If you’ve been following the NBC 2007 fall TV lineup then you’re no doubt aware of their upcoming new show Bionic Woman (not “The” Bionic Woman, that was the old one). The show looks like a pretty decent remake of what was already a cool idea, though not as cutting edge as it was 30 years ago. It’s also been interesting to hear how much the show has changed from the pilot episode already. First off Sommers’ sister was going to be played by Mae Whitman, George Michael’s girlfriend from Arrested Development, but that has already changed as well as her deaf status.

However the show ends up NBC is definitely looking to market this show heavily as I’m seeing coverage on it in a lot of places. One of my favorite little marketing tricks that I most recently remember from Lost were the Hanso Foundation websites that were supposed to be “real”. Heroes was also running one for the Prima Tech Paper company, which I totally missed. But now Bionic Woman has their own “secret” website that isn’t directly Bionic Woman related: The Center for Ethical Bionics.

The website looks pretty good and is rather convincing with its full content and lots of links that loop around as well as link out to legitimate news sites regarding bionics. There’s even a phone number, and yes I called it and got the voicemail system for TCEB. Unfortunately all their scientists were busy at the moment. I hope they don’t use their scientists to answer phones! There are a few more links out that go to “coming soon” sites for bionics tests, etc. I imagine those will be unlocked as the show starts up. The page I found to be most interesting was “A Closer Look” with a mysterious bio at the very bottom detailing a rogue bionic woman. Now the series storyline has a rogue bionic woman that our new bionic woman must battle, so I’m guessing this “dead” woman isn’t really dead after all. We’ll see soon enough.

Overall, the website is a pretty cool idea. They’ve been very careful to limit the detectable traces back to NBC. However, when loading or refreshing a page watch your status bar for the ever so brief callback to NBC.com for confirmation that this is a fictional site. Kudos though NBC, I enjoyed it.

Update (9/13): There’s another Bionic Woman fun site to check out. How Bionic are you feeling today? Bionic Assessment Test