TV show intros are usually all about the good times. “The Six Million Dollar Man” says fuck that. Tension is hardwired into this sequence. Letters appear on screen like circuits being soldered methodically into a board. Radio squelch and technical chatter murmurs in the background. Hulks of analog equipment, a time-code silently pacing the action, and jargon pull-quotes like “We have separation.” It’s only 15 seconds in, and you’re already shaking with anticipation and fear; you’re Chuck Yeager stealing an F-104 Starfighter, or at least Major Tom. Close-up of Lee Majors’ test pilot in his helmet - this is a cultural moment. “I got a blowout.” (Mayday Mayday, Maverick’s in a flat spin; he’s heading out to sea.) The faces of The Guv are introduced as the ground cruelly meets the man who fell to earth.
And then…an operating room.
“Steve Austin. Astronaut. A man barely alive.” More sick aesthetics - the frame-within-frame, the time-code again, the readout of vital statistics, the matrix of a human body, and that line. That line! “Gentleman, we can rebuild him.” These seconds suggest everything. The Talking Heads’ album covers for both More Songs About Buildings and Food and Fear of Music, the cold beating heart of Electronic Body Music, RoboCop’s POV, and the larger sense - a scary-cool new idea in 1974 - that what makes us tick isn’t so elusive that it can’t be rebuilt by science. And maybe it’s better than it was before. Maybe.
Better. Stronger. Faster. Cue the Chemical Brothers and every single beat or frame of film the dudes in Daft Punk ever produced. The human condition, monitored by machines. Nail us with the tile graphic, and Steve Austin and his bionic body running circles around Pritikin. Science rules. But what happens to you when you almost die, only to live better, faster, stronger? Are you any of those things, or just the unknown stuntman?
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