The Bionic Man: The Imperfect Science Behind The TV Show

When I was a kid, The Six Million Dollar Man was TV gold. Every Saturday night, I heard those famous words: “We can rebuild him.”

The premise began each episode: A test pilot crashes his supersonic aircraft, almost dies, gets rebuilt with bionics, and suddenly—boom—he’s running like a cheetah, jumping over buildings, and tossing cars like beanbags. I sat there in front of the TV every week, wide-eyed, entirely convinced that robotic science could make superheroes out of regular people.

Steve Austin wasn’t just a man. He was the man. The slow-motion running scenes? Iconic. The “ch-ch-ch-ch” bionic sound? Legendary. If you watched TV in the ’70s, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I believed every second of it.

Fast forward a few decades—I’ve had an epiphany. It hit me just yesterday: if Steve Austin’s arm is a robot but his shoulder is made of meat, it’d snap like a breadstick the first time he lifted that car. The same goes for those epic leaps. Sure, his legs might be titanium, but his spine? Still weak organic bone back there. The guy would compress like an accordion before he even cleared the first fence!

In reality, the Six Million Dollar Man was a Six Million Dollar Lawsuit waiting to happen. His warranty wouldn’t cover any of it.

Still, I can’t help but love the story’s premise.

The ’70s were a beautiful, polyester-clad era of optimism. We didn’t need biology or physics to make sense—we just needed a hero who could do the impossible and make that “bionic sound” while doing it. And when The Bionic Woman came along, it was the perfect upgrade into equality.

The science was dodgy, the action was exaggerated—but the dreams? Totally indestructible.

–Michael (Dark fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)