Overview
The character of Jaime Sommers first appears in a two-part episode of The Six Million Dollar Man in 1975 titled "The Bionic Woman". In this episode, Steve travels to his old hometown of Ojai, California, to buy a ranch that is for sale and to visit his mother and stepfather. During his visit, he rekindles his old relationship with Jaime Sommers, now one of America's top tennis players. Their relationship progresses rapidly to the point where Steve proposes marriage.
During an outing, Steve and Jaime take part in some skydiving. Jaime's parachute malfunctions and she plummets toward the ground, falling through tree branches and hitting the ground, suffering traumatic injuries to her head, legs, and right arm. Steve then makes an emotional plea to his boss, Oscar Goldman, to save Jaime's life by implementing bionics, even going so far as to commit Jaime to becoming an operative of the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). Goldman agrees to assign Dr. Rudy Wells (played at this point in the series by Alan Oppenheimer) and the bionics team to rebuild her.
Jaime's body is reconstructed with parts similar to Steve's but the actual cost of rebuilding her is not revealed. It is said humorously in dialogue to be less than the $6 million it cost to rebuild Austin because the replacement parts for her were "smaller". However, the German dub of the show contradicts this as it is called Die Sieben Millionen Dollar Frau (translated: The Seven Million Dollar Woman) in that country. Like Steve before her, Jaime is given two bionic legs, capable of propelling her at speeds exceeding 60 mph (having been clocked at more than 62 mph in "Doomsday Is Tomorrow" and outpacing a race car going 100 mph in "Winning is Everything") and jumping to and from great heights, and her right arm is replaced by a lifelike prosthetic capable of bending steel or throwing objects great distances. Whereas Austin received a bionic eye, the inner mechanism of Jaime's right ear is replaced by a bionic device that gives her amplified hearing such that she can detect most sounds regardless of volume or frequency. These bionic implants cannot be distinguished from natural body parts, except on occasions where they sustain damage and the mechanisms beneath the skin become exposed, as seen in Part 2 of the episode Doomsday Is Tomorrow, when Jaime sustained damage to her right leg. Also, as Jaime discovered on a vacation in the Bahamas, her bionic skin cannot tan with exposure to sunlight.
After Jaime recovers from her operation, Steve tries to break his agreement with Oscar that she will serve as an agent for OSI, but Jaime agrees to go on a mission for Oscar, despite Steve's concerns. During the mission, however, her bionics malfunction, and she experiences severe and crippling headaches. Subsequently, Dr. Wells determines that Jaime's body is rejecting her bionic implants as a massive cerebral clot is apparently causing her headaches and malfunctions. Soon after, she goes berserk and crashes her way out of the hospital. Steve takes pursuit and eventually catches up with her, where she collapses in his arms. Soon after, Jaime dies on the operating table, her body shutting down. The episode ends with Steve weeping at her memory.
The character was so popular that ABC asked the writers to find a way to bring her back. In the first episode of the next season, it is revealed that Jaime had not died after all, although Steve was not informed of this fact. He soon discovers the truth when he is hospitalized at Dr. Wells' clinic after a mission goes bad in which he suffers severe damage to his bionic legs and he sees Jaime as he is being rolled into the operating room before slipping into a coma.
As Steve later learns, Wells' assistant, Dr. Michael Marcetti, had urged Rudy (now played by Martin E. Brooks) to try his newly developed cryogenic techniques to keep Jaime in suspended animation until the cerebral clot could be safely removed, after which she was successfully revived. A side-effect of the procedure, however, causes Jaime to develop amnesia and forget her relationship with Steve and any attempt to make her remember her life with Steve causes her headaches and pain. Steve reluctantly lets her go on to live her own life as an agent for the OSI, although the pair would frequently work together on missions and reestablish a friendship.
Jaime, now retired as a tennis player, takes a job as a schoolteacher in Ojai, California. She lives in a refurbished rented apartment over a barn located on the ranch owned by Steve's mother and stepfather, who are aware of their bionic nature and double lives as secret agents. In Season Three, Jaime adopts Maximillion, a German Shepherd dog that has been given a bionic jaw and legs and could run at speeds of up to 90 mph. His bionics actually pre-dated Steve and Jamie's as he was a lab animal who was badly injured in a lab fire and was then used as a guinea pig for bionics. He was named Maximillion because the cost of his bionics was one million dollars. When he was introduced, he started experiencing symptoms that suggested an age-related variant of bionic rejection and was due to be dissected, but it was discovered the condition was actually psychological due to memories of the traumatic fire that injured him when he was a puppy. As such, the dog was allowed to live and become Jaime's pet.
Read more about this topic: The Bionic Woman