Bionic Woman (2007 TV series)

Bionic Woman
Created by	David Eick Kenneth Johnson based on the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin
Written by	Laeta Kalogridis Treena Hancock
Starring	Michelle Ryan Miguel Ferrer Molly Price Will Yun Lee Katee Sackhoff Thomas Kretschmann Mark Sheppard Lucy Hale
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	7 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	David Eick Laeta Kalogridis Jason Smilovic
Production locations	Vancouver, BC
Running time	42 minutes (without commercials)
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	September 26, 2007 – present
Related
The Bionic Woman The Six Million Dollar Man

Bionic Woman is an American science fiction television drama created by David Eick, under NBC Universal Television Group, GEP Productions and David Eick Productions. The series is a re-imagining of the original television series, The Bionic Woman, created by Kenneth Johnson and based upon the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin, and retains its forbear's premise while taking on a more contemporary setting. David Eick also serves as executive producer alongside Laeta Kalogridis and Jason Smilovic.

Bionic Woman premiered in the United States on the NBC network on September 26, 2007. The series is currently airing on Wednesday nights at 9:00/8:00c. It is also broadcast on Seven Network in Australia, E! in Canada, and ITV2 in the United Kingdom. The show premiered with NBC's highest midweek premiere ratings since the 1999 premiere of The West Wing. The show was the second most watched program in the timeslot, losing out to ABC's Grey's Anatomy spin off Private Practice which took 14.4 million viewers.

The series revolves around bartender Jaime Sommers, who is saved from death after receiving experimental medical implants. While adjusting to her new bionic powers and raising a rebellious younger sister, Jaime agrees to work for the organization that performed her surgery.

Production

Development

The first mention of a revision of the Bionic Woman series occurred in August 2002 when a story in The Hollywood Reporter indicated that the series would be produced by Team Todd: sisters Jennifer Todd and Suzanne Todd. The story quoted Suzanne Todd as saying:

We are going to take advantage of the fact that what seemed beyond the realm of reality back when they did the original show – some of the things in terms advancement in prosthetics and in replacement limbs – are real in true life now. I think the idea that they exist in the world today and people make use of them – not in a superhero way the way that Jaime does – is going to allow us to do something really interesting and very different than the old show.

It was later reported that the USA Network was considering airing the series, with Jennifer Aniston being in consideration for the lead role. However, no series was produced at that time.

On October 9, 2006, NBC Universal announced that it was bringing the project back with new producers and reportedly, a radical reworking of the original concept. The series would be written by Laeta Kalogridis (creator of the WB series Birds of Prey) and produced by David Eick. Eick commented on the new series saying, "It's a complete reconceptualization of the title. We're using the title as a starting point, and that's all. It's going to be a meaningful departure [from the original]."

On January 3, 2007, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the series one-hour pilot was given an official greenlight by NBC. On May 10, 2007, NBC announced that they had given an early pick-up to Bionic Woman for their fall 2007 schedule.

As the rights to Steve Austin from the Six Million Dollar Man series, of which the original The Bionic Woman was a spin-off, and the rights to the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin, on which effectively both original TV shows were based on are held by other parties, the new series currently excludes any elements from these sources.

Casting

The pilot starred Michelle Ryan, Miguel Ferrer, Molly Price, Will Yun Lee, and Mae Whitman.

On June 27, 2007, TV Guide reported that Mae Whitman was being replaced in the role of Jaime's sister. An NBC spokesperson confirmed this, stating, "The decision was purely creatively driven. It is very common to change storylines, characters, actors after the initial pilot is shot." Also, the sister character will not be deaf, as reportedly an NBC executive requested that the character's hearing be restored. Lucy Hale was later cast as Whitman's replacement in July 2007. In announcing the recasting, it was confirmed that the deaf trait of the character had been dropped. Instead, Hale's version of the character is depicted as a rebellious teen and budding computer hacker.

Katee Sackhoff was cast as Sarah Corvus, the first Bionic Woman, and her character subsequently appeared in the first three regular episodes of the series, with more appearances expected. Sackhoff has compared the role to Number Six, a character in Sackhoff's concurrent series, Battlestar: Galactica which, like Bionic Woman, is filmed in the Vancouver, British Columbia area. Isaiah Washington has also been confirmed to appear in at least five episodes of the series, making his first appearance in "Paradise Lost," the show's first post-pilot episode.

Sackhoff is joined by fellow Galactica co-stars Aaron Douglas as a prison guard and Mark Sheppard as Will Anthros' father Anthony Anthros.

As Ryan is from England and naturally speaks in received pronunciation, she affects an American accent for her role as Sommers. One notable exception to this occurs in the episode "The Education of Jaime Sommers", when Jaime assumes the guise of a British exchange student. This episode allowed Ryan to use her natural accent.

Crew

David Eick, Laeta Kalogridis, Jason Smilovic and Michael Dinner originally served as executive producers and writers. Dinner also directed the pilot but exited his post as executive producer in June 2007. Glen Morgan, writer and producer on The X-Files, Space: Above and Beyond, and Millennium, joined the production team of Bionic Woman as an executive producer in May, only to leave four months later, citing creative differences. In September, Friday Night Lights executive producer Jason Katims joined the show as a consultant. Katims ran the writer's room until late October, when Sopranos veteran Jason Cahill was hired as the new showrunner.

Plot

Main article: List of Bionic Woman (2007 TV series) episodes

Bartender Jaime Sommers struggles to make ends meet in San Francisco, California, while serving as a surrogate mom to her teenage sister. Nearly killed in a car accident, Jaime is saved by a cutting-edge operation—performed by her boyfriend, Will Anthros—that leaves her with advanced bionic prosthetics and implants with extraordinary new strength, among other artificially enhanced gifts. Now, however, Jaime must figure out how best to use her new abilities while embracing her new bionic identity.

The website for the UK newspaper Daily Mail published photographs from the pilot film that reveal that in addition to a bionic ear, Sommers will receive a bionic eye like that of Steve Austin, along with her bionic legs and bionic right arm. Clips from the pilot episode posted on the show's official preview webpage also reveal that she will have a bionic ear and be injected with nanomachines called anthrocytes that heal her body at a highly accelerated rate.

Johnson has confirmed on his website that he is not involved with the new Bionic Woman series. It still remains to be seen if either Johnson or the now-deceased Caidin will be credited on the new version of Bionic Woman, or if any references to The Six Million Dollar Man will be made. Since the rights to The Six Million Dollar Man and Cyborg are held by other parties, the characters of Oscar Goldman and Dr. Rudy Wells from the original franchise have been replaced by new creations and it has yet to be seen whether they or the character of Steve Austin will appear in the new series. The new version of Sommers is outfitted with a bionic eye; this is a piece of hardware established by Caidin in his original novel as being given to Austin and used in the subsequent TV series (the original Jaime Sommers did not possess one); thus far, this is the only overt reference to Caidin's original concepts in evidence.

Cast

Main characters

• Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan) is a bartender who is involved in a near fatal car accident and becomes the Bionic woman.
• Jonas Bledsoe (Miguel Ferrer) is the apparent director of the Bionics program.
• Ruth Treadwell (Molly Price) is one of the Bionic team members.
• Jae Kim (Will Yun Lee) is one of the Bionic team members and was formerly romantically involved with Sarah Corvus.
• Becca Sommers (Lucy Hale) is Jaime's sister.
• Anthony Anthros (Mark Sheppard) is the father of Will Anthros and one of the original developers of the bionic implants. He escapes prison at the end of the first episode.

Recurring characters

• Sarah Corvus (Katee Sackhoff) is the "first Bionic woman" and a nemesis of Jaime. The existence of a bionic person prior to the current one in the series is similar to the "Seven Million Dollar Man" from The Six Million Dollar Man. Corvus' bionics are malfunctioning and believes that Jamie's newer bionics may be the key to repairing hers. Jaime has mixed feelings about Corvus.
• Antonio Pope (Isaiah Washington) is an advisor in the Bionics program described as an "outsider with a mysterious agenda" with the power to either help Jamie or bring her down. Pope was shot and killed by a former collegue/lover at the end of Episode 7.
• Bruce McGill will play a heretofore unnamed character who is a high ranking operative in the Bionics program.

Broadcast history

International broadcasts

It will also begin airing on Global Television Network in Canada in the fall. Channel Seven in Australia had confirmed they will "fast track" the series so it premieres shortly after the US premiere, and it had shown the pilot episode on 4 October 2007. The sixth episode was fasttracked so much, it aired 7 hours after the US, with Channel Seven promoting the episode as "almost live."

Country	TV Network(s)	Series Premiere	Weekly Schedule	Status
Australia	Channel Seven	October 4 2007	Thursday 8:30pm	Currently airing - "fast track 7"

Pre-air release

On July 28, 2007, an older cut of the series pilot, still featuring Mae Whitman's character, was shown at the San Diego Comic Con, where producer David Eick confirmed the recasting of Becca's character. Other panelists included actors Michelle Ryan, Katee Sackhoff, and Mark Sheppard.

On September 11, 2007, the series premiere was made available as a no-cost download on Amazon.com's Unbox service as well on the video on demand platforms of several national cable operators also at no-cost.

Reception and ratings

US - weekly

Numbers of Viewers per Episode

Episode	Air Date	Rating	Share	Viewers	Rank
1	September 26, 2007	5.5	14	13.59	#2
2	October 3, 2007	4.0	10	10.94	#3
3	October 10, 2007	3.8	10	10.10	#2
4	October 17, 2007	3.3	8	8.52	#3
5	October 24, 2007	3.3	8	7.78	#4

In the following summary, "rating" is the percentage of all households with televisions that tuned to the show, and "share" is the percentage of all televisions in use at that time that are tuned in.

Unless otherwise cited, the overnight rating and share information comes from Zap2It The following week, the numbers are updated with the final Nielsen numbers from TVWeek.com. Additional ratings information, including the 18–49 rating, comes from BroadcastingCable. Viewer numbers and rank numbers come from Google Groups.

International - Australia

The first episode rated 1.6 million viewers, making it the most watched program of the night. Ratings began to dive with the third episode rating 1.2 million viewers. The fifth episode only rated one million viewers.

External links

• Official NBC Bionic Woman Page
• Bionic Woman at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com show