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<\/a>I just finished watching the season premier of the new TV series on NBC<\/a>, Bionic Woman<\/a>. The title of this blog entry reflects the updating of the value of the original six million dollar woman to reflect inflation \u2013 plus me adding my \u201ctwo cents\u201d worth.<\/p>\nWe\u2019ve had various series that treat machine intelligences and people with seemingly miraculously enhanced abilities, even if the explanation is pseudo-technological (such as Heroes and The 4400). This is the first major series since Dark Angel, however, to genuinely offer what may rightly be called a cyborg (and one cannot help wondering if the choice of dark-haired actress Michelle Ryan<\/a> for the new Jamie Sommers was influenced by Jessica Alba\u2019s role in that series).<\/p>\n As with David Eick\u2019s other recent recreation of a classic science fiction series from the 70s, Battlestar Galactica, Bionic Woman<\/a> is not an attempt to retell the story of the original series The Bionic Woman<\/a>. For those of us waiting for the new season of BSG to begin, it was refreshing to see not one but two familiar faces from that series (Starbuck and the Chief), the former promising to return regularly on the series. The new recreated Bionic Woman<\/a> is darker, edgier (again like Battlestar Galactica), reminiscent in some ways of La Femme Nikita<\/a>. In any current series involving government secrets, we expect the lines between the \u2018good guys\u2019 and the \u2018bad guys\u2019 to be at least somewhat blurry. This is not a bad thing \u2013 in studying the Ramayana recently for a class on South Asian Civilizations, I had the chance to reflect on how that great classic of the Indian tradition avoids such moralistic oversimplifications. Star Wars too does a great job of bringing the same theme to our attention.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>One does not have to look beneath the surface of the new series to come into contact with the moral and religious overtones. As Jamie\u2019s boyfriend, bionics expert Will, says in an introductory lecture on bioethics, the question regarding enhancement technologies is \u201cWhen is it OK to intervene in God\u2019s work?\u201d Few if any today would have objections to glasses, contact lenses, or laser eye surgery. Prosthetics are fine, and we seem to be willing to go a step further and allow breasts, for example, to be enlarged. I doubt there is anyone in the world with an e-mail account who does not receive frequent spam offering them the opportunity to increase the size of organs they have and others they do not (or rather, they do, but because of their gender most have no interest in enlarging them). What would be wrong, then, in simply making improvements for their own sake? Why allow interventions to correct our vision but not to improve it?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-7253158993547670105?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")
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