YMMV / The Six Million Dollar Man

• Adaptation Displacement: Most people have never even heard of the "Cyborg" novel, or the fact Caidin wrote three sequels, none of which had any connection with the TV series.
  • And those who did read the novels after only being familiar with the series were often surprised at how violent Caidin's version of Steve Austin was. For example, his bionic arm was often referred to as a deadly bludgeon. And there was a poison dart gun in his bionic fingertip.
  • Also in the novels, Steve's artificial eye was merely a camera. Steve couldn't actually use it to see anything. Oscar Goldman even commented, "Only God can restore lost sight."
  • Aside from the dart gun, there were additional differences in Austin's bionics; he had a radio antenna built into a rib, a secret compartment for gear in one of his legs, a steel-reinforced skull, and in the novels Austin's bionic arm was his left. Also, while on TV the term "bionic" was used in the singular, as in "bionic arm", Caidin's books used the awkward (but more grammatically correct) plural form, so "bionics arm".
  • With the exception of of the eye being just a camera, the novelizations of various episodes that were published incorporated the Martin Caidin version of the character, resulting in stories that were more violent than their TV counterparts. A notable example is "Love Song for Tanya" which ends with the villain being apprehended on TV, but in the novel, Steve uses the poison dart gun in his arm to kill the man.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Based upon the manipulation shown by Oliver Spencer, the Oscar Goldman stand-in featured in the original pilot film, it is possible to surmise that Austin's crash was orchestrated by Spencer, given the implication that it occurs more or less at the same time he is seen pitching the bionics project to his superiors, and the incredible coincidence that Austin's personal physician and best friend just happens to also be the inventor of bionics.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Ever since the debut episode "Secret of Bigfoot", the bionic Sasquatch proved wildly popular. Often getting toys and merchandise alongside Jamie and Steve, it's little wonder the character was brought back several times in later seasons.
• Fridge Logic: Backstories for Steve or Jamie commonly proclaim that bionic implantation "saved their lives", yet none of their physically-enhanced body parts (limbs, eye, ear) are crucial to sustaining life.
  • However, after the transplants, many episodes depict how damage to bionic limbs can be life-threatening to Steve and Jamie.
  • In the novel Cyborg on which the TV series was based, Steve Austin not only lost 3 of his limbs and an eye in the crash, his heart was also badly damaged. His life was saved by a bionic heart valve. His skull was also crushed, requiring a large portion of it to be replaced. This too could have led to fatal consequences.
  • They could be speaking metaphorically. While their injuries, once stabilized, weren't life-threatening, the loss of multiple limbs and other organs would have been a serious liability to pursuing anything resembling a 'normal' life (certainly in The '70s, before handicap accessibility was the law of the land). For vital, athletic people like Steve (test pilot and astronaut) and Jamie (professional tennis player and amateur skydiver) there's a huge psychological factor involved (this would have been true with anyone but even moreso in their cases). Indeed, in the original pilot film, Austin at one point attempts suicide, and after regaining consciousness after her accident, Jamie just wants to left to die, as well.
• Genre Turning Point: When this series and its Spin-Off, The Bionic Woman, each became sustained hits, the Super Hero genre began to be taken much more seriously as Prime Time TV material. That set the stage for Christopher Reeve to soar as Superman: The Movie to prove that notion true in feature films. It likely also helped open the door for Wonder Woman.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The presence of Kim Basinger in the unsold backdoor pilot "The Ultimate Imposter", when you know her very next screen appearance was as one of the stars of the Walter Hill-created Buddy Cop Show Dog And Cat (Yes, Kim Basinger did play a Fair Cop). So that pilot didn't sell one of its supporting cast did go own to star in her own shortlived series.
• Narm: "Sweet Jaime" as sung by Lee Majors in "The Bionic Woman" (the two-part episode that introduced her). Oh dear. (It doesn't help that the melody is loosely based around the show's theme song.)
  • Martin Caidin's Creator Cameo in "Deadly Countdown" as one of the villains. Acting is not his forte..
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Anytime a robot-disguised-as-a-human is unmasked.
  • Also, Bigfoot was known to scare more than a few kids. Especially in the episode in which Austin encounters the creature in a rotating ice tunnel.
  • Also in the title sequence with the footage from Austin's lift body plane's on board camera of his fateful crash seconds before impact is frightening to see obviously he is going to hit the ground hard. And it isn't special effects; this is actual in-cockpit footage of a real crash. It must have been especially Nightmare Fuel-ish to test pilot Bruce Peterson, whose spectacular crash was featured in the opening credits. Imagine reliving that week after week. (Reportedly, Peterson was not a fan.)^note  It probably didn't help that Peterson lost an eye in the crash, and never flew again, whereas his fictional counterpart had his eye replaced and not only continued to fly but remained in the space program. A defictionalized case of Kick the Dog, albeit unintentional.
• Questionable Casting: "To Catch the Eagle" tries pass off Peter Breck as the chief of a Native American tribe, and the equally Caucasian Kathleen Beller as his daughter.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • In The Return of the Six-Million-Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Dr. Shepherd, who performed life-saving surgery on Steve's son Michael, was played by a young Bryan Cranston.
  • Kate Mason, the second Bionic Woman in Bionic Showdown, is played by future Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock.
  • On the original series, you can see pre-My Two Dads Greg Evigan as the rival of "The Bionic Boy"
• Shocking Moments:
  • The crash footage in the opening credits is still disturbing after all these years, primarily because it was actual footage of a real crash in which a test pilot was catastrophically injured - but he never got the bionics.
  • Also, anytime a robot-disguised-as-a-human is unmasked.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • In "Killer Wind," though they used wind machines to indicate an oncoming storm, they didn't cover up the conspicuously sunny and cloudless skies.
  • An often-cited failure occurs in one episode where Steve throws a bunch of large tires at a group of mooks. One of the tires splits during the sequence, revealing the styrofoam within.
  • Although there were a few moments where doing so was actually effective (such as the famous training run sequence from the pilot film that became an iconic part of the opening credits), showing Steve running at full speed often came across as looking silly on screen since there was no way to show it without either obviously speeding up the film or having Lee Majors run against an obvious back-projection screen. To the makers' credit, this was realized early on; inspired by the use of slow motion to denote power and strength by NFL Films in its filming of football games, the same process was introduced by the producers to depict Steve's bionics in action. Once the slo-mo was introduced, the only time Steve was shown running at full speed was for comedic effect. While effective, however, the slo-mo did tend to be overused, such as whenever Steve used his bionic arm (even if superspeed was not involved).
  • The '80s TV movies were not free of this: Bionic Showdown using animated streaks drawn to Kate (Sandra Bullock) while running to covey her superspeed aren't nearly as effective as the original series' use of slow-motion and sound effects.

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