Tricia Helfer was 2 years old when Lindsay Wagner's "Bionic Woman" television series began in 1976.

Eventually the actresses would become part of a sisterhood of female sci-fi television characters over the past three decades who have been either all or part machine.

Along with Wagner's "Bionic Woman" and Helfer's Number Six on the new "Battlestar Galactica," there have been the half-human, half-Borg Seven of Nine on "Star Trek: Voyager"; Moya, the living, birthing spaceship on "Farscape"; and the androids on "Total Recall 2070."

Each has shown that it is possible for a female television or film character to be both the beauty and the beast. They can beat up an opponent without messing up their model looks.

Helfer is the current queen of the genre, starring on the Sci Fi Channel's new incarnation of the television series "Battlestar Galactica."

The character is a humanoid version of the robotic Cylons from the original "Battlestar." Helfer is having fun with the role because Number Six is not just a one-note character.

"In the beginning it looked like she was just going to be the robot chick. My mind was put at ease when I found out they wanted to make her more," Helfer says. "It is fun as an actress to make subtle differences in her so that she is two different characters."

The 5-foot-10 Helfer tucks her long legs under her on the couch in the Universal Hilton suite. She's been on the run all day, talking with television critics about the new "Battlestar Galactica."

The 30-year-old Canadian, who was discovered at age 16 outside a movie theater by a Ford modeling agency talent scout, seems to have the energy of the Energizer Bunny. She keeps talking with great enthusiasm about the TV role that has made her the latest robot/female pin-up sensation for the geek nation.

Helfer was not happy with the first couple of episodes, because her character had little dialogue. She feels the stoic nature made the character come across as static.

That's changed with each episode. Now the character is pure kinetic energy, whether she is playing mental games with Dr. Baltar (James Callis) or kicking asteroids and taking names.

In the original "Battlestar Galatica," Cylons were walking aluminum cans. They were easy to spot because of the red light that ping-ponged across their foreheads. In the new versions, some of the Cylons look like humans. They look human but still have deadly strength.

The version Helfer is playing just happens to look stunning in a blood-red dress.

Helfer never saw the original versions of the Cylons until she landed the role for the "Battlestar" miniseries last year. She didn't watch a lot of television while growing up on the family grain farm in Donald, Alberta.

Her father, a science-fiction fan, did take her to see sci-fi movies. Mechanized females have populated movies from "Blade Runner" to "Terminator 3."

The films made Helfer aware of sci-fi enough to know that mechanized female characters sometimes can be bad.

"If I am doing my job right, people shouldn't like her. But I don't play her as beingbad. She thinks she is doing good," Helfer says.

The complexity of character is a big difference from the mid-'70s version of the robotic hero played by Lindsay Wagner.

"The Bionic Woman," a 1976 spinoff of the television show "The Six Million Dollar Man," featured Wagner playing a character with so many electronically upgraded parts that she could run faster, hit harder and hear better than the average person.

Wagner, 55, looks like she could step right back into the role of Jamie Sommers. Actually, her step back into acting has been rather selective in recent years. She appeared recently in a Hallmark Channel movie.

The actress knows everything she does in the acting world to this day comes from the role where she had bionic strength in her legs, an arm and an ear.

But it was the other parts of her character that got the most attention from the actress.

"I said I wanted to do a science-fiction/reality show. I am not a robot. I am not from another planet. I am a human being who had these things. I made a very big push to make sure she remained a real person," Wagner says during a break from a party being held by the Hallmark Channel to promote its family-friendly original movies.

"My stance was I would do the series as long as we could do stories that meant something to me," says Wagner. "I made a commitment when I was young that I wanted my life to be a contribution.

"The universe said, 'Here's a place where you can communicate about what issues are important to you.' I got to do that because of the clout I got from the series."

"The Bionic Woman" gave Wagner the strength to accomplish her goal. After the series ended in 1978, she was able to make made-for-television movies that dealt with such issues as interracial relationships, mind over matter and human potential.

Wagner's bionic woman and Helfer's humanoid Cylon were given the strength to pound any foe into the dust. Both also were given characters with the brains and wiles to charm an opponent into the same dusty pile.

That was critical to Wagner. She made sure that despite all of the bionic abilities, her character was successful more because of her brains.

"We actually ended up using the bionic powers more for comedy. I told the producers I would never hit anyone. I might happen to shove a piano across the room. If it happened to hit someone, then so be it," Wagner says.

Wagner was afraid that playing "The Bionic Woman" on a weekly basis would put her in a sci-fi pigeonhole. That's why she insisted her character would go undercover each week. More opportunities were opened to play different roles, rather than just being a half-human, half-robotic character.

"This show came along right at the early stages of the women's movement," Wagner says. "That is why it was so important she not be a female man.

"The women's movement was not about women becoming men. It was about them finding their own strength and empowerment."

That groundwork paid off for each of the robot females to follow Wagner's lead. Those characters all have been strong without having to give up any of their femininity.

The combination has given Helfer a strong role early in her career. Her best-known work before the Sci Fi Channel series was playing Farrah Fawcett in the made-for-television unauthorized biography of "Charlie's Angels."

"You can get stuck in a science-fiction role. What is helping me is the difference between Number Six and the Farrah Fawcett role," Helfer says. "They are so different, I believe people know I can be more than a robot chick."

RICK BENTLEY