Dazzling colours are only part of the story. Television of the 1960s and 1970s had a whimsical, fantastic quality, encouraging viewers to suspend disbelief, to stretch imagination, to use their own discretion in explaining, or in not explaining and just accepting, how various non-everyday, non-contemporary, or outrageous events occurred. In the 1960s, the usual practice was to portray strange phenomena with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Satire was the order of the day, as in Bewitched, Gilligan's Island, and Lost in Space. Outlandish personages or situations literally materialised with a "ding", and the regular characters were blase toward them. Attempts to quit a marooned situation were constantly thwarted by ineptitude of a certain character, and the predicament of a conservative businessman with a white-witch wife's well-meaning but awry spells was invariably comical.
The Vietnam War and Watergate scandal brought the guileless light-heartedness of the 1960s to an end, though public belief in progress and in the near future persevered, and hence were viewers continually receptive to innocently and fantastically presented concepts. Television underwent a metamorphosis and became rather less whimsical. The fantastic premises of various television series were played "straight". For instance, an accidentally de-limbed astronaut became a cybernetic super-hero but had difficulty adjusting to the logistics of his powers and seemed to lose his fiancee when her body rejected the cybernetics implanted into her after she had been severely injured in an accident. The concept of a "bionic" man and woman, if done in the 1960s, would have been a situation comedy rather than a drama.
Though the 1970s were solemn in portrayal of the un-contemporary or the un-Earthly, it was still a carefree era in entertainment, the culmination of which was the abundance of blockbuster space fantasy films in the last three years of the decade. The sense of wonder that was conveyed then, in nearly every entertainment, still impresses the open-minded, nostalgic viewer.
In the push for absolute believability and gritty realism, the innocently wondrous quality of the 1960s and 1970s slowly died through the 1980s, and by 1990, it was essentially gone. There was a changing of the guard in the entertainment industry. Works of the 1960s and 1970s had been conceived and filmed by the Depression/World War II generation, which learned at an early age to go without material gratification and had more lively imagination and larger-than-life conceptions of heroism. But in the 1980s, hippies became yuppies, and television and cinema catered to the then-jaded generation of "free love". Everything had to be realistic, in an everyday, Thirtysomething mode of presentation. A fantastic concept could only be accepted if it was thoroughly explained. Heroes had to have an unproblematic, gratuitous darker side. They could not be larger-than-life. They had to act upon carnal urges with no consequences for their super-nature. Everything transpired by night, and the heroes were indistinguishable from the bleakness around them. The best example in this regard is the contrast between the Superman films of the early 1980s and the Batman film in 1989. Both were live-action, serious portrayals of a super-hero, but while Superman, garbed in flashy colour, was, in his selfless high-flying heroism, intangibly awesome, his powers not elucidated by requisite explanations of techno-babble or metaphysics, Batman was a wealthy but everyday, womanising "guy" with a heroic hobby, his every gimmick explained by technology, and his motivations were vengeful, because his parents had been murdered by the man who was accidentally changed into the Joker.
The Challenger and Chernobyl disasters, both in 1986, yielded a less ambitious time and a dulling of the public taste for scientific romanticism. Space became less accessible as a setting for every man's adventure. Science fiction became decidedly Earth-bound or was positioned in the far future. The viewing public, including the Generation X and Baby Bust age brackets, preferred to see people on Earth with common foibles and problems. Entertainment, no matter what the genre, digressed into total soap opera. Ineffable or outlandish fantasy concepts had become a thing of the downplayed past.
There was something of a backlash to this dulling-down of entertainment, as a segment of the younger population, those in their twenties, yearned to see their childhood heroes in action again. Although the major American television networks were reluctant to revive some television shows from the 1960s or 1970s for a regular, rather expensive series run, they were agreeable to two-hour reunion movies. The return of Perry Mason in a series of successful prime-time Movies of the Week was encouraging enough for NBC to initiate production on a reunion of two of the 1970s' most popular television heroes, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman.
Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner were pleased to work together again in a reprise of their popular 1970s roles, and The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman, NBC's Sunday Night Movie, was a critical and ratings success, one of the top draws for the week of May 20, 1987. TV Guide magazine had a cover photo and feature story on the reunion for the two cybernetically-charged action heroes. Nostalgia-instilling music with some tender scenes as the bionic duo rediscover their love for one another was mixed with action and a jazzy soundtrack as the plot moved as rapidly as its feature characters.
In every way, the movie was an accurate and affectionate homage to the exciting exploits of the bionic heroes of the 1970s. Steve Austin is attacked by a group of right-wing mercenaries who want the secret of bionics, and he escapes the villains in a thrilling car chase. He next pursues on his 60-miles-per-hour feet a getaway car containing the same mercenaries, who have abducted at gunpoint Jaime Sommers. Austin's son, Michael, is hospitalised after his test aircraft crashes in an air show, and Steve authorises cybernetic expert Rudy Wells to fit Michael with bionics as a, "microchip off the old block". Michael overcomes his resentment of his father's decision and, with Jaime's help, comes to terms with his bionics. He is then kidnapped by the mercenaries, who have also abducted Wells and a blind woman from Jaime's clinic to ensure that Michael does not use his bionic powers to escape. Jaime, Steve, and a group of Air Force cadets attack the glass factory hideout of the mercenaries' power-mad leader, Lyle Stenning, played expertly by Martin Landau, and free Michael, Wells, and the blind woman.
Whereas the original television series had no limit in story material, including alien beings, out-of-control space probes or computers, and evil scientists with world-affecting technologies, the reunion film, about right-wing mercenaries with aspirations for violently seizing power in America, was rather mundane, but had enough sentimentality and heart-pumping action to captivate and thrill viewers from beginning to end. Jaime, in the Bionic Woman series, could not remember her relationship with Steve prior to the rejection of her bionics, during which she died, was cryogenically suspended, and then revived. Now, after a concussion incurred in an explosion during an OSI mission, she remembers everything and wishes full reconciliation with Steve. Steve has an uneasy reunion with his son from a brief marriage with a young woman who later died, and as father and son become fundamentally alike with cybernetics, the gap between them disappears. Lee Majors' real-life son has a role in the movie, but not as Michael. He plays a self-confident, orphaned OSI agent who is at first sceptical of Steve's abilities, then is in awe after Steve saves his life.
The tremendous ratings success of this reunion movie immediately resulted in plans for a spin-off television series with Austin's son, which never materialised. But a second reunion movie for Austin and Sommers was produced and broadcasted almost two years later, on April 30, 1989. Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman had a misleading title, because no "showdown" occurs between Austin and Sommers. The movie pushed Steve and Jaime to the sidelines and focused on the trials and tribulations of a young athlete, played by Sandra Bullock, who is rendered bionic and assigned by the U.S. government, through the OSI, to stop terrorists from attacking visiting dignitaries at the Russian-American Unity Games. There is the usual love triangle surrounding Bullock's character, who is torn between the affections of a wheelchair-bound youth played by Jeff Yagher (V) and a slick OSI agent, played by Geraint Wyn Davies (Forever Knight), who is really a cybernetically-powered killer working for the terrorists. Steve and Jaime help Bullock and her paraplegic boy-friend to fight Wyn Davies and thwart the terrorist scheme. What happened to Michael is never explained, and Steve and Jaime have not yet "tied the knot", though a wedding is discussed by the two. It was hoped that a spin-off television series could be sold to NBC starring Bullock's character, but it too never came to fruition.
With reduced audience and mixed reaction for reunion movie two, plans for further movies were placed on extended hiatus, until the rather disappointing Bionic Ever After? was finally produced, and transmitted on CBS on November 29, 1994. Steve and Jaime do go to the altar, but only after both must cope with a computer virus, injected into their bionic parts by the genius daughter (played by Farrah Forke) of a deceased cybernetics expert who always resented Rudy Wells for supposedly usurping his rightful place as tops in that science. Terrorists seize a nuclear missile in the Bahamas and hold hostages at an embassy to force a defecting sports star to come out of hiding. And quite predictably, the saboteur (Forke) is in collusion with the terrorist leader, Myles Kenrdick (Geordie Johnson). Though there are traces of the old magic in Steve and Jaime being at the centre of fast-moving action, defeating the terrorist leader in a classic bionic chase of his getaway truck, they both are subdued for most of the movie by the debilitating computer virus and also by their obvious age. Wedded bliss is usually the "swan song" for heroic characters. This was precisely why the 1975 "Bionic Woman" episode of The Six Million Dollar Man avoided marrying Steve to his high school sweetheart. Jamie's body rejected her bionic implants, and she died. The ending of the episode caused anguish among young viewers, and the ABC network was flooded with mail from protesting parents. Jamie was resurrected for her own television series, but without memories of her relationship with Steve. The longevity of the two television programmes depended on keeping the two heroes separate, though they did join forces on two occasions to fight aliens and a robotics expert with a weather-controlling device. It is highly doubtful that any more reunion movies for the bionic duo will be made now that they are man and wife.
"Within each of us, there is a kind of beast, made of rage. Years ago, I used science to study this beast, to bring him out of me. I used gamma radiation to release him. But I used too much. Far too much. Now, the beast is out of my control, emerging whenever anger strikes. My name is David Banner. The world thinks I'm dead. I travel alone. I try to keep the beast caged, within myself." -Bill Bixby's introduction to The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989)Another action hero with a long-running television series was Marvel Comics' Incredible Hulk. Broadcast on the CBS network through four seasons from 1978 to 1982 was the story of David Banner (Bill Bixby), physician-scientist who overdoses on experimental gamma radiation and metamorphoses when angered into a primitive, violent but noble, green-skinned muscular powerhouse (Lou Ferrigno). A disastrous fire at a research laboratory kills Banner's colleague and, the world believes, Banner too, and the creature is incorrectly blamed for the deaths. Banner travels incognito through the United States in search of a cure for his condition, and invariably finds himself in the midst of conflicts or dangerous situations that bring about his transformation at least twice per episode. An investigative reporter named Jack McGee (Jack Colvin) hunts the creature and in a two-part episode learns that it is the alter-ego of a man, a man McGee cannot identify because Banner's face was in bandages due to a car accident.
The Incredible Hulk was most successful in ratings when starting CBS' Friday night line-up that included The Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas, but as time passed and budgets narrowed, production values declined, as did the audience, despite the constant high story quality. Two of the most memorable episodes, one in which a radioactive meteorite traps Banner in mid-transformation from the Hulk and the demi-Hulk is captured by the U.S. military, and one in which Banner battles another man's Hulk, were both fourth season two-parters.
In 1988, NBC revived The Incredible Hulk to companion its Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman movies, and there were plans to run a Movie of the Week with these super-heroes every one or two months.
The first reunion movie for the Hulk was The Incredible Hulk Returns, which was one of the top five highest-rated television programmes of the entire week of May 22, 1988. Interestingly, it was broadcast on Victoria Day weekend, the same weekend on which The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman aired a year earlier.
Critics were bemused at the widespread appeal of the Hulk's comeback, which was not in the same spirit as the solemn 1978-82 series. Stan Lee of Marvel Comics planned, with Bixby's blessing as star and producer, to feature another Marvel super-hero in every Hulk movie, and first to accompany the green giant was the Mighty Thor, God of Thunder. Unlike the Thor of the comic books who is a reluctant but earnest fighter of Earthly evil and the transformed alter-ego of meek, disabled physician Donald Blake, Thor (Eric Kramer) in The Incredible Hulk Returns is a fight-enjoying entity separate from a less self-disciplined and physically unimpaired Blake (Steve Levitt). Kramer's Thor is summoned by Blake by an enchanted Viking hammer discovered by Blake on an archaeological expedition and compelled by his wish to enter Valhalla to serve Blake as penance for past misdeeds, whether Blake approves or not.
Banner has not "Hulked-out" in two years and, as David Bannion, has risen to position of senior researcher at a Los Angeles medical electronics facility. He is about to test a gamma transponder that can bring untold advances in treatment of diseases- and cure his Hulk affliction, when Blake, a college colleague, arrives in the electronics facility and stops the procedure. Blake explains to Banner that he does not know why Banner is playing dead and is willing to preserve Banner's secret, and he asks Banner's help in severing his link with Thor, whose presence in Blake's life is anything but opportune. When Banner disbelieves Blake's outlandish story, Blake uses the hammer to summon Thor, whose troublesome appearance in Banner's intricate laboratory threatens to trigger Banner's metamorphosis. "I must not lose control," Banner says to himself with his eyes closed. "Is he praying?" Thor asks Blake. Thor furiously suspects that Blake has come to "Banner the warlock" for the purpose of scientific exorcism. Banner's plea, "Don't make me angry," impresses Thor for its seeming audacity. Thor unwittingly pushes Banner onto an electrically charged metal, and Banner "Hulks-out" in front of the astonished eyes of Blake and Thor. Though Thor's first pairing with the Hulk is violently confrontational, the two behemoths join forces after a re-transformed Banner urges Blake to help repair the laboratory equipment damaged in the Hulk's tussle with Thor, and reconciles with Thor's aggressive nature, which Blake too comes to accept and trust.
Banner's lady, Maggie Shaw, is targeted for abduction by mercenaries (the consummate villains of the 1980s) who want the gamma transponder for black market sale, and the Hulk and Thor are unable to stop the villains' helicopter with a drugged Maggie aboard it. Banner and Blake receive information on the whereabouts of the criminals and go there intending to rescue Maggie. Thor is called upon to help and asks Banner to change himself, "into that green troll." "I don't do that deliberately," retorts Banner, before an argument with a reckless co-worker who has come to this location triggers another "Hulk-out". The Hulk, Thor, and Blake vanquish the mercenaries and free Maggie. But Banner cannot stay in Los Angeles to continue his work because McGee has come to the city to investigate reports of the Hulk. Banner and Blake part company, each wishing the other luck. Blake and Thor will wander in a different direction from the again-drifting Banner, who bids good-bye to Maggie.
The success of the first Hulk reunion movie clinched the production of a second, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, which paired the Hulk with Marvel Comics' radar-sensed, super-hearing Daredevil character and his alter-ego, supposedly blind attorney Matt Murdock (Rex Smith). Movie two was set in a rainy, gloomy city, actually Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Banner changes to the Hulk in a subway when he tries to help a young teaching intern to fight two jewel thieves who want to rape her. Police find and arrest the un-Hulked Banner under suspicion of involvement with the criminals, who escaped the Hulk and return to their mobster boss, Wilson Fisk (John Rhys-Davies). The teaching intern is forced by the criminals to tell to the police that Banner attacked her, and is then kidnapped by Fisk. Banner dreams that he is put on trial and "Hulks-out" on the witness stand, and the Hulk demolishes the courtroom and kills the prosecuting attorney. This dream sequence is the essence of the movie's title. Banner does not really undergo a courtroom ordeal. He "Hulks-out" in his prison cell, and the Hulk, totally off-camera, breaks out of jail. Murdock, as Daredevil, locates Banner and brings the fugitive scientist to his apartment.
Banner learns how Murdock lost his sight in an accident involving radioactive material and gained an extrasensory ability. He agrees to help Murdock to find the intern teacher but declines to stand trial. Banner "Hulks-out" again to rescue Murdock from Fisk's thugs, who lead Daredevil into an ambush, and Murdock, applying his hands to the Hulk in mid-metamorphosis back to Banner, learns Banner's secret. Banner and Daredevil raid Fisk's headquarters in the movie's climax, and, surprisingly, the Hulk never appears during the final confrontation with the criminals. Banner, with Daredevil's help, frees the intern teacher, and Daredevil alone chases Fisk to the roof of the Fisk building, from which Fisk escapes.
Because of the misleading title, the lack of a climactic "Hulk-out", a major Hulk feat, the break from jail, being totally off-camera, thoroughly gloomy scenery, and an uncertain performance by John Rhys-Davies (The Living Daylights, Sliders) as Fisk, who is really a Spider-Man villain, this second Hulk movie, broadcast on May 7, 1989, was not as successful in ratings and audience approval as the first. Reports on the production of the first movie alleged that the budget for the reunion features was higher than had been the case in the 1978-82 television series, but this was not reflected in the production values. The Hulk's strength seems diminished or subdued, and very little is shown of Bixby or Ferrigno during the transformations, in most cases nothing at all, with the transformation completely off-camera. Finally, the ambition to introduce a Marvel Comics character in each movie was also compromised for the third and last Hulk feature on NBC, The Death of the Incredible Hulk, a February 18, 1990 event.
The title in this case was not misleading. The Hulk does die, and Banner with him. Though the intention was to feature Iron Man as the guest super-hero, with Banner seeking the help of industrialist Tony Stark, Iron Man's alter-ego, Stark was replaced by an elder scientist, Dr. Pratt (Philip Sterling), and no other super-hero was used. Banner confides the secret of his condition with Pratt, who is researching super-healing power and is edified to learn of the Hulk's ability to mend flesh in minutes. Banner agrees to undergo a controlled "Hulk-out" within a force field so that Pratt can attach instruments to the Hulk to monitor his strength. Pratt's plan to cure Banner of the Hulk and utilise controlled doses of gamma radiation in his healing experiments is thwarted by the interference of terrorists and mercenaries (yet again), who raid Pratt's lab at a critical time. The Hulk rescues an unconscious Pratt from a fire, and Banner later befriends a renegade from the terrorist group, a woman named Yasmine, who is captured by the villains, and when the Hulk boards an aeroplane aboard which the malefactors are attempting an escape from the green Goliath, an explosion occurs in mid-air, and the Hulk, after freeing Yasmine, falls to his death, surrounded by the mournful Yasmine and Dr. and Mrs. Pratt.
The death scene brought closure to David Banner and the Hulk's wanderings, whether or not this was the ultimate intention at the time. There were plans to reverse the death in a fourth movie (a la the Star Trek movies), but "The Resurrection of the Incredible Hulk" never progressed beyond the initial planning stage. The set where the death scene occurred was preserved in anticipation of a fourth movie, but Bixby was terminally ill with cancer and died in 1993. No continuation of the Bixby/Ferrigno Incredible Hulk series was possible, and any revival of this super-hero will probably be via a theatrical film, with completely different cast.
The Hulk reunion movies were an initially ambitious and disappointing trilogy, with production values lower than those of the original series, a subdued and in one instance "invisible" Ferrigno, uninspired antagonists, and no Jack McGee in the latter two. It would seem that NBC's interest in the reunion movie idea languished and died with the Hulk while Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers were retired by NBC after their second reunion, despite the ratings triumph of the first movie in both cases.
Everybody knows the story of The Brady Bunch. Man with three boys marries woman with three girls to form an enormous family. With an ever-dependable maid added, the cast of this 1969-74 television series was complete. The Brady Bunch is an at-times corny, early 1970s period situation comedy, with episodes of two types. The teenaged angst episodes, involving such things as sisterly rivalry, egomania over a Juliet role, a swollen nose with an impending date with a "hunk", worry over being dull, refusal to wear eyeglasses, et cetera, are rather less palatable in repeated viewing than the Brady excursion episodes, in which the family travels to the Grand Canyon, or to Hawaii, or to an amusement park, or those episodes featuring family projects like a film about the Pilgrims or a "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" backyard play. The series has endeared itself nostalgically to Generation X by recalling an innocent time when bell bottoms were "groovy".
Attempts in the later 1970s to revive the television series under such titles as The Brady Kids and The Brady Brides failed, and the Brady clan was not lensed again until A Very Brady Christmas, a highly successful reunion movie on the CBS network in 1988. It topped the weekly ratings for December 18-24 and generated network interest in a revival of The Brady Bunch through either a number of reunion movies or a regular series.
A Very Brady Christmas begins with Mike and Carol Brady (Robert Reed, Florence Henderson) deciding to combine their vacation money to bring their entire family home for the Holidays. But the fully-grown boys and girls, three of them married, and two with children, the others either dating or entirely career-"driven", are less than eager to see their parents and siblings again due to marital strife, a spouse being jobless, a career move of which Mike will disapprove, or fatigue at being the "baby" of the family. Still, everyone comes home, and with the addition of spouses and another generation of Bradys, the Brady house is filled to the brim. At the dinner table, each of the Brady kin confesses to having been reluctant to return home and why. Marital rifts are mended, elder sister Marcia's toymaker husband finds a new job, youngest son Bobby admits to racing cars in lieu of going to college and gains Mike's tentative acceptance, and Cindy (played by Jennifer Runyon instead of Susan Olsen, giving rise to rumours that Olsen had died) tells how she feels about being the youngest sibling and required to share a small dinner-table with the next generation of Bradys.
After this all-round candid exchange, architect Mike is ordered to a construction site where his client's recklessness has caused a partially completed building to collapse, and when Mike enters the wreckage to free trapped workers, he himself becomes pinned under debris, and it is the Brady clan's singing of a Christmas hymn that revives the unconscious Mike and gives to him the vim to free himself from the rubble. The Bradys finish their Yuletide celebration, with every family member having found peace of mind and new harmony in relationships.
A Very Brady Christmas, despite its hackneyed plot and resemblance more to the semi-dramatic Eight is Enough (1977-82) series than to the original Brady Bunch, was an affectionate, yuletide nod to the carefree days of yesteryear. Spurred by the ratings success of the reunion movie, Paramount Pictures tried to continue the rejoining of the family Brady not with further movies but with a regular dramatic television series that was doomed to fail. The Bradys never were the credible subject of serious drama, and in episodes of the new series, The Bradys, Bobby is critically injured in a race-car accident, brothers Greg and Peter have a squabble that nearly ends in tragedy, and Marcia (played in the new series by Leah Ayres) is an alcoholic. Mercifully, CBS pulled the proverbial plug on the television series after five episodes.
In 1989, ABC revived the Mystery Theatre format originated by NBC in the 1970s, and reprised Kojak and Columbo. Telly Savalas' bald, no-nonsense detective with a passion for lollipops floundered in his revival, but Peter Falk's ingratiating, endlessly probing, clumsy-but-infallible homicide investigator in a rumpled raincoat endured the cancellation of ABC's Mystery Theatre, returning for 2 or 3 movies a year through the early 1990s. Some of the new Columbos had innovative story plots, including a dentist who murders his rival lover with a lethal dental filling, a Spielbergian movie producer who electrocutes a troublesome friend threatening to publicise the producer's past fatal negligence, a jeweller who murders to obtain a winning lottery ticket, two spoiled-rotten college students who kill a professor who has discovered their cheating ways, and a magician/occultist who guillotines a sceptical colleague.
However, the new Columbo movies lost their zest in the 1990s and gradually disappeared, and with them finally died the noble dream of preserving the spirit of 1960s and 1970s imaginative television. These reunion movies, though of often dubious imagination, were the last gasp of fanciful television before the realistic mediocrity of the later 1980s and the 1990s conquered the televised airwaves.
Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1987) Lee Majors (Steve Austin), Lindsay Wagner (Jaime Sommers), Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), Martin E. Brooks (Dr. Rudy Wells), Martin Landau (Lyle Stenning), Tom Schanley (Michael Austin), Gary Lockwood (John Praiser), Lee Majors II (Jim Castillian). The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) Bill Bixby (Dr. David Banner), Lou Ferrigno (Hulk), Jack Colvin (Jack McGee), Steve Levitt (Donald Blake), Eric Kramer (Thor), Tim Thomerson (Jack LeBeau), Lee Purcell (Dr. Maggie Shaw). A Very Brady Christmas (1988) Florence Henderson (Carol Brady), Robert Reed (Mike Brady), Ann B. Davis (Alice Nelson), Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady Logan), Eve Plumb (Jan Brady Covington), Jennifer Runyon (Cindy Brady), Barry Williams (Greg Brady), Christopher Knight (Peter Brady), Mike Lookinland (Bobby Brady), Jerry Houser (Wally Logan), Ron Kuhlman (Phillip Covington III), Caryn Richman (Nora Brady), Phillip R. Allen (Ted Roberts). Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989) Lee Majors (Steve Austin), Lindsay Wagner (Jaime Sommers), Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), Sandra Bullock (Kate), Jeff Yagher (Jim Goldman), Martin E. Brooks (Dr. Rudy Wells), Lee Majors II (Jim Castillian), Josef Sommer (Charles Estiman), Geraint Wyn Davies (Allan Devlin), Robert Lansing (General McAllister). The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989) Bill Bixby (Dr. David Banner), Lou Ferrigno (Hulk), Rex Smith (Matt Murdock/Daredevil), John Rhys-Davies (Wilson Fisk), Nancy Everhard (Christa Klein), Joseph Mascolo (Tendelli), Marta DuBois (Ellie Mendez), Nicholas Hormann (Edgar), Richard Cummings Jr. (Al Pettiman). The Death of the Incredible Hulk (1990) Bill Bixby (Dr. David Banner), Lou Ferrigno (Hulk), Philip Sterling (Dr. Ronald Pratt), Elizabeth Gracen (Jasmine), Barbara Tarbuck (Amy Pratt), Andreas Katsulas (Kasha). Bionic Ever After? (1994) Lindsay Wagner (Jaime Sommers), Lee Majors (Steve Austin), Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman), Farrah Forke (Kimberly Havilland), Martin E. Brooks (Dr. Rudy Wells), Alan Sader (John MacNamara), Geordie Johnson (Miles Kendrick), Ivan Sergei (Astaad Rashid), Lee Majors II (Jim Castillian).