Forgotten Villains: The Bionic Woman: The Fembots

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Photos copyright Universal

I was recently made aware of just how many movies and television shows the younger generation have never heard of, never mind seen. So to that end, we look back at some characters you really need to see before you kick the bucket.

Every hero needs an enemy of equal or nearly equal strength to battle. For Bionic Woman Jaime Sommers, this came in the form of the deadly Fembots.

The battle begins in the three part crossover episodes of Kill Oscar. These spanned both the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman shows. They were the creations of one Dr Franklin, an old associate of the boss of OSI, Oscar Goldman (the late Richard Anderson). When Franklin came to him years before for funding for his proposed Fembots, Oscar chose to give the funding to Rudy Wells (Martin E Brooks) instead for the bionics programme. Disgruntled Franklin has perfected his Fembots and is now selling them to the highest foreign bidder. They are exact duplicates of the person they replace, in this case Oscar’s secretary and Jaime’s friend, Callahan and Rudy’s assistant, Linda Wilson. Jaime is experiencing a strange buzzing and Rudy thinks her bionic ear is defective. In reality she is picking up on the presence of a Fembot. Little does she know how close they are.

When Oscar is kidnapped by Franklin’s robots, Callahan fails to back up Jaime’s story causing her to confront Callahan at her apartment later that evening.

When they spoke earlier in the episode the human Callahan was going to visit her mother but Jaime asks about her plans by changing the name of the city her mother lives in. Having met physical duplicates before, Jaime thinks this is just a look a like but when Callahan grabs her by the wrist in a steel grip, Jaime knows this is different. The Fembots may have been downloaded with a person’s files but they cannot hope to know the little every day conversations they have with people. But after striking her, she doesn’t expect Callahan’s face to fly off revealing a robot underneath. As bionics have their own sound effects (and yes, to this day I still impersonate them when lifting something heavy much to my kid’s annoyance) so do the Fembots when they move. When the Linda Fembot joins the fight Jaime is outnumbered. She throws an armchair in an impressive sequence to stop them but they keep coming. Jaime makes an impossible jump which lands her in hospital close to death.

Steve Austin then takes over as he and Rudy mount a rescue mission for Oscar. He has met robot doubles before in Day of the Robot so Steve is not fazed by the idea at all. He rescues Oscar, Callahan and Linda but realises too late that this Oscar is in fact a robot. The name Fembot is misleading as male robots are also made. With Jaime recovered and Oscar having issued orders that he is to be killed, Franklin broadcasts his intentions through a fallen Fembot. He has perfected his weather machine and created a storm around his island to stop them from getting to him. But Steve and Jaime are launched through the torpedo tubes of a submarine and fight off Fembot forces on the island to stop Franklin which they do. Here we learn the Fembots are susceptible to lightning and only for this, our bionic heroes may not have been able to stop Franklin at all.

Rudy however keeps one in his lab to stoudy but when it reactivates in Fembots of Las Vegas, Jaime again finds herself up against them once more. This time Franklin’s son, Carl, is out to take revenge on Oscar, Rudy and Jaime for his father’s death. He has an orbital platform that can take out any city from space, His Fembots are already in place when our heroes turn up in Las Vegas. Jaime again suffers that buzzing in her ear making her seem slightly paranoid to Oscar and Rudy. Carl believes the Fembots are superior to bionics as machines can evolve faster to even greater heights of efficiency.

Their target is Dr Rod Kyler who due to an immune deficiency must live in a bubble for fear of catching a cold and dying. He is the creator of a space energy weaweapon platform and Carl Franklin has already replaced his girlfriend with a Fembot in order to get information out of him. Jaime rescues Kyler from the Fembots and manages to leap to safety by grabbing the landing strut on Kyler’s heliccopter leading to some great shots of a dangling Jaime flying over Vegas.

She is genuinely afraid of the Fembots as she still has nightmares about her near death fight in Callahan’s apartment. This is seen when she discovers a Fembot in Rudy’s lab. That’s where the Bionic Woman went beyond other hero shows; she had a gentle frailty to her that the audience could connect with.

It turns out that Carl is in fact a flawless robot intent on completing his creator’s work. It is a shocker and a great twist leaving Jaime to challenge him to a fight to the death on a high rise tower as the energy weapon targets them. Rudy has disabled all the Fembots and it is nail biting as Jaime flees the tower before it is destroyed by the energy weapon. She tricks Carl into falling from the tower and his mechanical body lies smashed on the concrete below.

The Fembots would return in the comic strip as season four of the Bionic Woman and Austin Powers had his own Fembots with slightly naughty improvements that a television show could not get away with. The look of the Fembots can be found in the movie Westworld when the Gunslinger’ face comes off to reveal the robotics beneath. Having perfect duplicates beside you is unnerving especially as they do not need sleep, food, water and keep on coming. They will fulfill their programming until it is done including murder. If you are their target they can sit right beside you before making their move because you know the person they are impersonating and trust them. Indeed if they are a beautiful woman or handsome man they are capable of drawing you in before they strike.

But they will always be remembered for their battles with the bionic duo as the almost perfect assassin.