The Bionic Woman is an American science fiction action-adventure television series created by Kenneth Johnson based on the 1972 novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin and starring Lindsay Wagner, that aired from January 14, 1976, to May 13, 1978.

Jaime's life is saved by Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) and Dr. Rudy Wells (Alan Oppenheimer, Martin E. Brooks) with bionic surgical implants similar to those of The Six Million Dollar Man Steve Austin (Lee Majors).

She also has extraordinary strength in her bionic right arm and in both legs that enables her to jump great distances and run at speeds exceeding 60 miles per hour.

[1] She is then assigned to secret missions as an occasional agent of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, while teaching middle and high school students in her regular life.

The character of Jaime Sommers first appears in a 1975 two-part episode of The Six Million Dollar Man titled "The Bionic Woman."

In the first episode, Steve travels to his hometown of Ojai, California, to buy a ranch that is for sale and to visit his mother and stepfather, Helen and Jim Elgin.

Goldman ultimately gives in and assigns Dr. Rudy Wells (played at this point in the series by Alan Oppenheimer) and the bionics team to rebuild her.

Dr. Wells determines that Jaime's body is rejecting her bionic implants and a massive cerebral clot is causing her headaches and malfunctions.

He soon discovers the truth when he is hospitalized after suffering severe damage to his bionic legs; he sees Jaime before slipping into a coma.

As Steve later learns, Wells' assistant, Dr. Michael Marchetti, urged Rudy (now played by Martin E. Brooks) to try his newly developed cryogenic techniques to keep Jaime in suspended animation until the cerebral clot could be safely removed, after which she was successfully revived.

A side effect of the procedure causes Jaime to develop retrograde amnesia, preventing her from recalling previous events including her relationship with Steve.

Realizing that he is the primary trigger for her painful memories, Steve reluctantly asks Oscar to transfer Jaime to another medical facility away from him.

There, she undergoes a successful surgery to restore her memory — she remembers everything except her love for Steve and the skydiving accident that led to her bionics.

However, the network rejected the proposed spin-off series and Max stayed with Jaime instead, making several appearances throughout the third season of The Bionic Woman.

Season two ran from September 1976 to May 1977 with 22 episodes and finished with good ratings (number 14 overall, slightly behind The Six Million Dollar Man).

Season two also had its most notable episodes, "Kill Oscar" in which Jaime fights the fembots, and "Deadly Ringer", for which Wagner won an Emmy Award.

[6] NBC picked up the show for a third (and final) season, which ran from September 1977 to May 1978 with 22 episodes and featured a new character, Chris Williams (Christopher Stone), as a recurring love interest for Jaime.

The series proved popular worldwide, particularly so in the United Kingdom, where it was shown on the ITV network and achieved unusually high audience figures for a science fiction show.

(By contrast, The Six Million Dollar Man never once entered the top 10 rating during its five seasons, though this was most likely because the show was never broadcast across all ITV stations at the same time).

The close connection between The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman was highlighted by the fact that Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks played their same characters on two television shows (eventually) running concurrently on two networks.

Jaime's missions frequently involved undercover work in which she takes on a secret identity, such as a nun, a police officer, a college student, an air-steward, a singer, and a professional wrestler.

As with spy shows at this time, Jaime was frequently kidnapped (more often than not with the use of chloroform or a drugged drink) and placed in dangerous situations from which she would need her bionic abilities to escape.

Jaime dealt with a number of bizarre cases, such as a villain who operates a hair salon using a "truth serum" shampoo to extract information from OSI agents.

Extreme cold is shown to inhibit her bionic implants, causing them to freeze up and malfunction (a scenario also common with Steve Austin).

While Steve Austin occasionally (particularly in early episodes) employed violence in order to complete missions, Jaime's approach tended to be less-violent and as such she was rarely shown directly using her bionic strength against a human opponent (and even when she did, never with deadly force).

Despite being on different networks, both The Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man were simultaneously cancelled in the spring of 1978 due to poor ratings; after 2 1/2 and 5 seasons respectively.

Unlike The Six Million Dollar Man, which ended with a standard episode, "On the Run" was written and filmed as a resolution to the series.

Jaime Sommers, based on the Wagner interpretation, was reintroduced in issue 3 and in June 2014 Dynamite announced it will publish The Bionic Woman Season 4, a continuation of the TV series, beginning in the fall of 2014.

[35] English actress Michelle Ryan (affecting an American accent) was cast in the title role for this pilot, and Katee Sackhoff played Sarah Corvus, the bionic woman's nemesis.

[36] The new series featured very few elements of the original script and focused on a much darker concept, but received generally negative reviews.