I was astonished to find, this morning when I arrived at the Convention Center, that the line to get into the special screening of the Bionic Woman pilot episode, was lined the entire length of the rear of the building -- and then wrapped around to run that same length again. (That's longer than the line to get into the exhibit hall, which is really saying something!)

It didn't take long to figure out what was up with this unusually long line. The Heroes panel was scheduled for the same ballroom, just two sessions later. Nearly everyone seemed to have the same idea: come for Bionic Woman, stay for Heroes to guarantee yourself a seat for the latter. In fact, I wouldn't put it past NBC to have planned these sessions this way to give Bionic Woman the biggest possible audience viewing.

Doug and I made it into the screening and managed to get fairly decent seats, and more or less right on time, the screening started.

The new Bionic Woman is a reimagining of the "Bionic" mythos, created by one of the minds behind the new Battlestar Galactica (David Eick), and follows a formula behind the recreation of that series: take the concepts from the original series that worked well and then update the rest with a darker, grittier, more drama-infused feel for modern audiences.

Mild spoilers follow... 

The story follows Jamie Summers, this time out played by British actress Michelle Ryan (doing a flawless American accent), who gets enhanced biomechanical implants in her body following a life-threatening accident, turning her into a conflicted superheroine. (In addition to her implants, she also gets "anthrocytes" in her bloodstream that help her heal faster, and military fight training files uploaded to chips in her brain.) Her boyfriend works for some sort of government thinktank that specializes in these body enhancements, and can't bare to lose her, so he performs the surgery on her himself after her accident.

Jamie's pretty freaked by her new body, to say the least. And she's not the only one unhappy with the situation. That shadowy government agency responsible for her upgrades isn't sure what to do with her, and a renegade agent long thought dead (played by Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff) becomes Jamie's arch-nemesis of sorts. Sackhoff appears in an unforgettable opening scene that sets the stage for the intensity of what's to come.

Spoilers end.

My feeling is that this thing has tons of potential. It was a fast-paced episode, crammed with a lot of exposition as it was, into a single hour, so some of the scenes could have used a lot more time to live and breathe to feel realistic. But it was a solidly entertaining hour, Ryan brings an easy magnetism to the role, and there's a compelling mythology already building beneath the story's surface that I look forward to finding out more about.

After the screening, a short Q&A panel was held with Eick, producer Glen Morgan, writer Jason Smilovic, Ryan, Sackhoff, and star Mark Sheppard (best known to Galactica fans as Romo Lampkin), who has an important, but mysterious role to play in the series' storyline.

When asked why they were updating Bionic Woman for television now, David Eick explained that this idea had existed in a slightly different form before they ever had the title to use, but once NBC approached him with the idea of updating Bionic Woman, he said it was an easy fit to use his existing idea and tweak some details, like character names, to better fit the show. As the show plays out, Jamie will work to find balance between having a normal life, and the superheroics she's called to now, while getting pulled in lots of different directions by individuals with their own agendas. Some parties want her to be more soldier or machine-like, while others bring out her humanity.

Eick likened her to the Peter Parker archetype: a reluctant hero who doesn't know what she's doing and must figure it out as she goes along. 

The episodes will not be heavily serialized like Galactica, but will have a larger mythology that's always unfolding under the weekly stand alone storylines. Bionic Woman premiers Wednesday, September 6th, at 9:PM.

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