The Six Million Dollar Man (TV Series) Eyewitness to Murder (1974) User Reviews

Enjoyable detective shinnanigans for Steve.

[Prichards12345 · 7/10 · 18 May 2019]

I quite like this one. Steve spots an assassin with the aid of his bionic eye, out to off a D.A. who wants to put a mobster away. Gary Lockwood of 2001 fame plays the sniper in question; but wait! Is Steve wrong? Here's our sniper appearing on a local t.v. chat show at the same time as the murder. Steve determines to break his alibi.

Good episode, even better denim outfits.

The Sniper

[AaronCapenBanner · 6/10 · 20 May 2015]

Steve Austin(Lee Majors) is leaving a restaurant late one night when he is a(bionic) eyewitness to the murder of an assistant D.A. by an unknown sniper(played by Gary Lockwood). Trouble is, his bionics is still top secret, but as it turns out, the real target was the D.A. himself(played by William Schallert) going after a notorious racketeer that put the contract out on his life, so Oscar Goldman(Richard Anderson) allows Steve to investigate the assassin himself, which leads to unexpected developments that reveal double trouble... OK episode isn't typical fare at all but still works reasonably well, though not much to distinguish it otherwise.

Eyewitness to murder

[coltras35 · 6/10 · 24 August 2023]

By sheer chance, Steve Austin witnesses the attempted assassination of Lawrence Sandusky, a prosecutor who is about to file criminal charges against a known racketeer. Austin is unable to capture the attacker, but he catches a glimpse of his face. OSI is assigned to security detail for the prosecutor pending a 9:00 a.m. Court hearing. Austin identifies and apprehends John Hopper, believing him to be the hired hitman. However, Hopper has a seemingly ironclad alibi. Convinced that he is correct, Austin trails the released suspect as the court hearing fast approaches.

Personally it makes a change for Austin to put on his detective hat instead of being action man - at least it adds some variety. It's not a stand out episode but it isn't bad either, and Steve really gets to use his bionic eye.it's quite enjoyable in a low key way.

Austin, P.I.

[boscofl · 30 January 2017]

A pretty conventional episode, "Eyewitness to Murder" is a solid representation of the show. It is strictly no frills but avoids the outlandish scenarios and plot devices of most SMDM offerings.

Steve witnesses an attorney getting shot outside of a restaurant and gets a glimpse of the shooter through his bionic eye. Turns out the killer was after the victim's boss, a crusading DA who is after a powerful crime lord. Oscar and Steve are enlisted to protect the DA for a short period and ferret out the assassin before he strikes again.

Steve puts on his gumshoes and some snazzy 70's leisure suits to fulfill his mission. Along the way he rips the door off a cab, avoids being run down by a pickup truck in an alley, and sprints through downtown Los Angeles (?) before thwarting the assassin's plan.

The twist to the episode is that the shooter, John Hopper, was apparently in two places at once and no one believes he could have been positively ID'd as the gunman. In a somewhat Hitchcockian plot device the only witness to the assassin's identity is Steve, who can't reveal his bionic gifts to anyone and therefore cannot reveal why he is so positive Hopper is the man.

Gary Lockwood guest stars as Hopper; he gives a pretty cold-blooded performance as an unstoppable hit-man who is confounded by Steve's ability to finger him. Lee Majors is solid as usual and, in addition to his usual array of 70's outfits, sports a pair of tinted glasses for much of the action. Plus we learn he likes his coffee black.

Gumshoe Bionics

[markymark70 · 6/10 · 8 October 2007]

Steve Austin turns Private Eye for this episode where an attempt on the local DA results in an aide getting killed instead. Steve spots the killer in the dark with his bionic eye and vows to catch him. However, it seems the perp has a cast iron alibi - he was on a late night live television programme. (Interesting to note in this episode the amount of characters smoking - the sniper even smoking on the chat show whilst being interviewed. Something you won't see on today's TV.)

Anyway - Steve remains convinced he has his man and follows him. He survives an attempt to run him over and then figures out how the sniper could be in two places at once just in time to avert another killing.

A strange episode really, a bit more like your usual PI episode rather than the SMDM - but I still enjoyed it. Steve does have some stamina though - he sits in a hotel lobby for almost 8 hours straight and looks just as alert afterward as he did before. If this episode was done by Jim Rockford or Mannix or even Jake and the Fatman - you'd think it okay but Steve's special talents were not utilised enough here.

Still a nice episode - if only for Lee Majors denim outfit !!!!

The Six Million Rockford Files

[Steve_Nyland · 4/10 · 31 October 2006]

Offbeat & somewhat boring SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN episode has OSI Colonel Steve Austin -- who is an astronaut -- and his boss, former state prosecutor Oscar Goldman, getting mixed up in an assassination plot against a district attorney targeted for elimination by hired killer Gary Lockwood, best known for his role in 2001. Perhaps inspired by the House Select Comittee on Assassinations hearings, the plot revolves around Lockwood's labyrinthine scheme to do in the noble DA, Steve's efforts to bring him to justice after seeing him gun down an assistant DA by mistake, and plenty of harried motorcade scenes with people ducking in and out of doors while trying to protect a guy who isn't smart enough to even wear a flak vest as protection from being picked off by a sniper.

You may be wondering what all this has to do with an astronaut who flew to the moon, was smashed up in a test flight accident & re-built with super-powered bionic limbs. Well, you got me, and this episode is probably the only real misfire from the series' otherwise excellent First Season, who's episodes all had more grown-up themes than the later years where Steve would battle against Bigfoot. Here he does gumshoe work in trying to solve a murder mystery and, quite frankly, the formula doesn't work. It is like a ROCKFORD FILES jaunt with a bionic man: Other than tearing the door off a cab and warding off a killer pickup truck, Steve's bionics are relegated to the sidelines in Gratuitous Bionic Displays meant to remind viewers of what series they were watching. At one point he even goes to visit a tailor for clues and the gentleman kindly brings up Steve's fame as an astronaut just in case anyone was wondering if Lee Majors hadn't done this show on the side.

It's still some of the best TV of the 1970s and Majors flaunts a wardrobe of leisure suits and denim coordinates that will tweak the bad taste gland in any fan of schlock entertainment. But aside from the insight that OSI Colonel Steve Austin puts ketchup on his hot dogs, the show really doesn't contribute or add anything to the series ... Unless you want to cite the running gag where Steve destroys private property with his bionic gratuity and promptly peels out a wad of $100 bills to pay for it, as well as the gag reply to casual questions about how he can do his amazing feats like seeing in the dark ("Well, I eat a lot of carrots"; good advice for younger viewers maybe). He is also able to prance around Los Angeles running 60mph with nobody even looking twice at him, suggesting that stealth materials may have been used on those leisure suits. And the episode's strangely squarish, Nixon/Ford era law & order mentality is quite unique in the raging Age of Aquarius. It's well made, but what were they thinking?

4/10; Lockwood's assassin character would later be brought back in the 2nd Season episode "Steve Austin, Fugitive" to reprise is role, though I have't the foggiest idea why.

Predictable

[supergye · 5/10 · 6 May 2021]

As a fan of this series I would rank this among the lowest of all the shows over 5 yrs. First off, with Steve as a witness to a murder, and the fact that a suspect appears to be in two places at the same time of murder, why wouldn't the police detective check out the suspect's family to see if he has a twin brother? The fact this is not looked at seems like such a mistake of obscene magnitude. Pretty sure you would lose your job as a detective if you didn't check out this rudimentary fact at the time of investigation. I think most viewers would of guessed how it was done right away since the answer was so obvious. The fact that the entire episode was built around such a simple premise was just childish.