“Pilot”
September 26th, 2007
I’ve been in possession of the original pilot for Bionic Woman for quite some time, but I decided against watching it. With recasting and fine tuning being considerable (Deaf sister turns to decidedly not deaf sister), and talks of producer issues, the series is perhaps the second most troubled of the fall season (Next to CBS’ Moonlight). It is perhaps surprising, then, that I found the pilot to be about as good of an introduction to this series as I could expect.
There were certainly problems: some dialogue issues reared their ugly head, specifically the feminist rhetoric coming from a seven year old (Feminist rhetoric? Fine. From someone who would never actually say that? Not fine), and there were certainly certain characters that…well, never became characters. However, the pilot’s focus was not in making us like or dislike these characters, but rather that we could get caught up in this world.
Now, mind you, this is a flawed way of going about things: a general apathy towards a show’s characters is generally a barrier to enjoying the series as a whole. This is why a lot of the pilot’s goodwill comes via Katee Sackhoff, Battlestar Galactica’s Starbuck, whose presence immediately elevates Bionic Woman amongst die hard fans of that series (myself included). More importantly, however, is that Sarah Corvus is a character who has history, motive and gravitas; these are traits we are missing for our titular heroine, portrayed by Michelle Ryan.
Cultural Learnings 