WAKE-UP HOLLYWOOD ! Martin Caidin Deserves BETTER than THIS !!!

Going back to the source material, maybe call it Cyborg and let the lack of a dollar figure add to the mystique. The dollar figure was the cost of the original project, facility, and a year's operating costs, as I recall, not exactly the cost of one man's "improvements".

Forty-ahem years ago, the concept of a cyborg was pretty much brand new to the larger public, though some knew of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" or similar treatments, or a few might have heard of Norbert Wiener and Cybernetics -no, not L. Ron & Dianetics... ;-) I suspect Cyborg would do just fine as a title these days, but I could live with: "Cyborg: The Sixty Million Dollar Man" or some such as a title.

I'd like to see the right people develop a story, or stories, around this material as long as they preserve the heart and soul of the story as being that of a man who overcomes his physically damaged condition through becoming a cyborg despite his misgivings and questions about whether he retains his humanity. Or possibly take it even further and let him further explore his diversity and possibly even come to acknowledge it as a form of evolutionary change directly brought on by the efforts of his own original species... There is much that could be done among the week to week geek show and gags that might also allow for exploration regarding just what constitutes a man, how much must remain, etc. Done correctly a new series or movie franchise could explore HUMANITY from a different or many differing viewpoints all neatly disguised in a form the average viewer could tolerate or might even enjoy.

I think the best work is work that speaks to people on multiple levels and allows for people to come back to it after they've grown and appreciate heretofore undiscovered aspects. TSMDM managed to do that if you pay attention when watching it -often in a subtle manner somewhat overshadowed by stunts and gimmicks for some audiences, but it had it's moments.

For example, they could explore mind transference/"eternal life" through technology, AI's both "good" and "bad", the nature of evil in terms of, "Is something bad or just termed so because it is not beneficial to my desires and needs or that of the greater good?", etc. How about questions regarding will man be superseded as the dominant species by products of his own genius? Exploration of an even starker modern world that has realized that nuclear war will likely kill an entire planet so has innovated on a smaller scale with weapons capable of less mayhem overall, but capable of being soullessly dispatched from around the globe with no skin in the game at the point of contact. Technologies like exo-skeletons exist, how would our intrepid cyborg fair against the competition and how easily might one take him on with a similarly powered exo-skeleton? Would he win due to being the superior MAN? Does our Cyborg have WiFi? Bluetooth? A sat phone? Does he use Norton Anti-virus? Can his GPS be hacked? Does he hack better than anyone else due to a complete neural interface, or does he have an opponent who does?

Is he already an Astronaut, chosen because of his advanced mind, skills and abilities in addition to his own innate intelligence, or must he journey even further to become more than the sum of his parts to reach his potential? Will more of his abilities be other than physical? Will he evolve abilities unexplored in the initial improvements? Is he a man-made mutant of sorts? Will he relate better with humanity even after his modifications or eventually side with AIs or must there even be opposing sides? Will we find he retains more humanity than those he opposes despite his new status? And so on, and so forth, ad infinitim... And then, we throw in the opposite sex, then perhaps eventually his bionic counterpart(careful, we don't want to Lois and Clark him to death just yet) who may even be in conflict with him at first. Maybe she's created by another group with other objectives, maybe her's are nobler than his own organization's? Maybe we pull the old switcheroo and she's an android not a cyborg. Maybe he's shocked(maybe she's AC and he's DC? ;-)), maybe by then he doesn't care... So very much to play with it's like a carnival!

Frankly, there are easily seasons and seasons of topics that could be explored with the last forty years of innovation to be used as the backdrop, not to mention the last 30-40 centuries of humanity as the other side of the coin.

I hope someone more imaginative than I gets a chance to pick up the baton and run with it! Maybe a little faster than 60!