Six Million Dollar Man vs the Robot Maker

In this video I take a look at the war between the Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin and the Robot Maker, Dr. Dolenz.

The Robot Maker first appeared on the first season episode of the Six Million Dollar Man, “Day of the Robot and then on two more episodes, “Run, Steve, Run” and Return of the Robot Maker.”

The Robot Maker could easily be confused with the Fembot creator, Dr. Franklin. Interestingly enough there doesn’t seem to be a connection between the two doctors and their bionic robots, even though, both doctors used the exact same tactic of replacing Austin’s boss, Oscar Goldman with an exact robot duplicate. 

In his first appearance, the Robot Maker is referred to as Dr. Dolenz. In his second appearance he introduces himself as Jeffrey Dolenz. In his third and final appearance he introduces himself as Chester Dolenz. No explanation for the name change is given. Perhaps, he didn’t want people to know his real name.

Coincidentally, on a trivia note, the actor who played the Robot Maker was Henry Jones who appeared on a episode of Silver Spoons. The actor, John Houseman, who played the inventor of the Fembots played the grandpa on Silver Spoons on a regular basis. Houseman also played Bionic Woman Lyndsay Wagoner’s father on the 1973 movie,  The Paper Chase.

On the first Robot Maker episode, “Day of the Robot”, the Robot Maker wants to steal a top-secret anti-missile device so he kidnaps Major Sloan, a friend of Steve Austin and replaces him with a robot, which leads to a awesome fight at the end of the episode between Steve Austin and the robot.

John Saxon played the first robot and Major Sloan. He showed up on a lot of classic TV series like Starsky and Hutch, Wonder Woman, Bionic Woman, the A-team and [probably his most famous role was on the Bruce Lee movie, Enter the Dragon in 1973.

For the final battle of Day of the Robot, Steve Austin barely managed to pull out a win due to the robot hitting his human arm. Steve only managed to win when the robot jumped down to attack him while Steve grabbed a steel girder which the robot basically impaled himself onto.

In the second appearance of the Robot Maker in the first season episode, “Run, Steve, Run, Dr. Dolenz, the infamous robot maker, has been hired to build a team of robots to rob Fort Knox. He refuses to start working however, until he's discovered the secrets of the bionic man who defeated his first robot. Therefore he spends his sponsor's money and time following Steve Austin who is taking a vacation at a ranch.

After watching Steve outrun a horse the doctor’s thugs shoot Austin with tranquilzer darts and capture him. He escapes, of course, and captures the thugs, but Dolenz, himself, managed to get away. Strangely, enough, there wasn’t any actual robots in this episode besides in a memory flashback.

In the third and final appearance of the Robot Maker in the second season episode, “Return of the Robot Maker” Dr. Chester Dolenz replaces Oscar Goldman with a new and improved robot.

This was the first time this happened to Oscar, but not the last.  Fembot creator Dr. Franklin would create another duplicate robot of Oscar in the three part crossover between the Bionic Woman and Six Million Dollar Man, “Kill Oscar”.

After an epic bionic battle between Steve Austin and the robotic Oscar, where Austin knocked the head off of the robotic Oscar, Dr. Dolenz is carted off to jail.

The Robot Maker never got his own toy, but it’s a good bet that the robotic Maskatron was based off either the robots created by the Robot Maker or Dr. Franklin the creator of the Fembots.

In 2014 though, a comic book set in the Six Million Dollar Man TV universe showed that Maskatron was developed by Oliver Spencer as an improvement upon bionics and the robot disguises himself as Steve Austin before going rogue