Six Million Dollar Man, The

▪ American television show

      American television show, a science-fiction thriller about a secret agent whose body was equipped with a number of electromechanical aids. The show aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network for five seasons (1974–78).

      In The Six Million Dollar Man, Col. Steve Austin (played by Lee Majors), a test pilot and former astronaut who had been severely injured in a crash, was “rebuilt” by the U.S. government's Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) in an experimental procedure that replaced his legs, right arm, and left eye with cybernetic parts. In exchange for the $6 million operation, Austin became the first of a new “better, stronger, faster” breed of secret agent, capable of running more than 60 miles per hour (100 km per hour), demolishing walls with his fist, and seeing in the dark.

      In addition to Austin, the show's regular cast included Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson), the director of OSI, and Dr. Rudy Wells (Alan Oppenheimer [1974–75] and Martin E. Brooks [1975–78]), who performed the bionic operation. Another recurring character was Jamie Sommers (Lindsay Wagner), Austin's girlfriend, who also suffered a debilitating accident. Like Austin, Sommers was rebuilt by OSI and subsequently repaid the organization by undertaking a variety of covert operations.

      The character Steve Austin first appeared as the protagonist of American author Martin Caidin's science-fiction novel Cyborg (1972), which was adapted the following year as a made-for-television movie (The Six Million Dollar Man), starring Majors in the title role. Two more feature-length sequels (The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine, Women, and War and The Six Million Dollar Man: Solid Gold Kidnapping, both 1973) were made for television, and in 1974 a weekly hour-long drama was born. A spin-off, The Bionic Woman (Bionic Woman, The), debuted in 1976. Both shows went off the air in 1978, but the two eponymous characters reunited for several more made-for-television movies, and in Bionic Ever After? (1994) they were finally married. The concept lived on in films that featured such characters as Robocop and the Terminator.

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