Liz McKeon

‘Bionic’ Beginnings
September 27, 2007

A couple of things I feel compelled to arm you with before I talk about Bionic Woman: 

a. I have never seen the original series, and

b. I’m a huge Battlestar Galactica fan.

So, with those pivotal bits of info now floating in the ether, I’m going on to say that last night’s premiere was, eh, entertaining enough. But my favorite scenes were the ones with Battlestar’s Katee Sackhoff and--surprise!--Aaron Douglas.

Sackhoff’s villain character looks like she’s fun to play. The eponymous Bionic Woman, Jamie Sommers, played by EastEnder Michelle Ryan, did not look like a fun character to play. I wonder if that--and possibly her familiarity--is the reason I preferred the villain. I’d be more than willing the give the show a few more episodes to see if the Bionic Woman becomes more fun when she’s not dealing with the trauma of becoming part-cyborg.

The storyline worked, most likely because while I know that many liberties were taken in creating this adaptation, I didn’t know what they were and therefore didn’t carry that baggage into my viewing of the pilot.

What threw me off was that I just couldn’t shake the feeling that quite a number of the scenes were eerily reminiscent of Alias, but without Jennifer Garner or humor.

I’d say the show itself was well-made and the effects were perfectly fine, but it seemed like an action movie that was missing parts of its soundtrack. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for dour, I’m not really sure.

Again, I’ll watch for at least a few more weeks because Bionic Woman has all the elements of shows I’ve liked; hopefully, it will start to add some of its own charms to that list.

In the meantime, it was fascinating to hear “Starbuck” explain how she was systematically turning herself into a robot.

Posted by Liz McKeon on September 27, 2007 | Comments (1)