Fembots In Las Vegas

NBC premiered its new series, BIONIC WOMAN, this week, but let's not forget Lindsay Wagner, the one true Bionic Woman. As tennis star Jaime Sommers, Lindsay damaged an ear, an arm and both legs in a skydiving accident, but since she was lucky enough to be dating SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN Steve Austin (Lee Majors), the U.S. government provided her with some bionic parts of her own. Unfortunately for Steve, her accident caused amnesia, and she completely forgot she ever was in love with him.

Jaime actually died at the end of that 1975 two-part episode of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, but ratings were huge, so she returned in another two-parter earlier that year. Ratings for it and another episode remained high, so ABC spun Jaime off into her own series, THE BIONIC WOMAN. After two seasons on ABC, it was canceled, but NBC picked it up, making regular Richard Anderson, who played Jaime and Steve's boss Oscar Goldman, the only actor to appear regularly as the same character on two different TV series on two different networks at the same time.

THE BIONIC WOMAN kicked off its third and last season with a two-parter introducing another "regular": Max, the Bionic Dog (I know). Then, another two-parter, "Fembots in Las Vegas," marked the return of the sexy female robots that plagued Jaime and Steve in the 1976 three-part episode, "Kill Oscar," that crossed over between THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN. If you're wondering where Mike Myers came up with the idea for the "fembots" that attacked him in the Austin Powers movies, you can thank THE BIONIC WOMAN for it.