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Back in 2012, when I was still a newbie editor, I made a series of fan edits based on my all time favourite childhood television series THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN. In the end, I made seven entries in my rechristened CYBORG series. And while none of them were perfect, I am still generally happy with most of them. All except for one. The first one. CYBORG The Retro-Con Cut.
Being it was my first time ever working with Interlaced Television Material, I made a few mistakes in converting the episodes to MP4 format for editing. The Aspect Ratio is slightly incorrect and the file was not fully Progressive. Plus, there were some minor narrative and visual choices that I am now not entirely satisfied with.
So with this being the 50th Anniversary of TSMDM, and Shout Factory releasing the series on Blu Ray this past year, it seemed like the perfect time to go back and Rebuild this edit. Make it Faster. Stronger. Better than it was before.
Basic details: My absolute favorite hero of my childhood was THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN. For me, it was a comic book come to life before my very young eyes. Each week I would watch Colonel Steve Austin do battle with spys, evil masterminds, robots, aliens and even a bionic sasquatch! It is in my mind, one of the greatest adventure televisions shows of all time. It would be years later that I would finally watch the original trilogy of tv movies that inspired the regular series. To my surprise, there were many discrepancies and outright contradictions between the movies and the series proper. The main ones being no Oscar Goldman, different actor playing Dr. Rudy Wells, Steve as a civilian test pilot and how Steve was written (as a bionic James Bond) in the second and third movies.
My intent is to try and reconcile some of these elements from the tv movies with the established continuity of the television series. Using the season one premiere episode "Population: Zero" as my foundation, I have created a series of flashback scenes which retro-con Steve's bionic origin.
Basic Cut/Change List:
--Cut Darrin McGavin as Oliver Sempler
--Cut Martin Balsam as Dr. Rudy Wells
--Inserted Alan Oppenheimer (Dr. Wells) and Richard Anderson (Goldman) into origin flashbacks
--Added Universal Studios title card
--Added two Bionic Eye shots
--Cut Don Porter reveal in pre-titles teaser
--Used second season SMDM opening credits
--Added iconic Bionic SFX throughout edit
--Created 4 flashbacks from episodes "The Deadly Replay", "Wine, Women & War" and the SMDM pilot tv movie
--Fixed out of sync trash can fire scene
--Added additional music by Oliver Nelson
--Cut Oscar scene about power needed for weapon
--Cut Power Plant scene
--Cut reference to Steve's high school steady, as we all know Jaime is his true love lol
--Trimmed most commercial breaks
--Added End Title Cards for Cast and Source Material
RUNTIME: 70 MINUTES (4 minutes shorter than the original Retro-Con Cut)
7GB MP4 file. PM if interested.
LOL