Get Your Bionic On Early with Choice ‘Bionic Woman’ Web Sites
Do You Have What It Takes to Leap Across Rooftops in a Single Bound?
I can pretty much already guess that the answer to that question is an emphatic no. But, NBC, home of the rapidly approaching sci-fi series Bionic Woman, wants to help you and other curious people find out for certain anyway. All you have to do is surf over to the Bionic Assessment Test (BAT) Web site, sit through—or skip over—a well-executed introduction based on critical aspects of the Bionic Woman pilot episode, and click start when you finally reach the test page. You can then proceed through five levels of surprisingly difficult evaluation activities that will reveal your supposed percentage of “bionicity.” If creative or visually appealing online time-wasters are your thing, you probably don’t want to miss out on this one.
The BAT site isn’t the first of its kind, however. NBC also established the realistic Center for Ethical Bionics (TCEB) Web site to get fans involved in Bionic Woman before the show’s September 26 premiere. TCEB has a virtually identical aesthetic to the many biotech sites proliferating all over the Web. In fact, it looks so authentic, I had to do a triple-take on my first visit just to make sure it wasn’t legit. NBC’s Web developers deserve a big pat on the back for their impressive work designing TCEB to successfully mimic the real things.
Click on the site’s About link, and you get a nice profile of the “organization’s” history, complete with photos of brilliant-looking “scientists.” Better still, go to the A Closer Look section to peruse a classified dossier on Sarah Corvus, the character played by Battlestar Galactica veteran Katee Sackhoff; jump to the aforementioned Bionic Assessment Test site, which TCEB warns is actually a nefarious recruitment tool for identifying unwitting human lab rats; and surf over to USA Today to learn all about former U.S. Marine Claudia Mitchell, planet Earth’s first genuine female cyborg (and only the fourth part-machine human ever), who was equipped with a functional bionic arm last year at age 26. The cost of the futuristic body part? A breathtaking $4 million, mostly courtesy of the National Institutes of Health.
The Center for Ethical Bionics, as comprehensive as it is seemingly official, also provides a mailing address and phone number for contact purposes (I’ve no idea if either are valid), and it even allows visitors to register with the site to “join in the pursuit of ethical bionics.” Just make sure not to skip over the question asking how many bionic parts you already have. I selected the highest option available, ten, because you know what they say—ask a stupid question…
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Bionic Woman premieres Wednesday, September 26, at 9pm EST on NBC
Bionic Assessment Test image courtesy of NBC
