistance by Austin-- in which he has no visitors from his civilian life, only a hospital nurse who becomes his new girlfriend (Barbara Anderson)-- Austin finally consents. The broad implication is that once he's been given great power, Austin is too much a nature's nobleman not to use the power for good. It's a pretty simple mission-- that of liberating an Arab leader from a desert prison-- given that most of the movie's running time has been used for the origin. The first pilot ends with the implication that Austin will have other adventures, with his nurse-girlfriend at his side.

Not surprisingly, by the second pilot film, the nurse is gone, since she would have cramped Austin's style as he was re-molded into something of a low-rent James Bond. Not only does the hero-- now an Air Force colonel-- get to romance two sultry sirens, played by Britt Ekland and Michele Carey, he faces off against his first formidable opponent. Arms dealer Arlen Findletter (Eric Braeden), despite a risible name, shows great skill at stealing American ordnance for sale to hostile countries. Though the villain's good, the action's less than impressive here. The most interesting thing about the second pilot, winsomely entitled "Wine, Women and War," is that Oliver Spencer is gone, replaced by the more avuncular figure of Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson). Austin is still semi-rebellious against the agency's authority but they don't give him really serious reason to rebel.

The third and last pilot film, "The Solid Gold Kidnapping," still uses the bouncy Bondian theme song from the second pilot. However, though the action scenes are somewhat better than in the last outing, "Gold" plays down Austin's romantic encounters. The hero's opponent this time is a criminal organization that specializes in kidnapping, and Austin gets on the organization's bad side when he liberates one of their prisoners. The villains themselves are very colorless-- the leader (Maurice Evans) doesn't even have a given name-- but there are numerous familiar actors here, including Leif Erickson, John Vernon, and Luciana Paluzzi.

This final pilot is also the first time Austin is teamed with an ally who follows him into the field: Erica Bergner (Elizabeth Ashley). The agency appeals to Bergner to help them find the cabal's location by accessing the memory of a dead kidnapper, and Bergner can only do this by injecting DNA from the dead man into her own brain. Thus there's some suspense as to whether Bergner is going to lose her mind in her attempt to access the dead man's memories.

There's one decent dramatic interlude in which Austin makes clear that he doesn't really like Bergner tinkering with the human body, since a part of him still resents being turned into an experiment. But this momentary conflict is quickly forgotten when Austin finds the cabal's hideout and liberates yet another of their victims. The ending is anti-climactic, though, since it calls upon Austin to attack the elderly Evans' character before making the escape.

On the whole, I think this concept succeeded not because of the quality of the pilots, but through appealing to the American audience's desire to believe that "their boys" were doing the right thing when they went to other countries on missions of espionage. That's why the Faustian aspect of the setup falls away, and the American government becomes "God" more than "Devil," resurrecting a fallen hero so that he can go on to greater glories.