An OSI mission is already underway when we join Jaime in The Bionic Woman episode 11 – one involving a secret formula, a passenger plane, and Rio de Janeiro.
Creator: Kenneth Johnson
Genre: Adventure, Superhero
Number of seasons: 3
Episode 11 Release Date: May 5, 1976
Where to watch: on digital and on demand
The camera alights, within the first minute of The Bionic Woman episode 11 (“Fly Jaime”), upon the face of one Dr. Rudy Wells (Martin E. Brooks). Remember him? He’s the boffin that kicked off all this bionic stuff in the first place. And here he is now, informing an old colleague that their secret formula – that simply mustn’t get into the wrong hands – is safe with him, and soon to be locked away in the OSI vault, tapping his noggin.
So episode 11 opens on an OSI mission already in progress – isn’t that exciting? Rudy’s already made the rendezvous, and is heading for the airport. Jaime (Lindsay Wagner) is already disguised as a flight attendant, and is to escort Rudy from Manaus – where they are – to Rio de Janeiro – where Oscar (Richard Anderson) is set to meet them. And here already is a couple of bad guys too, boarding the plane, and intending to kill Rudy while in transit. I suppose because of this formula thing.
Now it’s not like The Bionic Woman ever dawdles with its cold opens, but dropping us in on a plot that started well before we arrived does provide a nice sense of pace here. Plus, with all the players now aboard a plane, it seems we’re in for a bit of a chamber piece and all. There’s the disguised Jaime, the Dr. Rudy Wells, this pervy bloke, an uptight missionary, a drunk med school dropout, and, don’t forget, a couple of bad guys, along with their mysterious boss too. It could almost be an Agatha Christie tribute.
And I usually quite like that kind of television. That limited-location, all-actors-on-one-set, could’ve-been-a-stage-play kind of television. I suppose, being British, what with Play for Today (1970) and the like, that predilection is something I’ve inherited.
Soon after take-off, a spot of turbulence then of course strikes the character-full plane. For what other narrative devices are there to use at 40,000 feet? One of the engines even catches fire, and this might just be the opportunity I’ve been awaiting, to briefly mention “Return Flight”, an episode of telly from an entirely different programme called Dead of Night (1972). There, the intrusion of ghosts is met with stiff upper lip in the cockpit, as a pilot navigates mid-air haunting straight-faced. Here, stormy weather results in many a lightning flash, Jaime being thrown about the place, one of the plane’s wings breaking off, and all the pilots passing out. Spooky British telly against The Bionic Woman is likely a needless comparison, but aren’t all comparisons needless, really?
Pitching towards ground level as they now are, the only pilot to regain consciousness prepares for an emergency landing and, with that, there goes the idea of this being a bit of a chamber piece, for The Bionic Woman episode 11 then suddenly becomes a castaway episode, with all our characters finding themselves on a desert island. And no, how they all arrived on a desert island after being on a domestic flight is not revealed.
Before now, I’d have thought that an unannounced plane crash episode would have pulled some (or at least a little) impassioned writing out of me, but here we are. As fun as it is for The Bionic Woman to do something different, and, admittedly, surprising, I didn’t love this one as much as I think I ought to have done. And my not knowing why only provides a further example of me being a very poor reviewer.
Perhaps episode 11 just appears too late in the game for surprises? Maybe the hours of predictability that came before don’t serve to heighten the impact of this episode, but this episode serves to demonstrate how those previous hours could have been better utilised? Perhaps my glass is just half-empty at the moment. Or maybe the twist is that I’ve actually been subconsciously suspicious of episode 11 this whole time – only later discovering that it’s a retread of an earlier The Six Million Dollar Man (1974) entry!
But to watch The Bionic Woman episode 11 standalone, or packaged with some other outliers (like “Jaime’s Mother”) in a concentrated taster of the show, might do you better. And certainly, be curious about television that wasn’t released this week, but against my usual character, I’d warn you against being a completionist today. There may be satisfaction in it at the end, but that original curiosity might also sour in the meantime. And that is really all the wisdom I can spare for now. It is quite a shallow well I’m drawing from here, you know.
Episode 11 of The Bionic Woman is now available to watch on digital and on demand.
