Since many of the people depicted in television pro­grams seem machine-made anyway, and since many of the characters in TV shows have no more depth than those in the average cartoon, there really is no reason to be surptised or aghast at the succes ABC has had this year with mechanical stories about semimechanical people.

I refer to that Six Million Dollar Man and that Bionic Woman.

It's little wonder the pair will be joined on the net­work next year by a sym­thetic android cop on the new series Holmes and Yoyo. Nor is it any mpstery why Variety has dubbed ABC The Bionic Network.

Yet it develops there are ievels of mechanicalism, and by simple standards of imagination and human interest. The Bionic Woman on Wednesday nights is clearly superior to the show from which it sprang. Eve-like.

Bionic Woman is harmless and undisturbing fun. It would help one's appreciation of it if not so many televi­sion shows were at precisely the same intellectual level--­one too low to regitter on any known meter.

Why has Bionic Woman repeatedly placed in Nielsen's top ten since its premiere early this year? Kenneth John­son, formerly with Man, has a number of explanations for the show's appeal--none of them having anything to do with advancing the art of television.

"Mainly," Johnson says from his office at Universai Stu­dios, "I think it's an adult show that kids can enjoy. You know, the kids say, 'Wowee, it's superhero time,' but adults look at it and say, 'Hey, there's a little satire, a iittle wit, maybe even a little philoosophy going down on this show.'"

Another reason for success, Johnson thinks, is the fact that heroine Jaime Sommers, played so very nicely by the refreshing Lindsay Wagner, is not a superheroine in the invincible old comic-book style. There are things she can­not do--like leap tall buildings with single bounds­.

BEST THAT MONEY COULD BUY

When Sommers lost both legs. her right arm and the hearing in her right ear in a parachute accident and subsequently had the missing pieces replaced with the best that money could buy (and technology allegedly could create), she didn't become all-powerful. Just super enough to still seem subject to danger.

"She's very human, really," Johnson says. 'There's very de­finite parameters for her. She can jump to the second scory of a building, but not the third story. She can turn over a car but not a truck. She can lift a ton, but not a ton and a half.

"Another thing: she's never aggressive when she's on the attack. I know that sounds paradoxical, but what I mean is, unlike Wonder Woman, she doesn't go up to a guy and sock him in the puss. She's more clever than that. She'll pull the tug out from under him, and that's a lot funnier."

During the opening credits for the show, a computer readout tells us about Jaime's vital statistics, but then it gets to this item: "Estimated cost--Classified." Does this mean Our Heroine is a cut-rate model?

"We didn't want to specify and get into an inflation situation." Johnson explains. "But in one of the early shows, she asks how much she cost compared to the Six Million Dollar Man and she was told, 'Well, not quite $6 million. Your parts were smaller.'"

Filming begins July 1, and the season will open with a two-part revisit of the Bigfoot Monster that appeared on The Six Million Dollar Man last season and gave it one of its highest ratings.

The episode will begin on Man and conclude on Wom­an. In fact, Johnson says, the two bionics will do "a lot of crossing over" during the year to appear on each other's shows.

That sounds like the tiff between Wagner and The Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors is over. "Whatever animo­sity there was is past history now," Johnson says. Among the subjects of contention: that the spin-off Woman would take viewers away from the original Man (it did anything but) and that, Majors complained, Wagner was getting paid more than he.

MORE EXOTIC LOCATIONS

During the new season, the writers will get Sommers out of her classraom and hometown settings and into more exotic locations. She will go on assignment in Nash­ville as an undercover country-western singer. She will pose as a policewoman in an episode for which the produ­cers hope to get Evel Knievel to play a motorcycle cop.

"And," Johnson promises, "We have a big doomsday double-header planned for midseason." Just in time for Christmas, no doubt.

The Bionic Woman will be appearing other places be­sides the television screens of the nation. The Kenner toy company hopes to have 2.5 million Bionic Woman dolls on the market by autumn­.

"They're putting it together now," says Johnson, not in­tending a pun. There even will be a doll in the likeness of Oscar Goldman, the character who gives the orders and assignments to both the bionic woman and the bionic man.

What will an Osrar Coldman doll do? "Oh, it'll be the typical bureaucratic doll," says Johnson, who grew up near Washington. "It doesn't do anything."