Jaime Sommers (The Bionic Woman)

Jaime Sommers
Lindsay Wagner as Jaime Sommers.
First appearance	"The Bionic Woman" (episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, 1975
Last appearance	Bionic Ever After? (TV movie), 1994
Portrayed by	Lindsay Wagner Carlena Gower (childhood flashbacks)
Information
Aliases	The Bionic Woman
Species	Human
Gender	Female
Occupation	Secret agent, schoolteacher, former professional tennis player
Spouse(s)	Steve Austin
Children	Michael Austin (stepson)

Jaime Sommers is a fictional character from the science fiction action series The Bionic Woman (1976–1978). She is portrayed by American actress Lindsay Wagner. Sommers takes on special high-risk government missions using her superhuman powers. Wagner first played the role in the 1970s American television series The Six Million Dollar Man. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she reprised the role in several reunion television films.

In the series' fictional history, Jaime Sommers is a former professional tennis star, who after recovering from her near-fatal first operation, is the first female cyborg. She is assigned to spy missions of her own as an occasional agent of the Office of Scientific Information, while under the employment cover as a school teacher of middle school students. Through the use of cybernetic implants, known as bionics, Jaime is given an amplified bionic ear which allowed her to hear at low volumes, at different frequencies than most humans, and over uncommonly long distances. She also has extraordinary strength in her bionic right arm, and both legs, which enable her to run at speeds exceeding 60 miles per hour.

In 2004, the character was listed in Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters.AOL named her one of the 100 Most Memorable Female TV Characters.

Jaime is portrayed as the third cyborg and first female. She followed the astronaut/test pilot Steve Austin and the race car driver Barney Hiller (seen in the November 1, 1974, and November 9, 1975, episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man). Jaime's bionics were thus Rudy Wells' third generation. She has been shown to be able to run slightly faster than he could. Also, her prebionic life as a professional athlete gave her greater natural agility than Steve. Her difficult transition to postbionic life, along with later degrees in psychology, made her the ideal candidate to be Rudy's assistant in training new implantees in the use of their bionics. She trained Steve's son, Michael, to control his bionics after his operation, as well as Kate Mason.