'Bionic Woman' 1.1 - Dismemberment plan

"Bionic Woman" was probably my most anticipated fall show this year, for one pretty good reason - it's produced by David Eick, who, along with Ronald Moore, is responsible for the totally rad "Battlestar Galactica" remake. Of course, "Bionic Woman" follows the same rough formula - it's a super-serious reimagining of a cheesy '70s sci-fi show, where the basic concepts and some character names are kept and everything else is built from the ground up. The fact that Mae Whitman, aka Annie McNoFace, was cast to play the title character's deaf younger sister, was just a bonus (though she got recasted and the character regained her hearing somewhere along the way).

Other than behind-the-scenes stuff, the similarities to "BSG" are rather readily apparent - Katee "Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace" Sackhoff in a prominent role as the evil bionic woman, what looked to be the same font in the opening credits, and hey, even the Chief for a scene.

It's probably unfair to endlessly compare "BW" to "BSG," but let's do it for a while anyway. "BW" doesn't seem nearly as capable as working on the different levels "BSG" operates on - what with the political intrigue and real world parallels and all that. That doesn't mean "BW" doesn't have potential as a sci-fi/action series, but being a good sci-fi/action series isn't really what most people like about "BSG." At this point, "Bionic Woman" seems a lot tidier and in more of a typical good vs. evil continuum, and thus a lot less interesting (although that obviously could change). Does this mean that "BW" is a poor man's "BSG"? Mmmmaybe.

Michelle Ryan is an appealing enogh lead, like a younger, vaguely British Amanda Peet. What's jarring is how quickly she seems to go from being freaked out over the whole being a bionic woman thing to saying "Alright, cool," as is indicated in next week's previews. It's also weird and also fantastic to see Sackhoff in a considerably less butchy role than "BSG" (her makeup in the bar scene towards the end was somewhat disorienting). She's great and deserves a shot on a "real" network - speaking of which, it's odd to see a show like this on an NBC. It's more of a "real" sci-fi show, not a splashy, flashy affair like "Heroes." Nerds are taking over, just like Nostradamus predicted.

I'll stick around for episode two, but to again compare it to "BSG," you have to wonder if the hard science fiction aspects of it might not appeal to the masses. At least on "Battlestar," you've got people flying around in space to begin with, so you expect a certain amount of wackiness. Here, it's "Normal, normal, normal - hey, you have robot limbs and these crazy things crawling around your blood!" - normal, normal, normal." Could give a few cases of genre whiplash.