Recker's World
The Six Million Dollar Man
You know, when I was a kid, back in the 70s, we didn’t have too many TV heroes but there was one that stood out big time and that was Steve Austin… No not “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. A much cooler hero than that. I’m talking about the Six Million Dollar Man! Yeah!
Hey, I’m sure he would have made a great pro-wrestler though. He’d show Dusty Rhodes a thing or two about bionic elbows. He’d make Roman Reign’s superman punch look like an Oompa Loompa punch. I could just imagine him and Ted DiBiase teaming up together to form the Six Million Dollar Team. That would have been great.
And hey, don't forget that Steve Austin once beat Andre the Giant! (Stone Cold never did that!)
The Six Million Dollar Man was the original cyborg hero. Like the Robocop of the 70s… except that he was a lot more gentlemanly and not so harsh on criminals. Sure, he’d smack them around a bit and send them flying a few meters, but he wasn’t out to kill anybody or pretend to be Judge Dredd or anything like that.
Steve Austin was cool though, especially with that eyebrow of his… (no we’re not talking about the Rock, Dwayne Johnson). Steve Austin was the originator of the people’s eyebrow, which was kind of appropriate really, because one of his eyes was bionic. Then of course he had a bionic arm and two bionic legs!
You just can’t underestimate how cool the Six Million Dollar Man was to young boy in the 70s. When you looked into the distance at something, you didn’t just look. You added in the sound effects… di di di di di di di di di di. When you threw a mock punch at your friend, you did it in slow motion. And when you jumped from one place to the other, you didn’t just jump, you did it with the sounds to go with it. Hrri hrri hrrri hrri hrri hrri hrri. And running was sometimes done in slow motion too unless you were in a real hurry to get somewhere. You just had to imagine the theme tune in the background as you ran or even hum it yourself.
Then there was that ultra cool Six Million Dollar Man doll that made it fine for boys to have dolls. Ok, it looked nothing like Lee Majors, but still. I never owned one, but was envious of one of my friends who did.
One thing you didn’t appreciate as a kid was romance in your TV shows and your heroes hooking up with some girl. Come on, that’s not what heroes are supposed to do when you’re 10 years old. They don’t have time for that kind of namby-pamby nonsense! Even Dr Who kept his female companions at arm's length. Heroes like Steve are there to take out bad guys! (And the Doctor is there to defend us against the likes of the Daleks and the Cybermen). Fortunately, Steve left the womanising to guys like Burt Reynolds and Roger Moore.
Except for one time… that one woman…
But yeah, that was fine. In fact, it was AOK. Jamie Summers was beautiful and the story was just so freaking brilliant. You actually wished that you were Steve so that you could get to fall in love with Jamie too. The Six Million Dollar Man with his Bionic Woman. How bittersweet it was that it was a doomed relationship.
Yes, every boy wanted to be Steve Austin. Every boy wanted to have bionic limbs and if it meant teaming up permanently with the bionic woman, we wouldn’t have minded at all. Steve Austin was the type of guy your parents were happy for you to emulate and might even let you head up in space as an astronaut, just so that you could crash back to earth and have your limbs replaced with bionics.
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