Category: Six Million Dollar Man

Steve and Oscar are invited to view an energy project on Kamkov Island in the Soviet Union, headed up by Steve’s old friend, retired cosmonaut Vasily Zhukov. But a massive earthquake shakes the island before the OSI delegation even leaves the ground in the U.S., trapping Vasily’s research partner (who also happens to be his fiance) underground. Steve insists on going to Kamkov Island despite the danger, but when another quake strikes, he saves Zhukov by using his bionic strength, revealing his secret in the process. Other secrets are revealed as well: to prevent western sabotage, an automatic defense system was rigged to detonate a nuclear bomb at the heart of Zhukov’s project. Defusing the bomb may be beyond even Steve’s abilities.

teleplay by Larry Brody
story by Larry Brody and Jim Sangster
directed by Jerry Jameson
music by Oliver Nelson

Cast: Lee Majors (Steve Austin), Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), Martin E. Brooks (Dr. Rudy Wells), Gary Collins (Colonel Vasily Zhukov), Jane Merrow (Irina Leonova), William Smithers (General Koslenko), Bruce Glover (Capt. Voda), William Boyett (Air Force General), Walker Edmiston (Russian Operator), Anne Newman (Female Technician), Rico Cattani (Male Technician)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Waiting for a taxi after dark, Steve is present when a shot rings out, killing a member of the legal team of a prosecutor who is mere hours away from seeking a grand jury indictment against a major criminal figure who no one has been able to prosecute. The OSI is brought in to help provide security for Sandusky, the prosecutor, and his surviving staff members. What Steve can’t divulge, however, is that he got a good look at the shooter with his bionic vision. When he spots the shooter again, Steve apprehends him, but under police interrogation the man seems to have an airtight alibi. How can the assassin have been in two places at the same time, and with his own credibility in question, how can Steve stop him from striking again?

written by William Driskill
directed by Alf Kjellin
music by Oliver Nelson

Cast: Lee Majors (Steve Austin), Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), Gary Lockwood (Hopper), William Schallert (Lorin Sandusky), Ivor Barry (Mr. Hanley), Regis J. Cordic (Host), Leonard Stone (Lt. Tanner), Allen Joseph (Dorsey), Lew Palter (Cab Driver), Donna Mantoan (Hotel Clerk), Al Dunlap (Doorman), Marilyn J. Hassett (Car Rental Girl)

Notes: Guest star Gary Lockwood was one of the stars of 2001: a space odyssey, and prior to that, the star of The Lieutenant, the first television series created and produced by a rising young writer named Gene Roddenberry. Roddenberry cast Lockwood in the second Star Trek pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, a few years later. William Schallert also appeared in Star Trek, guest starring in two different incarnations of the franchise (TOS: The Trouble With Tribbles, DS9: Sanctuary).

LogBook entry by Earl Green

All eyes are on NASA’s next mission, Athena One, the first flight of a female astronaut. Steve Austin has been recruited to help train Major Kelly Wood for her flight, but their personalities clash on the ground. When her mission finally takes to the sky, an accident renders her co-pilot unconscious, necessitating a rescue mission involving the Skylab space station. Over Oscar’s objections, Steve himself volunteers to pilot the rescue vehicle, transporting a surgeon to Skylab to save the injured co-pilot while he and Major Wood conduct a risky spacewalk to repair a malfunctioning solar panel on Skylab itself. But exposure to the radiation of space may be causing Steve’s bionic implants to malfunction – and the lives of three people now depend on him flying a manual re-entry.

written by D.C. Fontana
directed by Lawrence Doheny
music by Oliver Nelson

Cast: Lee Majors (Steve Austin), Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), Farrah Fawcett Majors (Maj. Kelly Wood), Paul Kent (Flight Surgeon Wolf), John S. Ragin (Flight Director), Quinn Redeker (Capcom), Dean Smith (Major Osterman), Jules Bergman (himself), Patsy Sabline (1st Secretary), Toni Jannotta (2nd Secretary)

Notes: Call it stunt casting or nepotism, but Farrah Fawcett Majors was married to series star Lee Majors at the time this episode was filmed; they’d star together again in the premiere episode of Majors’ post-bionic hit series The Fall Guy. She would reprise this episode’s role in a later Six Million Dollar Man episode, in addition to guest starring in two completely different roles, all within the show’s first four seasons. Her other genre credits include Logan’s Run and Saturn 3. Bringing significantly more genre cred to this episode is writer D.C. Fontana, who was the story editor and a frequent writer on the original Star Trek and its animated revival, as well as stints on later shows like The Fantastic Journey and Logan’s Run. In other “inside baseball” casting, Jules Bergman was the science editor in the news department of ABC (the network which aired Six Million Dillar Man); among other things, he was heavily involved in ABC’s coverage of real space missions, including Apollo 13 (whose story would seem to be an inspiration for this episode). Austin’s moonwalk is described as having happened in January 1972. Stock footage from Apollo 9 and Apollo 15 are used in the spacewalk sequence (despite a mismatch in the spacesuits and helmets used in those missions), but the model sequences of Skylab apparently pre-date the launch of the actual Skylab station, which lost an entire “solar wing” during launch. Some footage from actual Skylab spacewalks appears during the second spacewalk sequence, as well as a famous photo of the heavily damaged Apollo 13 command module take in 1970 after the service module had separated for re-entry.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Dr. Rudy Wells hasn’t even checked into his hotel room in Austria and he’s already getting a phone call from Oscar Goldman. Nothing has happened to Steve – Oscar’s just paranoid about Wells (and his knowledge of the bionic replacement surgery) being out of the country with no bodyguard. Steve offers to travel to Austria himself to keep an eye on Dr. Wells at a discrete distance, just to assuage Oscar’s fears…which turn out to be well-founded. Wells has been abducted by the Tucelli brothers, crime kingpins who have heard rumors of Wells performing bionic replacement surgery and want him to do the same for them. Wells denies all knowledge, trying to stall just long enough for them to see a real bionic man in action.

written by Elroy Schwartz and Krishna Shah & William Keenan
directed by Virgil W. Vogel
music by Oliver Nelson

Cast: Lee Majors (Steve Austin), Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), John van Dreelen (Alfredo Tucelli), Alan Oppenheimer (Rudy Wells), Than Wyenn (Desk Clerk), Jim Shane (Yamo), Michael Dante (Julio Tucelli), Curt Lowens (Anton Brandt), Norbert Schiller (Porter), Cynthia Lynn (Fraulein Krueger), Ynes Van Holt (Switchboard Operator)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Long a surveillance target of the OSI, a man named Quail – who has the resources to hide out on his own well-equipped island complete with sensor systems, a 30-foot-tall electric fence, and a water filtration system – is now a top priority: a U.S. government agent relayed information that Quail is planning something massive, and lethal, in July. Infiltrating Quail’s base is beyond most agents, and even Austin has to undergo a rigorous training program that tests even the limits of his bionically enhanced endurance. Unfortunately, once inside Quail’s base, the nuclear power source in Austin’s bionic limbs gives him away to the base’s sensors. Austin is subjected to a series of interrogations, and one of his interrogators reveals that she is a deep-cover agent working on behalf of Interpol to topple Quail’s operation. With time running out before Quail hatches a plan to kill all the delegates at a critical world peace summit, does Austin go it alone, or does he believe her story?

written by Richard Landau
directed by Reza Badiyi
music by Oliver Nelson

Cast: Lee Majors (Steve Austin), Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), Steve Forrest (Quail), Kevin Tighe (Root), Tom Reese (Joe Alabam), Arlene Martel (Violette), Barry Cahill (Submarine Captain), Hank Stohl (Balsam), Ben Wright (Ives), H. Alan Deglin (Hurst), Tom Hayden (Sonar)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Two weeks after returning to Earth from a mission during which he conducted a spacewalk and began acting strangely, astronaut Josh Lang is on the verge of being grounded, which would end his space career. NASA contacts Lang’s old friend (and former fellow astronaut) Steve Austin to see if he can get through to Lang, understand what’s happened to him, or why Lang keeps talking to someone named Andy. Lang confesses to Austin that he came into contact with some kind of electrical field that boosted his mental abilities exponentially, and that he can even talk to dolphins telepathically. But when he’s sedated and confined for further study, Lang reveals another side to his new abilities, including the power to attack people with the power of his mind, knocking them unconscious without a physical blow. Lang goes on the run from NASA and military police, and Austin insists on trying to reach his old friend to convince him to stop fleeing. In the meantime, Lang’s powers are growing, at the cost of his survival.

written by Del Reisman
directed by Jerry London
music by Oliver Nelson

Cast: Lee Majors (Steve Austin), Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), William Shatner (Josh Lang), Warren Kemmerling (Ted), Quinn Redeker (Calvin Billings), Rodolfo Hoyos (Ernesto Arruza), Anne Schedeen (Tina Larsen), Joseph diReda (1st Deputy), Ron Stokes (2nd M.P.), Aaron Mitchell (2nd Deputy), Charles Floyd Johnson (3rd M.P.), Trent Dolan (Technician), Mary Rings (Millie)

Notes: Clips of Steve Austin running (from the pilot movie) and pole-vaulting (from last week’s episode) are reused, though the footage from The Last Of The Fourth Of Julys creates a bit of a jump-cut error, as Oscar is seen standing alongside the huddled NASA scientists watching Austin, and is then instantly seen standing away from them, near the crossbar Austin is trying to clear. The spacewalk footage from the opening teaser is instantly recognizable as footage of Ed White conducting the first American spacewalk during the Gemini 4 mission in June 1965, even though much more recent spacewalk footage was available and had been used in previous episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man. Oscar protests Austin wanting to run “two whole” computer searches for him on the grounds that “it’ll cost a fortune”. Lang wants NASA to send dolphins up on “the next space shot, the Apollo-Soyuz“; as the third and final Skylab crew had returned to Earth in February 1974, this was technically correct, even if the notion of strapping a dolphin into an Apollo capsule is impractical at best. Guest star Anne Schedeen, here playing a NASA computer programmer, would have later brushes with suspicious space travelers as one of the stars of the 1980s sitcom ALF.

LogBook entry by Earl Green