Until I run out of cool giftable stuff to tell you about or until we run out of days till Christmas, I’ll be sharing some neat-o things that your geeky pals might enjoy, or that you might want to give to yourself, if you’ve been especially good this year.
If you’re looking for a very special gift for a very special person, look no further: this new and fanatically complete collection of everything Six Million Dollar Man will impress even the most hardhearted geek on your list. The package simply looks impressive: The 40-DVD set includes all three pilot films, which aired on ABC in 1973; all five seasons of the show, which aired between 1974 and 1978, including associated crossover episodes from the Bionic Woman series; all three reunion movies from the 1980s and 90s; commentary tracks on some episodes by writer Kenneth Johnson; and more than 17 hours of bonus features. Oh yeah, and when you open the big box holding it all, you get the “We can rebuild him. We have the technology” spiel that opened each episode (it’s on a little chip inside the door). It’s all deeply cool.
And that’s before you get to the actual content. Nostalgic GenXers will revel in this trip down bionic memory lane: I had totally forgotten about, say, the special two-part Bigfoot story in Season 3, until I saw it listed on the package and the awesome nerdy beauty of it came flooding back to me. And there’s new stuff to discover, too: I didn’t remember, for instance, the so-awful-it’s-wonderful theme song that graced the pilot movies, which is like something out of Shaft. All the guest stars are another bonus, actors both famous and unknown at the time: Farrah Fawcett, William Shatner, Kim Basinger, Rick Springfield, and on and on.
Never before available in Region 1 — rights issues had been holding up a DVD release — this set is obtainable exclusively from Time Life.
