Here's our personal benchmark for a TV pilot's budget: If it costs more than it did for the US to rebuild Steve Austin, then it's probably too much. But others disagree:

[F]or Fringe, Abrams shot a two-hour action show that opens with a flesh-eating virus set loose on an airplane. “Viewers are a lot more sophisticated now,” says veteran director and producer Harry Winer. “They demand greater production values, more-complex stories, and higher-quality special effects. And now, with HD, there’s no room for error.”

You see that? We're getting blamed for the high price of TV these days, just because we don't want to watch General Hospital in prime-time. I don't like where this is going; next time the Writers Guild or Screen Actors Guild goes on strike, studios will point the finger at us and say, "Listen, if they didn't want to see 'quality' then we'd have more money for you guys."

I like quality as much as the next person, but whatever happened to the school of "Less Is More"? A good show doesn't mean feeling the urge to blow the budget on special-effects, and you'd think that Abrams would know that; Lost is a master of the understated thrill, after all. Did Fringe have to cost $10 million? Probably not - but perhaps Abrams just got carried away with his Star Trek budget and couldn't bring himself to tighten the pursestrings back up.

$10 Million for a Pilot? [NYMag]

With the continued, somewhat inexplicable, success of Hancock, it seems that the only constant in Hollywood math is "(Will Smith) + (4th of July Weekend) x (Genre Movie) = $$$." Bearing that in mind, we thought that it's be kind of us to demonstrate to some stalled SF movie projects just to how to use the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (and, let's face it, wherever else he wants to be the Prince of, these days) to get their movies up and running again.

Halo
Will Smith is...: The Mysterious Master Chief.
Why This Works: Sure, in the games (and the novels, and the comic books), you never see Master Chief's face, but just as that didn't work for the Judge Dredd movie, it's not going to work here, either. Pull up that visor and let's see the sensitive man underneath who knows that war is hell and space war even moreso. Smith got an Oscar nomination for The Pursuit of Happyness, so let's see him bring the pain here. Literally.

The Six Million Dollar Man
Will Smith is...: Well, Steve Austen, obviously.
Why This Works: Isn't it time to ruin another '70s TV show with the same kind of comedy treatment that worked so well for Starsky And Hutch? Put Smith in the familiar role and let him play it for laughs - Austen's cybernetic upgrade not only gives him more strength, super-powered eyesight and the ability to run surprisingly quickly, but also the power to loosen up his uptight white boss, played by Billy Bob Thornton, continuing his streak of slumming it in broad comedies. Throw in a Will Farrell cameo and it's box office gold, baby.

Ghostbusters 3
Will Smith is...: Nerdy accountant Louis Tully.
Why This Works: So Rick Moranis doesn't want to come back to the role that made him famous? That's no problem - Replace him with an even bigger star. Here's your explanation as to how it happened: Between movies, Tully had a terrible accident that forced him to have an incredible amount of reconstructive surgery. When he recovered from the surgery, he was a changed man: Tall, attractive, charismatic... and no longer afraid of no ghosts.

Green Lantern
Will Smith is...: Hal Jordan. Admit it; you thought I was going to say John Stewart, didn't you?
Why This Works: Smith takes on the role of ladykiller test pilot Jordan, the one man who can save the world through the power of his mind. It's the next step of Smith's Independence Day role, but with the added benefit of a lack of Jeff Goldblum's scientist hacker. Plus, who wouldn't want to see Smith in this role, besides the legion of fanboys who'd get upset that they didn't pick a white actor?

Wild Wild West 2
Will Smith is...: Captain James West.
Why This Works: ...Okay, maybe this is the exception that proves the rule. Never mind.

Boys in the '70s were given all manner of toys to tie in with their favorite televisual cyborg; not only could you get a Steve Austin action figure, there were also additional "critical assignment arms" to collect as well!

And when Steve got tired after fighting Maskatron - "The ultimate enemy of the Six Million Dollar Man" - he could always kick back in the Bionic Transport and Repair Station. Which, as the ad copy states, is multi-purpose:

Poor Jaime Sommers didn't fare so well, though. Not only did she not get her own villain to fight, she didn't seem to get to do that much at all, besides... well... be a Bionic Barbie. Look at the way her figure is described:

Beauty and Fashion plus Bionic Action! 12 1/4" beautiful fully articulated figure modeled after Lindsay Wagner, the star of the Bionic Woman TV show. Silky fully rooted hair... Dressed in official stylish jogging outfit and tennis shoes.

Kenner Toys 1976 Catalog [PlaidStallions.com]

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• Geordi LaForge's visor: When Star Trek launched The Next Generation in XXX, one of the most striking visuals was Levar Burton wearing what looked like a car air filter over his eyes. The visor allowed his character, who was born blind, to see in the infrared spectrum, at the microscopic level, and to detect energy levels. He could even detect vital signs and tell if someone was lying, making him handy to have around. However, he must have been happy when the First Contact film came around, because he didn't have to wear that wacky visor anymore.
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• Predator-Vision: In the Predator films, the titular aliens have evolved to the point where they have developed their own infrared vision. However, they've invented helmets with enhancements that take the vision even further, letting them see with X-Ray vision, to detect radioactive sources, auto-target, and even (in the Aliens Vs. Predator films) to see with sort kind of electro-magnetic vision that allows them to track Aliens, who don't show up on infrared scanners. While those helmets looked sleek and cool with awesome functions, they still resembled fugly crab-aliens underneath.
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• Luke Skywalker's binoculars: When Luke was trapped on Tatooine as a teenager, he had loads of time to daydream and imagine what life was like on other worlds. So he'd frequently scan the sky and the horizon with his binoculars, hoping to find some sort of excitement. Plus, they came in handy when R2D2 and C3P0 went missing. No idea what all the different numbers and gauges mean, besides distance (maybe Luke had ganked his Uncle's golf binocs) but the view through them was 1977 gee-whiz tech.
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• Cyclop's visor from The X-Men: This special visor which was outfitted with ruby quartz lenses that have the ability to block his optic blasts. So, it might not allow him to see things closer or at the molecular level, but it does keep him from blowing the hell out of everyone and everything he looks at. If you ask us, that's not a bad enhancement. Later he was able to sport some ruby quartz sunglasses, although that sort of makes his "Cyclops" name a bit useless.
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• The glasses in William Gibson's Virtual Light: In this novel, the characters are trying to track down a pair of glasses that you can't see through. Instead, they use EMP drivers to send signals directly to your optic nerve. As a result, they allow you to see without having photos hit your retinas, and they can also pump more information into the signal. For instance, one of the characters describes that the glasses cost about the same as a "small Japanese car", and that when you look at things through them, "Put 'em on, you go out walking, everything looks normal, but every plant you see, every tree, there's this little label hanging there, what its name is, Latin under that." One pair to go, please.
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• Nanotech eyes in Deus Ex: In Warren Spector's dystopian future video game, you play a "nanotech operative" who has the ability to upgrade and enhance his body in the field, which you'll have to do in order to complete the game. One of the coolest modifications was upgrading your eyes so you could see in the dark and through walls. This usually comes in handy when people are trying to kill you, as you can imagine.
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• The HUD in Down and Out in the Magic Kindom: In Cory Doctorow's future, people live with onboard computers in their brains that allow them to make phone calls, record their daily lives through sight and sound, and provide heads-up displays in their eyes where they can check the time, read files, surf the web, and check other people's "whuffie" scores. Whuffie basically tells you "how cool is this person?" and becomes the currency of the day. As interesting as that is, we're most exciting by surfing the net on our eyeballs.
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• The sunglasses in They Live: In John Carpenter's "I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum" humans vs. aliens film, former pro wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper finds a pair of very special sunglasses. They let him see the world as it actually is with fugly aliens controlling the human race, subliminal messages they keep them sedate and to "Obey." Of course, Roddy isn't too happy with this, and goes on a killing spree.
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• The Bionic Eye: In both the Six Million Dollar Man and the newly rebooted The Bionic Woman (sorry old Bionic woman, you got stuck with a Bionic ear), the main characters are both outfitted with bionic eyes that give them the ability to zoom in on subjects and see into the infrared. Not one was this one of the coolest Bionic upgrades in my opinion, but it also made for the best action figure I ever lost. Colonel Steve Austin's action figure had a big hole in his head that you could look through to "simulate" bionic vision. My parents probably thought I'd glued that thing to my head. Bionic eyes or bionic contact lenses, let's hope you get here soon.
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Famous names: Lee Majors, Richard Anderson, Martin E. Brooks, Harve Bennett

Crunchy goodness: 2

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: Lindsay Wagner appeared in a series of episodes of season two as Jaime Sommers, who goes skydiving with Steve and becomes horribly injured. She gets her own bionic limbs and Steve decides to marry her, the only woman who can keep up with him. But then her body rejects her implants and she dies of a blood clot... only to come back to "life" shortly afterwards with no memory of her romance with Steve. Wagner went on to star in her own show, The Bionic Woman.

Change of pace: The show started as a series of TV movies, produced by Battlestar Galactica creator Glen A. Larson, which portrayed Steve as a snarky, reluctant superspy. But the actual series, produced by StarTrek II: Wrath Of Khan producer Bennett, was less James Bond-y and more friendly.

Memorable product tie-in: The classic Steve Austin action figure, wearing his red astronaut jumpsuit and featuring a big hole in the back of his head so you can look through his "bionic eye." The bionic right arm, controlled by a button in his back,could lift objects weighing up to two pounds.

The Six Million Dollar Man: Episode Guide