Bionic Woman Complete Series - DVD Review

Did David Eick have the power to rebuild Jaime Sommers? Only in a Frankenstein’s-franchise fashion. The Battlestar Galactica producer’s part-sappy, part-sombre, mostly soporific retooling of the ’70s series lacks courage and conviction: fusing well-used body parts, its personality emerges as less than the sum of its influences. Noir nights, rain-soaked rooftop scraps, good cyber-babes vs bad cyber-babes, super-heroines with women’s issues and shady black-ops teams fuse Blade Runner, Alias, Dark Angel and Buffy. To add, Eick simply skims over science-vs-ethics subtexts and, in its best move, casts BG’s Katee ‘Starbuck’ Sackhoff as a vigorously va-va-vamp-ish first bionic woman-turned-psycho. Otherwise, BW lacks bionic legs, sacrificing dash for a second-hand hotch-potch that Michelle Ryan struggles to ignite. The puff-piece DVD extras are notably brief. Not unlike the show’s lifespan, then…