Bionic Woman/Original Pilot

Original Pilot
Pilot 0
Airdate	unaired
Written by	Laeta Kalogridis Jason Smilovic
Directed by	Michael Dinner
— N/A	1x01 → Second Chances
Bionic Woman — Season One

Original Pilot is the unaired version of the pilot to Bionic Woman. Jamie Sommers undergoes intensive surgery to install bionic implants after a car wreck nearly kills her.

Co-Stars:

Plot Overview

In a non-distinct bunker, a vaguely military group comes across dead scientists strewn around a hallway. They discover the source of the murders, a woman named Sarah who claims that she isn't in control of her body, in a nearby room and are forced to kill her before she can attack them as well.

This, however, has little to do with Jamie Sommers at the moment. The scene changes to a crowded club where she is a bartender. When she isn't tending bar, Sommers is taking care of her deaf sister as if she were a surrogate daughter and dating a man who she believes is completely out of her league since he's a professor and a surgeon. One night, she goes to dinner with her boyfriend, Will Anthros, and tells him that she's pregnant. She expects him to run in the opposite direction as fast as he can, but he proposes marriage. They begin to drive home after dinner, but are struck by a semi truck which wraps their car around a streetlight. The truck that hit them was driven by the woman from before, who is clearly not as dead as she appeared to be.

Jamie and Will survived, but she suffered extensive damage to her arm, legs and eye. Instead of being taken to a hospital, she's airlifted to a remote location where Will performs major reconstructive surgery on her. While she's under anesthesia as a patient who technically doesn't exist, Sarah has reported the death of Will as a success.

Many hours later, Jamie comes out of surgery and wakes up. Will tells her that though she lost the baby, there was no permanent damage to her reproductive organs and that she would be able to get pregnant again. Her second concern is that she can't feel her legs or right arm, which is a bit more difficult to explain. Will tries to break it to her that her legs, right arm, right ear and right eye needed to be replaced. He tells her that her body is being healed by nanomachines that he calls "anthrocytes." Her face and arm are nearly completely healed, but her legs aren't even close. She freaks out and throws Will against a wall, prompting the surgical team to tranquilize her before she can do any more damage. When she wakes up, her legs are healed. She immediately figures that it was a dream, but Will comes back into the room with a broken arm and she knows that it wasn't a dream at all.

In the bowels of this installation, Jamie is considered as a candidate for some kind of non-military program. Though there is some disagreement from the man who "killed" the last subject, who sees a need for military applications of bionic limbs, Jamie is eventually entered into some tests to see if she can be released into the world again. This includes rehabilitation (which she refuses), a psych evaluation and combat training (even though she's a civilian). The leader of the cabal asks when Jamie's remaining implants will go online, but Will refuses to answer. Instead, he smuggles her out of the building so that she won't become part of their designs. The alarms sound while Ruth and Jae are in an elevator, when Ruth shows Jae a picture of Sarah that Jamie drew.

Thanks to her implants, Jamie easily outruns the helicopter pursuing her. She eventually gets back home after the search is called off (mainly because of Will's request), but she refuses to answer any of Will's phone calls. She also doesn't allow herself to tell her sister what happened to her. But, her relationship with her sister is the least of her problems now. Sarah is well aware of her failure to kill Will because the man who sent her on her mission has already packed up and left. She hunts down Jamie at the club she works at and, coincidentally, talks to her right when her eye and ear implants activate. Jamie runs to the bathroom and pukes, but Sarah finds her and tells her in vague terms what's happening to her, namely an overload of information.

When Jamie leaves the club someone tries to attack her, but she quickly gets the upper hand and nearly kills him with his own knife before she realizes what she's doing. She goes directly to Will's apartment to get answers about what they've done. He tells her about the microchips in her brain and connects the man who Jae saw in prison as the founder of the project and his father. She, somehow, finds it in her to forgive him for turning her into a superhuman. But, when she brings up the name Sarah Corvas, Will leaps to her side and demands to know where she heard that name. She begins to answer when Will is shot by a sniper bullet fired by Sarah. Jamie drags him out of the line of fire and goes to confront Sarah. Sarah admits to being the first Bionic Woman and tells Jamie that she's "cutting away" all of the parts of her that are weak. The two get into a fight that is broken up when the people associated with the bionic project arrive in a helicopter.

Meanwhile, Will is carted off in an ambulance and Jonas, the director, tells her she's part of their organization now and doesn't have a choice in the matter. She begs to differ and tells Jonas that she'll only work for them on her terms and that she'll bury any man he sends to kill her with if he isn't satisfied with that. She walks off and Jonas tells Ruth that they have a candidate. Elsewhere, Will's father has been sprung from prison.

Trivia

The Show

Mae Whitman in the role of a tattooed, pierced, deaf Becca Sommers.

Behind the Scenes

• Casting: The primary difference between this version of the pilot and what will be broadcast is the character of Becca Sommers. Becca, Jamie's deaf sister, was originally played by Mae Whitman. This reportedly angered deaf groups because an actress with the ability to hear playing a deaf character was insulting to them. Because the subplot which necessitated the character's deafness was nixed early in production, the character was changed completely. The broadcast version of Becca Sommers will be played by Lucy Hale, who will be a more supportive, happier character, as well as a budding hacker.