The Bionic Woman
To maintain the show's plausibility, creator/executive producer Kenneth Johnson set very specific limits on Jaime Sommers's abilities. He elaborated, "When you’re dealing with the area of fantasy, if you say, ‘Well, they’re bionic so they can do whatever they want,’ then it gets out of hand, so you’ve got to have really, really tight rules. [Steve and Jaime] can jump up two stories but not three. They can jump down three stories but not four. Jaime can’t turn over a truck but she can turn over a car." These limits were occasionally incorporated into episodes, such as "Kill Oscar Part 1," in which Jaime is forced to make a jump that's too far down for her bionic legs, causing massive damage to them and nearly causing her death as a result.
Bionics
The word "bionic" was coined by Jack E. Steele in 1958, possibly originating from the technical term "bion" (pronounced "BEE-on"; from "bíos"), meaning 'unit of life' and the suffix "-ic", meaning 'like' or 'in the manner of', hence 'like life'. Some dictionaries, however, explain the word as being formed as a portmanteau from biology" and "electronics. It was popularized by the 1970s U.S. television series "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman", both based upon the novel "Cyborg" by Martin Caidin, which was itself influenced by Steele's work. All feature humans given superhuman powers by electromechanical implants.