The Bionic Woman Season Three   Starring: Lindsay Wagner Fabulous Films Ltd / Fremantle Media Enterprises RRP: £39.99 FHED2884 Certificate: PG Available 03 December 2012

Jaime Sommers, is a top level tennis star and old flame of Steve Austin, better known as The Six Million Dollar Man, having been rebuilt with robotics following a plane crash, becoming a cyborg. When he returns home to settle some family affairs he rekindles his relationship with Jamie. Their new love goes well and Austin commits to marrying Jamie, but before they can wed, Austin takes his love for a sky-dive, a dive which ends with Jamie’s parachute failing; she falls, nearly fatally, to the ground. Austin pleads with his boss to save her life by giving her robotic implants, resurrecting her as The Bionic Woman and the newest recruit to the OSI...

The Bionic Woman: Season Three (1978) saw the show move from its original home at ABC to its new owner NBC, who were having a tough time in the ratings war. It must have seemed like a no brainer, the show was popular and had achieved some critical acclaim. The change of channel only meant that there would be no more crossovers with The Six Million Dollar Man as it remained with ABC. So, you have a successful show, which your rival has dropped, what do you do with it? Well, the answer for NBC appears to be, throw out the successful formula and look like you're scrabbling around in the dark with a bunch of old science fiction tropes, which were old and risible, even in 1978.

This was not the show's golden period - that had passed with season two. Here we have bionic digs, aliens - you can tell they are aliens as at least one of then wears silver - and the return of the fembots. Why they decided to go this way is anyone’s guess. Continuity would continue with the inclusion of Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks, but no Lee Majors. To fill this gap Jamie is given another object of her affection, as if a lone female who did not need the company of men was somehow a threat to the audience’s sense of normality.

It’s not all bad and like many long running series there is good and bad, or in this case some good with a lot of cheese. Kudos to NBC though, as they did at least, allows the show to come to a logical close, with the final episode borrowing heavily from The Prisoner.

Season three is presented on a seven disc DVD set. Having previously seen the quality of the surviving ABC prints of the show it is noticeable that NBC retain prints with superior quality. Audio is 2.0 Stereo with the picture being presented in its original aspect ratio.

Disc one contains, I kid you not, The Bionic Dog pts. 1 & 2, which is better than its title would suggest, part one also has a commentary by James D. Perriott and the disc is filled out with the two parts of Fembots in Las Vegas. Rodeo kicks off disc two followed by African Connection, Motorcycle Boogie and Brain Wash, which has a connected podcast by fan and collector James Sherrard.

Skirting the isthmus of Bionic overdose we sail the ship into the deeper waters of disc three, only to find our quest for bionic bounty dashed across the ragged rocks of disappointment, finding only four more episodes, Escape to Love, Max, Over The Hill Spy and All for One. Disappointment upon disappointment is dashed upon the heads of the true believers as we find yet another vanilla disc in disc four with The Pyramid, The Antidote, The Martians are Coming and Sanctuary Earth, some really good doses of hokum, slock science fiction are her on display, a lot of fun if you turn your brain off, it’s almost up there with Galactica 80.

On the downward slope towards bionic oblivion and we turn the corner only to find that the pods have attacked, vanilla is everywhere with a quartet of stories, Deadly Music, Which One is Jamie, Out of Body and Long Live the King. Just when all seemed lost and the sailors have taken to clawing at each other out of frustration, redemption arrives in the form of disc six which has the final two stories of the show, Rancho Outcast and On The Run with commentary with writer Steven E De Souza. The disc also has extras, a Q & A with Lindsay Wagner (15 min), Bionic Gallery (4 min, 31 sec). we still have another disc to go, but that didn’t stop them sticking on the reunion film, Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman (1 hr, 38 min, 09 sec).

So, we finally sail into the safe harbour of the ultimate disc in the box set and still there are treasures to be found in the form of two more reunion movies, Bionic Showdown (1 hr, 35 min, 48 sec) and Bionic Ever After (1 hr, 30 min, 21 sec), wherein our hearts melt finally seeing the two bionics live happily ever after and a Bionic Reunion Gallery (2 min 59 sec).

I(ts nice to complete your collection, it’s even nicer for the makers to actually end a show properly, so even with its silliness and the dip in quality, it’s still worth picking up the set to finally see who the story of Jamie Sommers finished.

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Charles Packer