The Six Million Dollar Man Rankings And Opinions

If you grew up hearing “We can rebuild him. We have the technology,” you already know that The Six Million Dollar Man isn’t just a ’70s TV show; it’s a full-on pop culture time capsule. Running on ABC from 1973 to 1978, the series turned astronaut-turned-cyborg secret agent Steve Austin into one of the decade’s most recognizable TV heroes, complete with slow-motion runs and that iconic electronic “dit-dit-dit” sound effect when the bionics kicked in.

Today, fans still debate which episodes are the best, which villains were the most menacing, and whether The Bionic Woman sometimes outshone its parent series. Add in reunion movies, comics, toys, and endless reruns, and you’ve got a franchise that refuses to stay in the pastno matter what modern critics might say about the pacing or the dated special effects.

Quick Refresher: What Made Steve Austin a TV Icon?

The series is based on Martin Caidin’s novel Cyborg and centers on Colonel Steve Austin, a test pilot catastrophically injured in a crash. After a $6 million operation (over $40 million in today’s dollars), Austin wakes up with a bionic right arm, two bionic legs, and a bionic left eye that grants telescopic and infrared vision. His new hardware lets him run at highway speeds, punch through doors, and see things that are literally miles awayall while working covert missions for the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI).

Surrounded by recurring characters like his handler Oscar Goldman, his doctor Rudy Wells, and later love interest Jaime Sommers (the future Bionic Woman), Steve Austin became a pop culture shorthand for “enhanced human” decades before cinematic universes and superhero streaming series were a thing.

How Are “The Six Million Dollar Man” Rankings Decided?

When you look up “best Six Million Dollar Man episodes” today, you’ll find a mix of fan-driven rankings and critic reviews. Fan sites and episode ranking platforms like Episode Ninja and EpisodeHive aggregate votes from viewers, often elevating high-concept science fiction plots, emotional crossovers, and late-series spectacle.

Critics, meanwhile, can be a bit harsher. Slant Magazine’s review of the complete DVD collection calls the show a “time capsule” that sometimes looks cheap, repetitive, and politically cautious by modern standards, even while acknowledging its importance as a template for later, more sophisticated genre TV.

So in this guide, we’ll blend fan rankings, critical commentary, and long-term cultural impact to create a more rounded set of Six Million Dollar Man rankings and opinionsnot just “which episode had the coolest explosion.”

Top 10 Six Million Dollar Man Episodes (Ranked with Context)

Fan-vote rankings tend to skew toward the later seasons, where the show leaned hard into big sci-fi ideasmoon missions, alien islands, killer probes, and Bigfoot. Using aggregated scores and fan consensus, here’s a curated top 10, with some explanation of why each one still lands with viewers today.

1. “Dead Ringer” (Season 5, Episode 18)

This late-series standout sees Steve Austin dealing with brushes with death and eerie visions that may or may not be supernatural. Fans love it because it breaks the show’s usual mission-of-the-week pattern and leans into mood, atmosphere, and character introspection. It feels like a “what does all this bionic heroism actually mean?” episode, not just another operation.

2–3. “Return of Deathprobe (Part 1 & 2)” (Season 5, Episodes 14–15)

If you want the quintessential ’70s sci-fi disaster story, the Deathprobe saga is it. A runaway Venus probe, tougher than Steve’s bionics, threatens mass destruction while Steve has to outthink, not just outpunch, the machine. The two-parter ups the stakes beyond a single bad guythis is about technology gone rogue, which hits differently in a world now swimming in AI, drones, and self-driving tech.

4 & 9. “Sharks (Part 1 & 2)” (Season 5, Episodes 1–2)

Submarines, nuclear payloads, piracy, and, yes, actual trained sharks. It sounds like someone put a spy thriller, a disaster movie, and a nature-attack flick into a blenderbut that’s the exact campy-serious tone that makes The Six Million Dollar Man so watchable. Fans rank these episodes highly for the tension, the underwater stunts, and Steve being pushed far outside the usual desert bases and secret labs.

5 & 7. “Deadly Countdown (Part 1 & 2)” (Season 5, Episodes 3–4)

Here, Steve is entangled in a satellite test and a plot to hijack missiles for sale to foreign powers. It’s classic Cold War era anxiety filtered through bionic action, and the two-parter keeps piling on complicationssabotage, kidnapping, and moral pressureuntil the final countdown (literally) forces Steve to rely on both his tech and his judgment.

6. “Bigfoot V” (Season 5, Episode 5)

No Six Million Dollar Man rankings and opinions list is complete without mentioning Bigfoot. The Sasquatch episodes are legendary: part conspiracy, part monster movie, part weird ‘70s cosmic sci-fi. In “Bigfoot V,” Steve returns to investigate new sightings, tapping into the show’s recurring idea that not all “monsters” are truly villainsand sometimes the government is just as suspicious as the creature in the woods.

8. “The Blue Flash” (Season 3, Episode 10)

This earlier-season favorite plays a little closer to spy thriller than sci-fi, with Steve investigating a missing OSI agent and a mysterious boarding house. Instead of sheer bionic spectacle, it’s all about suspense, undercover work, and unraveling a conspiracy one odd clue at a timeproof that the show could be engaging even without aliens or killer robots.

10. “The Bionic Woman (Part 2)” (Season 2, Episode 20)

“The Bionic Woman” two-parter doesn’t just introduce Jaime Sommers; it practically invents the emotional backbone of the franchise. Part 2, in particular, is famous (and infamous) for putting Jaime through surgery, espionage, and ultimately apparent death when her body rejects the bionics. Fans still talk about the trauma of watching this as kids, and critics highlight it as one of the best written stories in the entire bionic universe.

Beyond Episodes: Best Villains, Arcs, And Bionic Concepts

Top Villains and Threats

• Deathprobe – The unstoppable space probe that outclasses Steve physically and forces him to rely on strategy instead of brute bionic force.
• Fembots and “Kill Oscar” – Although “Kill Oscar (II)” technically lands on some best-episode lists, the whole arcwith lifelike female robots infiltrating OSIis a fan favorite for its paranoia-meets-camp tone and for tying closely into The Bionic Woman.
• Barney Miller, the Seven Million Dollar Man – In “The Bionic Criminal,” Barney’s breakdown raises tough questions about mental health, power, and what happens when bionics are dropped into unstable lives.
• Bigfoot – Technically more of an anti-hero than a villain, Bigfoot symbolizes the wild unknown. The show leans into UFO and ancient-astronaut vibes while still giving Steve a formidable physical match.

Most Influential Story Arcs

• The Bionic Woman arc – From Jaime’s introduction to her death, resurrection, and eventual spin-off, this storyline gave the franchise emotional stakes and expanded its universe.
• Reunion TV Movies – Films like The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, Bionic Showdown, and Bionic Ever After? kept the characters alive into the late ’80s and ’90s, eventually delivering the long-awaited wedding of Steve and Jaime.
• Time-bending and space episodes – Stories like “Just a Matter of Time” and “Dark Side of the Moon” pushed the show from grounded espionage into cosmic, almost comic-book territory, showing how far the concept could stretch.

Critics vs. Fans: Does The Show Still Hold Up?

Here’s where the opinions get spicy. Modern criticism often points out that The Six Million Dollar Man can feel slow, episodic, and visually dated, with limited political edge despite its Cold War backdrop. Slant Magazine’s review of the DVD collection calls it “cheap-looking, repetitive, and utterly boring” in places, arguing that the show soft-pedaled real-world issues and leaned too hard on formula.

Fans, on the other hand, tend to view the very same qualities as part of its charm. The slow-motion sequences, the stylized sound effects, and the earnestness of Lee Majors’s performance give the series a sincerity you don’t always see in modern, ultra-ironic genre TV. Nostalgic retrospectives argue that the show and its spin-off symbolized a moment when the fusion of humanity and technology felt hopeful rather than ominousa fantasy of being “better, stronger, faster” without losing your soul.

Meanwhile, The Bionic Woman often scores higher in critical pieces for its emotional writing and Lindsay Wagner’s Emmy-winning performance. Some rankings and essays flat-out say the spin-off outshines the original in depth and elasticity of tone, especially in episodes that blend heartfelt character beats with truly wild plots (mind-control shampoo, bionic dogs, pro-wrestling undercover workthe ’70s really went for it).

Ranking The Franchise As A Whole

Best Seasons

1. Season 3 – A sweet spot of strong writing, the introduction and return of Jaime Sommers, and a more confident balance between human drama and sci-fi spectacle.
2. Season 5 – Not always subtle, but wildly imaginative: Deathprobe, Bigfoot’s return, moon missions, and some of the most fan-voted favorites land here.
3. Season 2 – Less polished but crucial for establishing tone and mythology, especially with “The Bionic Woman” two-parter and “The Deadly Replay,” which revisits the crash that created Steve in the first place.

Best Bionic Moments Across The Franchise

• Steve outrunning vehicles at 60+ mph, captured in slow motion with the famous sound effecta visual shorthand for “superhuman” that pop culture still borrows today.
• The emotional scenes around Jaime’s surgeries and apparent death, which gave kids of the ’70s one of their first “TV heartbreak” memories.
• The reunion movies culminating in Bionic Ever After?, finally letting Steve and Jaime marry after decades of near-misses and interrupted missions.

Experiences, Nostalgia, And How Opinions Evolve Over Time (Approx. )

One of the most interesting things about The Six Million Dollar Man rankings and opinions is how they shift depending on who you askand when they first met Steve Austin.

For people who watched the show during its original ABC run, the memories are often tied to family rituals: kids racing into the living room before the opening credits, parents joking about how “six million” sounded like an unimaginable fortune, and everybody trying to run in fake slow motion across the carpet. Those viewers remember specific episodeslike the Bigfoot saga or “The Bionic Woman” two-parterless as isolated stories and more as events. The cliffhangers lingered all week. The schoolyard the next day turned into an instant review panel.

Fast-forward a few decades, and the experience of discovering the show looks completely different. Many newer fans first meet Steve Austin through DVD box sets, streaming bundles, or retro cable marathons. They binge episodes instead of waiting a week between missions. As a result, their rankings often prioritize pacing and variety: season-spanning arcs, weirder sci-fi concepts, and episodes that stand out visually in a long weekend of viewing.

There’s also a generational split in what feels “dated” versus what feels “comforting.” Younger viewers, raised on hyper-slick superhero movies, may find the slow-motion fights and brightly lit sets a bit quaint, even unintentionally funny. But the same qualities can feel soothing to others: the show is earnest, unhurried, and rarely grim. Steve Austin may be a government agent, but he’s not tortured by grimdark monologues; he’s closer to an old-fashioned adventure hero who just happens to have cutting-edge hardware.

Fans who cross over into The Bionic Woman quickly notice how opinions shift when Jaime Sommers enters the conversation. Rankings that started as “best Steve episodes” turn into “best bionic universe episodes.” Many viewers, especially women who caught the reruns in the ’80s and ’90s, talk about Jaime as their first experience seeing a female action hero treated as capable and clever rather than just decorative. That emotional connection often nudges Jaime-centric crossovers and reunion films higher up in the rankings than a strictly technical evaluation would place them.

Another layer: behind-the-scenes knowledge. Commentaries, documentaries, and fan sites reveal how the stunts were staged, how the crash footage used real NASA lifting-body accidents, and how the writers tried to define limits for Steve’s abilities so the fantasy wouldn’t spin out of control. Once viewers learn those details, episodes that once seemed simple take on extra texture; they’re not just “that one with the robot” but a showcase for the stunt team, the writers, or a guest star who would later become famous.

So when someone insists that Season 5 is peak Six Million Dollar Man while another swears by the early, more grounded seasons, they’re not just arguing about scripts. They’re ranking memories, viewing habits, and personal thresholds for camp. That’s part of what keeps the franchise alive. Even if a critic calls the show a “relic,” the ongoing debates, re-watch projects, podcasts, and fan rankings prove that Steve Austin’s world still has something to sayespecially about how audiences respond differently to the same blend of technology, heroism, and heart.

Conclusion: Better, Stronger, Ranked-er

In the end, The Six Million Dollar Man occupies a unique place in TV history. As a piece of ’70s genre television, it helped define what a sci-fi action hero could look like on the small screen. As a franchise, it spawned an iconic spin-off, reunion movies, and mountains of merchandise. And as an ongoing conversation topic, it’s a living example of how fans and critics can look at the same set of slow-motion punches and hear very different things.

Whether your personal list puts “Dead Ringer,” “Return of Deathprobe,” or “The Bionic Woman” at the top, the real fun lies in the debate itself. Rankings change, opinions evolve, but that opening narration“Better… stronger… faster”still hits like a promise. Not just about a single bionic man, but about how TV storytelling keeps getting rebuilt and re-evaluated, one rewatch at a time.