The Six Million Dollar Man: Sharks (part 1)


episode number: season 5, episode 1 (1977)
viewing setting: home DVD, 7/22/12

episode synopsis: Steve helps deal with the attempted theft of a submarine.

impressions: This was the underwater episode. It was also the premiere episode of the fifth and final season. Steve's lost his mustache and gained a wacky haircut that makes him look older and more serious. He's also gained skills: he just sits down in the submarine and starts helping operate it. In a similar vein, Rudy is present on the ship above, and seems to be able to do anything scientific, not just bionics and surgery. Sharks played a role in this one, though the control method was somewhat silly, as was the diver's claim of the shark being a "monster" and "the biggest I've ever seen" and then it swims by and it's pretty small. This episode also featured the oft-used-in-the-1970s-and-1980s disembodied camera problem, wherein bad guys with a TV screen can somehow watch all the action taking place elsewhere despite not having an actual viewing device actually following the actual events that are being shown on the screen. Finally...this ended in a cliffhanger, the first of several in season five.

notable guest stars: Pamela Hensley (better known as Princess Ardala from the Buck Rogers series) is the main bad guy's bad daughter. John de Lancie is one of the Navy divers.

significant bionic antics: Steve lifts a fallen girder, forces open a blocked submarine hatch, bends some shark cage bars, rips a submarine's steering column out, taps on the wall of the underwater base to alert the good guys, hurls one of those heavy old pillows hard enough to stun a bad guy, and stretches the bad guy's wetsuit to tie him up.

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