Bionic Woman

The 2007 series is a re-imagining of the original 1970s Bionic Woman created by Kenneth Johnson, itself based on Martin Caidin's novel Cyborg and its adaptation The Six Million Dollar Man, but updated to a contemporary setting.

A revival was first mentioned as early as August 2002, when The Hollywood Reporter indicated the series would be produced by sisters Jennifer and Suzanne Todd (Team Todd), with the USA Network later considering it and Jennifer Aniston reportedly in consideration for the lead role.

Because the rights to Martin Caidin's novel Cyborg and to the Six Million Dollar Man character Steve Austin were held by other parties, the new series had to exclude overt elements from them, and neither Kenneth Johnson nor Caidin received screen credit; Johnson confirmed on his website he had no involvement in the new show.

In the original unaired pilot, Jaime's teenage sister Becca was written as hearing-impaired and played by Mae Whitman, but NBC executives requested the deafness be dropped, so the character was retooled as a rebellious hacker and recast with Lucy Hale, requiring all of Whitman's pilot scenes to be reshot.

Michelle Ryan, who plays Jaime Sommers, is English and naturally speaks with received pronunciation, so she used an American accent for the role; the one exception is the episode 'The Education of Jaime Sommers,' where Jaime poses as a British exchange student, letting Ryan use a variation of her real accent.

Katee Sackhoff, cast as Sarah Corvus, compared the role to that of Number Six from her concurrent series Battlestar Galactica, and fellow Galactica co-stars Aaron Douglas and Mark Sheppard also appeared in the show as a prison guard and as Anthony Anthros respectively.

Bruce McGill was cast as an unnamed high-ranking operative in the Bionics program, but his character never got to appear on screen because the WGA strike halted production before his scenes were filmed.

Production was halted in mid-November 2007 due to the Writers Guild of America strike, and the regular cast were suspended on half-pay for five weeks; the show's first season ultimately ended after only eight aired episodes.

The series went through several showrunners during production: Michael Dinner directed the pilot and exited as executive producer in June 2007, Glen Morgan joined in May but left after four months citing creative differences, Jason Katims served as a consultant, and Jason Cahill was ultimately hired as showrunner in late October.

The series premiere achieved NBC's highest midweek premiere ratings since The West Wing's 1999 debut, but ratings declined sharply, dropping to just 5.9 million viewers by the eighth and final episode, contributing to its cancellation.