The Six Million Dollar Man (TV Series) Hocus-Pocus (1976) User Reviews

Hocus-pocus

[coltras35 · 7/10 · 24 October 2023]

O. S. I. Needs to get a stolen top-secret codebook back from elusive criminal and club owner Mark Wharton. Oscar gets Will Collins, manager of the Blue Tiger night club to introduce Steve Austin as magician 'Steve Andrews' as Wharton has a fascination with magicians. To add an extra element to the show, Steve proposes to take E. S. P. Gifted Audrey Moss with him as his assistant. Unfortunately, Wharton intends to use Audrey for a purpose... to find out who is betraying him ...

Lively episode with Austin and Audrey going into a mission impossible syndrome - the villain played by Pernell Roberts of Bonanza fame is one paranoid character. Roberts takes command of the role. Austin ends up in the fridge again while Audrey is forced to work for Roberts. It's not action-packed but it's engaging and a little suspenseful.

Pretty Good "Con Based" Adventure for Steve

[hypestyle · 8/10 · 3 August 2021]

Pernell Roberts (future star of "Trapper John, M. D.") guests as the bad guy here. He's an independent crime boss, Mark Wharton.

Wharton's operatives pull off the theft of an armored truck in the Southern California area. The truck had $100,000 in corporate payroll. But that's not all. The truck also (amazingly) had the Navy's top code book (a classic MacGuffin), according to Oscar. When boss Wharton realizes that this code book would be highly valuable on the worldwide black market, it presents a grave threat for the American intelligence apparatus.

For purposes of infiltrating Wharton's mansion and retrieving the code book, Oscar pairs Steve with college freshman Audrey Moss. Moss is gifted with limited telepathy-- here expressed as ESP-- where she can read the 'surface thoughts' of people close by. She is a willing research subject at her university. For a cover, it is decided that Steve and Audrey present themselves as a magic act out of Chicago, and they arrange an audition for Wharton, to perform gigs at the nightclub he owns. Therein sets up the "con game" to infiltrate Wharton's mansion, find and retrieve the code book, before the criminal auction takes place.

This episode presents ESP in a relatively realistic manner, and not with any drastic results (e.g., the X-Men's Professor X). Oscar is a skeptic of ESP but grudgingly comes to accept Audrey's abilities as real.

There's quite a bit of bionic action in the climax, which is satisfying. Some tricks are done which are attributed to Steve's bionic arms or legs, during the magic performance.