episode #69 - The Ultimate Imposter

episode #12 of 4th season / Air Date: 1/2/77 written by W.T.Zacha, Lionel E.Siegel directed by Paul Stanley

This was actually a pilot for a new series; Steve Austin (Lee Majors) appears only in the first couple of scenes and then pops up again in the epilogue. The focus of the episode is on a new hero and possibly new agent Joe (Stephen Macht), an English professor who is helping Dr. Rudy Wells (Martin E. Brooks) with his latest project/invention: a method to transfer massive amounts of computer info directly into a human brain. There's an overload and Joe appears to get a brain injury, going into a coma; but, he recovers and becomes the first human who can accept this new process without problems. He wants no part of Oscar Goldman's OSI agency when Goldman hints at the possibilities. However, Joe's girlfriend (Pamela Hensley), also an OSI agent, has been captured by a bad guy (David Sheiner); Joe decides to go in and rescue her, armed with all the information that can possibly help him in successfully completing the task.
This was actually pretty interesting and it's a shame nothing more came of it (no new series after this pilot). You would think that an episode with Austin being mostly absent would be substandard, but this guy named Joe and the new computer tech of giving him expert abilities almost instantly was very intriguing. He becomes an expert counterfeiter in this first go-around, as well as master of such things as intricate alarm systems and hand-to-hand combat. Also interesting was the whole approach to Joe and the concept: he resists the possibility of becoming an OSI agent at first, but when he's in the middle of the mission, he finds that it's an exciting experience, one that he can get used to. We can relate; if we could become experts at certain disciplines so quickly, we would want to indulge ourselves in showing off our abilities - that's a no-brainer. The villain isn't captured at the end, suggesting his return in a future series, but it never happened. This episode also opened the door to there being a cadre of special OSI agents - a couple of bionic ones, Joe here, the guy from The Bionic Woman episode Biofeedback - but this also was never developed. BoG's Score: 7 out of 10

Bionic Trivia: that is indeed Kim Basinger in one of her earliest roles, in one scene as the villain's daughter; her character appears to be unaware of her father's illegal activities; had there been a series from this, she may well have returned.