MacGyver

MacGyver [ mɪɡˈɡɑʲvə ] is a television series produced from 1985 to 1992 , which was first broadcast in 1987 in German-speaking countries. It consists of seven seasons with 139 episodes , followed by two television films in 1994. The series, which mainly belongs to the genres of action , crime and adventure , is creator of Lee David Zlotoff .

Richard Dean Anderson plays the protagonist Angus MacGyver , who often works as a mixture of secret agent, adventurer and emergency worker in humanitarian missions, starting with the second season for the fictional Phoenix Foundation . His most noticeable ability is the practical application of natural and engineering sciences and the combined, inventive use of everyday objects. With this talent he finds a variety of unusual solutions to problems such as escaping from captivity or defusing explosives. Because of these inventions commonly referred to as "MacGyverisms", the series achieved cult status and - with mediocre audience ratings in the United States - became a worldwide success, including in German-speaking countries. The word MacGyver found its way into several languages as a synonym for an inventor or engineer. The series was parodied with, among other things, the commercially unsuccessful movie MacGruber . In September 2016, the first broadcast of a reboot of the same name began .

Episodes, Seasons and Movies

→ Main article:

Episode list
Seasons 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7
TV films Hunt for the treasure of Atlantis and hell

The television series consists of 139 episodes, each about 45 minutes in length. In the United States , they premiered in seven seasons, of which seasons 1 to 6 consist of 19 to 22 episodes each and the final season comprises 14 episodes. When it was first broadcast in German-speaking countries, the broadcaster Sat.1 deviated significantly from the original sequence of the episodes and grouped the episodes in different combinations into seasons. The season information in this article refers to the season numbers of the US premiere, unless otherwise stated.

In 1994 two 90-minute television films appeared with MacGyver as the title character.

content

Overview and main characters

MacGyver actor Richard Dean Anderson on the set, circa 1985

Angus MacGyver (the first name is mentioned for the first time in the fifth season), 39 years old towards the end of the fifth season, comes from the fictional city of Mission City, Minnesota . His external appearance is characterized by the mostly bleached mullet hairstyle and casual, sporty clothing from the second season . In his childhood one of his friends died playing with a loaded pistol together. As a result of this experience, which the viewer learns about in the fourth season, he consistently avoids the use of handguns to settle conflicts in adulthood . How much he rejects the use of firearms becomes particularly clear during a temporary memory loss : Even when he is ready to fire with a loaded rifle facing a murderous attacker, he does not pull the trigger, but puts him out of action in some other way. His approach to solving problems is generally determined by avoiding lethal violence. He usually overpowers opposing people by luring them into a trap or by making them incapable of acting in direct confrontation with targeted punches.

In the first season, MacGyver takes on orders for the fictional US secret service Department of External Services (DXS) and for the Pentagon . Pete Thornton (* 1933), his superior and best friend, also works in a managerial position at DXS . From the second season, MacGyver and Pete work for the fictional Phoenix Foundation for Research . The US think tank and research institute , which is represented nationwide and operates internationally , mainly undertakes humanitarian missions ranging from supporting the socially needy to mediating peace between states. Pete serves as the director of operations. The headquarters of the Phoenix Foundation, a high-rise office building, is located in Los Angeles and is the main location for many episodes.

MacGyver lives in an apartment of a house on a busy beach promenade for the first two seasons . From the third to the sixth season, he lives on a houseboat , which is anchored alongside other boats in a coastal port. In the seventh season, MacGyver lives again in an apartment. All love relationships occurring in the series do not last longer than one episode, which MacGyver justifies with the early death of his parents and a resulting fear of attachment. Past love affairs often form the starting point for actions in later episodes. In the episode Death in China , which was first broadcast as the penultimate and serves as the end of the series, MacGyver first learns from his now adult son Sam . He finishes his work for the Phoenix Foundation and travels with him.

MacGyverisms

MacGyver's utensils often include a Swiss knife. When he was on a mission in Geneva , when he lost his pocket knife, he used a Swiss knife that a Swiss woman gave him to cut the adhesive tape with which an explosive device was attached.

The special feature of MacGyver, presented in the opening credits with numerous settings , is to improvise in seemingly hopeless situations and to be able to combine objects available on site to escape from such situations. Such situations include running away from hostile individuals, incapacitating them, escaping captivity, and preventing timed explosives from detonating . In addition to utensils that are usually at hand - including a Swiss army knife , adhesive tape and matches - his creativity, his sense of physical and chemical relationships and his technical talent are useful for this . In the episode Der betrrogene Betrüger (Season 2) he is characterized by a woman with the typical "MacGyverisms" (in the German dubbed version: "MacGyverismen"), a synonym used outside of the series for his inventions. Some examples of MacGyverisms:

MacGyver instructs a woman to plug a leak on a sulfuric acid tank containing chocolate.

By setting up and switching on a number of electronic kitchen appliances, he ensures that the video surveillance transmitted by radio is disrupted.

MacGyver deceives electronic door opening systems several times, which require a fingerprint or a combination of digits for identification . To do this, he makes fingerprints visible and takes them over, for example with billiard chalk and candle wax .

MacGyver also prevents hostile people from driving off several times by clogging the exhaust pipe of their vehicle , for example with a potato.

At least twice he uses a handgun with the drum removed beforehand to move a screw nut . Among other things, this prevents a core meltdown .

There are other examples of MacGyverisms where he uses handguns without pulling the trigger himself. For example, by gradually burning through a thread attached to the trigger, he achieves that a submachine gun shoots into the air and distracts certain people.

In some episodes he uses homemade explosives to fight criminals. He makes them from reeds and swamp gas, for example .

With his shoelaces, a wrench and a paper clip, he manages that the accelerator of a car is operated by opening the driver's door and not by pressing his foot.

From an old refrigerator, old textiles and some propane gas bottles , MacGyver's guidance is made into an airworthy hot air balloon .

He connects the line of the telephone from his motel room with that of the telephone in the next room so that he can overhear the calls from the neighbors.

From bamboo wood , plastic tarpaulin and the motor of a concrete drum mixer , he constructs an airworthy, two-seater small aircraft. Another time he builds a flying machine from tarpaulin and the propeller of a wind tunnel, among other things .

In a photo laboratory and with glycerine to smooth the paper, he makes the writing legible again on a crumpled and burned sheet of paper.

MacGyver frees himself from a pumping station by suddenly escaping a T-shaped iron rod that is stuck in a high-pressure pipe and crashing into the door, which breaks the lock and hinges.

He uses the magnet on a walkie talkie to prevent the detonator of an electronically controlled bomb from going off.

MacGyver's talent for improvisation is also used to repair defective items. For example, he bridges a defective fuse with chewing gum paper, which is electrically conductive , so that the current flows again.

The viewer finally learns that MacGyver's son Sam has a similar talent for improvisation as his father.

Other figures

Penny Parker is a young and extremely talkative and sometimes childishly naive American woman who MacGyver first met by chance in the first season on a mission in Bulgaria . With little talent but big dreams, her pursuit of a career in show business gets her into trouble several times.

Jack Dalton is the most common supporting character. Jack is a pilot and an old friend of MacGyver's. In the course of the series, he builds his own airline company. He often persuades MacGyver to help him with daring actions that require traveling by plane. MacGyver and the audience sometimes notice that he does not always stick to the truth from Jack's involuntarily winking eye. For example, Jack tells MacGyver that he is in dire straits; However, Jack has actually been deliberately arrested and lures MacGyver to look for treasure with his help.

Harry Jackson is a grandfather of MacGyver and became a surrogate father for him after his father and grandmother were killed in a car accident. He left MacGyver seven years after the car accident. After another 16 years, Harry and MacGyver meet again for the first time in the first season and together flee from killers through the wilderness. Harry dies of a heart attack at the end of the episode Ferry to the Afterlife (Season 5) .

Widowed Nicole Anne "Nikki" Carpenter stars in six episodes of season three and is best introduced as an insurance detective and sister of a friend of MacGyver's in the episode Who Laughs Last Laughs . Starting with her next gig, she works in the Phoenix Foundation, often alongside MacGyver.

The Coltons are a dark-skinned family that includes the mother and her three sons Frank, Jesse and Billy . The two older brothers, Frank and Jesse, are premium hunters who specialize in bounty hunting . Young Billy emulates them in this career choice. A Colton's first appearance is that of Jesse in the episode Mother Dalton (season 4). In this episodes and in five later episodes, MacGyver meets one of the Colton brothers each in search of criminals who they continue together. The four Coltons have their last and only joint appearance in the episode The Coltons (season 7), in which MacGyver is exceptionally only a minor character.

Recurring minor characters that appear in three episodes each include the following people:

Lisa Woodman is a student MacGyver gets to know on the job in Switzerland. He mediates disputes between her and her parents and helps her in emergencies, including alcohol addiction and kidnapping.
Earl Dent is a former inmate who receives help from MacGyver with rehabilitation and when he is blackmailed by criminals.
Mama Lorraine is a voodoo priestess who runs a shop in MacGyver's neighborhood for Season 7.

Neither Pete nor the minor characters known from the series appear in the two television films.

Frequent topics and assignments

Many episodes are about solving criminal cases. Drugs, murder, fraud, theft, money laundering and counterfeit money often play a role here. MacGyver once supported the city police's drug squad by developing a device that could open doors without a gun during raids . Sometimes it's about terrorism . For example, MacGyver and his grandfather prevent terrorists from blowing up the Phoenix building.

Several episodes are about the search for a treasure, be it a pot of gold, a large amount of money or an archaeologically significant object. Corresponding episodes often take place outside the main location. MacGyver and an archaeologist are looking for the so-called “Holy Rose” in southern England and northern France; they discover that the laser was invented much earlier than assumed. Other treasures that MacGyver and friends are looking for are the grave of Alexander the Great and the giant sapphire "Eye of Osiris" in Turkey and a treasure of the Incas in Peru , which ultimately turns out not to be the expected gold, but rather a store of grain . In the Arctic Circle , MacGyver is part of a US-Soviet expedition looking for gold bars worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

There are other episodes that take place in the wild and often show that MacGyver can live in nature even without the aid of civilization. In such episodes he works as part of a Phoenix program or visits a friend, but discovers and fights unplanned criminal activities. Examples of such crimes include poaching in the national park, oil theft from a pipeline, and illegal handling of drugs. In the episode Merciless (Season 5), which takes place in Africa, MacGyver pleads for the protection of rhinos , against poaching and the killing of the rhinos for the economic exploitation of their horns . In several episodes he campaigns against environmental degradation . For example, he is committed to the side of an environmentalist against clearing and illegal timber export.

Some episodes deal with MacGyver in the liberation of friends or allies from captivity in politically unstable states in Central America . For example, with the help of Jack and his plane, he frees Pete and a nun from the violence of rebels who are planning an assassination attempt on the president and who have captured them on false grounds.

With increasing frequency in the course of the series, MacGyver campaigns for socially disadvantaged people, often as part of a corresponding program of the Phoenix Foundation. For example, he works in a Phoenix program to reduce the school dropout rate as a science teacher in a special school and as a mentor for a talented young person. He also helps an underage prostitute to free herself from the power of her pimp and he supports the homeless . Sometimes he brings homeless people to the Challengers Club , where he volunteers sporadically. The club, which appears for the first time in the episode Druck (season 4), serves young people from difficult social backgrounds for leisure activities and is threatened with closure several times due to lack of money.

MacGyver fights contract killers several times in the course of the series. In the first season, the hit men Axminster and Quayle try to murder MacGyver in retaliation, but fail mainly due to the tricks MacGyver devised. From season two, MacGyver meets Murdoc in at least one episode per season .

The hit man Deborah is set on MacGyver to influence the Phoenix Foundation's decision on an environmental report. By approaching him, she spies on him and he falls in love with her. In her attempt to insidiously murder him, however, as well as on another occasion in the following season, she fails when she lures MacGyver to her by kidnapping Pete and Jack. In another episode, MacGyver saves Lt. Murphy before her insidious assassination by the psychopathic serial killer Dr. Zito , whom she had once arrested and who therefore wants to take revenge on her. Zito reappears on the series and teaches MacGyver a lesson in malice by kidnapping several people.

Murdoc

The professional killer Murdoc works - like Quayle - with particular insidiousness . He prefers to lure MacGyver into an elaborate ambush rather than simply shooting him, which he has several opportunities to do. Murdoc is a quick-change artist; he often approaches his victims disguised, masked or with a disguised voice, for example as a nurse or as a wheelchair-driving, francophone theater director. Introduced into the plot, Murdoc as an internationally wanted terrorist is flashed back to seven years ago, marking the first meeting of MacGyver with both Murdoc and Pete, in the episode The Dead Live Longer (Season 2). In that flashback, MacGyver helps secret agent Pete stop Murdoc from killing them both with bazookas . In the first Murdoc-centered episodes, Murdoc seeks personal revenge on MacGyver and Pete. Episodes with Murdoc appearances always end with a situation in which he is apparently fatally injured. For example, a dynamite explosive device explodes at his feet or he falls hundreds of meters or he falls into a pool of water after being electrocuted .

In the episode Das Tal des Todes (Season 5), MacGyver and the audience learn that Murdoc has previously worked for the organization Homicide International Trust (in the German dubbed version: Insidiously international killing ), HIT for short . Because Murdoc has not carried out the most recent order given by HIT, HIT blackmailed him with the threat of murdering his sister Ashton. MacGyver helps him free Ashton so as not to be responsible for her murder. Rather than face prosecution thereafter, Murdoc provides evidence to break up HIT. At Murdoc's return in the sixth season, however, HIT continues and Murdoc, applying for re-inclusion in HIT, fails again to murder MacGyver. Therefore, HIT drops Murdoc, so that he wants to help a disempowered Central American dictator to return to power in order to make money in the seventh season, but he is unsuccessful because of MacGyver's intervention.

References to real political conditions

Several episodes, most of which belong to the first three seasons, are set against the backdrop of the Cold War . They deal with the liberation of dissidents and other persons from state custody, with MacGyver's confrontation with secret services of the Eastern Bloc , including the KGB and GRU , and with the possession of secret information on microfilm . The episodes in question are set in Bulgaria , Hungary , Czechoslovakia , the GDR , the Soviet Union and Afghanistan . MacGyver's mission in episode GX-1 (season 3), for example, is to find and destroy the wreckage of a US airplane that crashed with secret technology on board in the GDR. The end of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain are reflected in the episodes An Act of Humanity and The Wall from the sixth season . In the latter, MacGyver brings a woman to the United States and to her grandfather, who fled across the German-German border before the fall of the Berlin Wall and from whose grandfather some ex- Stasi employees still want gold back.

Another direct reference to a political event in reality is the episode The Children of Tienanmen Square (Season 5), which was first broadcast half a year after the so-called Tian'anmen massacre . MacGyver helps the Chinese student movement publicize the alleged massacre in the United States that China has hitherto kept secret, and in a later episode with the publication of evidence of the exploitation of the students arrested in the massacre.

In the episode The Gardens of the Death Baron (season 7) MacGyver comes under the control of the Tonton Macoute , a violent militia that was formerly under the control of the dictator François Duvalier in Haiti and is now active in MacGyver's neighborhood. Mama Lorraine helps him rescue a kidnapped woman from the violence of the militia who pays homage to Baron Samedi .

Fight against racially motivated crime

In the episode Druck (season 4), the black co-leader of the Challengers Club, MacGyver's friend Booker Wilson, is murdered by a racist white man. MacGyver tracks down the killer and can only be stopped from hateful and revenge-filled beating of the killer by a young person whom MacGyver had previously taught to renounce violence. This scene clearly differs from MacGyver's usual behavior, which is characterized by self-control, rationality and reason.

The 92nd episode (season 5), which bears the original English title The Ten Percent Solution and was neither dubbed nor broadcast by Sat.1 , is also about racially motivated crime . It centers on a policy, the US group of neo-Nazis , the six western US states under Nazi power or under the control of the white master race want to make. With the help of a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor and the Phoenix Foundation, MacGyver uncovered the group's plans, which were financed with the proceeds from the sale of paintings confiscated by the Nazis. MacGyver prevents with a MacGyverism that he and his fellow prisoners are gassed by the neo-Nazis.

Memories and fantasy experiences

In several episodes of the last three seasons, MacGyver experiences events in dreams or in his mind that only take place in his imagination. In the two episodes In the Wild West (Season 5) and MacGyver's Dream Women (Season 6) he dreams of himself as a cowboy in the Wild West . The former, in which Pete and the actors of several recurring supporting characters appear in roles with the same name, also reflects his attitude in the reality of advocating peaceful coexistence and against gun violence and racial discrimination. In the last episode of the fifth season, Ferry to the Hereafter , his thoughts go through the farewell to his grandfather. The two-parter Knight MacGyver (Season 7) takes place in the Middle Ages and is part of a dream by MacGyver in the role of a knight under King Arthur .

In the third to last episode of the second season and in the last episode of the fourth and sixth seasons, MacGyver and his friends remember shared experiences that were told in previous episodes and that are shown again here in flashbacks. There are also flashbacks to MacGyver in his childhood in a few other episodes.

Staging

Seven episodes from the first season begin with opening sequences placed in front of the opening credits , which are referred to in the credits as the Opening Gambit and are from scriptwriters other than those of the main plot. MacGyver acts as the first-person narrator in most episodes of the first four seasons . As such, he introduces the viewer to his current mission or explains how MacGyverism works. Some episodes, mainly those of older seasons, contain archive material that is recordings of missiles, animals, cities and landscapes, but also scenes from movies: The episode The Thief of Budapest (Season 1) contains scenes from Charlie dusts off millions (1969), The Ant War contains material from When the Marabunta Threats (1954), An Invisible Opponent (Season 1) contains material from the film Finale in Berlin (1966) and the episode GX-1 (Season 3) Small parts from Top Gun - You Fear Neither Death nor the Devil (1986) were integrated.

production

Executive Producer Henry Winkler

Paramount employee Tony Jonas had a very vague idea of the series , who introduced it to the production company Henry Winkler / John Rich Productions. From this, Winkler and Rich developed at least five variations, on the basis of which they had Lee David Zlotoff develop a concrete concept for the new series. Zlotoff is named in the credits as the creator of the series. He previously worked as a screenwriter for the crime series Hill Street Police Station and Remington Steele , also as a producer for the latter. For the peculiarity of the character MacGyver, the MacGyverisms, Zlotoff was largely inspired by John Koivula, who worked at the California Institute of Technology and had a broad knowledge of chemistry, physics and gemology . In addition, the scriptwriters used Richard Dean Anderson to characterize the main character in the course of the series, for example both are from Minnesota .

Winkler and Rich acted as executive producers during the entire production time . Winkler previously starred in the comedy series Happy Days , Rich had worked primarily as a director and producer on television series in the 1970s and 1980s. Anderson himself acted as a producer on the two television films under a contract with ABC. With his company Gekko Film Corp. Among other things, he decided to let the films play in Europe.

The MacGyverisms were developed with the assistance of scientists from the California Institute of Technology, mainly Koivula. In addition, MacGyverisms were adapted from letters received from viewers as part of a competition organized by the producers. Sometimes the scriptwriters modified the MacGyverisms to the detriment of their scientific credibility in order to incorporate them into the plot. For example, the number of chocolate bars used in the pilot episode to close the acid leak would not be enough in reality. If MacGyverism could not be implemented as planned and tested during the shooting, special effects were used. In MacGyverisms, which contain explosives or other dangerous substances, attempts were made to avoid imitations by omitting certain ingredients.

The first two seasons were made in Hollywood . For cost reasons, the Paramount Television studio relocated the production site to Vancouver, Canada, before the start of the third season . The seventh season was again in California , in Ventura County . In the first three seasons, Richard D. Anderson performed many stunts himself. Then he injured his back so seriously in a stunt for the series that an operation was necessary.

Executive producers included Stephen Downing from the start of the series , who was a Los Angeles cop for 20 years prior to working on the series . He used the series to oppose their use in the face of the immense number of deaths from handguns in the United States. He used the episodes Blood Brothers (Season 4), in which MacGyver remembers the gun-related death of one of his childhood friends, and A Gun with a Past (Season 6). The second episode is about a revolver that - similar to the Robert F. Kennedy murder - killed a senator 20 years ago and, as is common in the USA, was then put back into circulation through a police auction. The episode The Children of Tienanmen Square (season 5) is also based on Downing's idea and gives the viewer the perspective of the Chinese student movement on the Tienanmen massacre. A building converted into a Chinese embassy was used for the shooting. Real Chinese diplomats tried to obstruct the shooting by appealing to the police and the staff.

Dana Elcar , who played Pete Thornton, suffered from glaucoma . After the fourth season, he announced to the producers that he was going blind. This restriction was henceforth taken into account in the scripts. He was practically blind during the production of the sixth season, so the character Pete was also blinded. In order to be able to learn his script texts, he had them read to him.

The most frequently used directors include Charlie Correll (19 episodes and Hell's End ), Cliff Bole (16), Michael Caffey (16), Michael Preece (11), Mike Vejar (17 episodes and Treasure Hunt from Atlantis ) and William Gereghty (19). In the first and fifth episodes, the director is named Alan Smithee , a common pseudonym .

The episode The Coltons (season 7), in which the Colton family is central, was originally produced for the sixth season and was planned as the introduction to a spin-off series , which however never materialized.

Cast and dubbing

The table lists the actors, their role names, their affiliation with the main cast (●) or with the secondary and guest actors (•) per season and the total number of episodes with performances as well as the German voice actors .

		Season
actor	Role name	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	Episodes	German voice actor
Richard Dean Anderson	Angus MacGyver	●	●	●	●	●	●	●	139	Michael Christian (originally TV dubbing) , Erich Räuker (DVD dubbing) , Lutz Mackensy and Rainer Schmitt (VHS videos from CIC )
Dana Elcar	Andy Colson	•							1	Wolfgang Völz
Dana Elcar	Peter "Pete" Thornton	•	●	●	●	●	●	●	85	Wolfgang Völz
Teri Hatcher	Penny Parker	•	•		•	•			7th	Evelyn Marron
John Anderson	Harry Jackson	•	•			•	•		5	Detlev Witte (Season 1) , Arnold Marquis (Seasons 2, 5, 6)
Michael Des Barres	Murdoc		•	•	•	•	•	•	9	Wolfgang number
Bruce McGill	Jack Dalton		•	•	•	•	•	•	19th	Friedrich G. Beckhaus (Season 1) , Michael Chevalier (2nd Voice) , Hans-Werner Bussinger (3rd Voice) , Jan Spitzer (Season 7)
Elyssa Davalos	Lisa Kosov alias Lisa Kohler			•					2	Simone Brahmann
Elyssa Davalos	Nicole Anne "Nikki" Carpenter			•					6th	Simone Brahmann
William Morgan Sheppard	Dr. Zito				•		•		2	Friedrich W. Bauschulte (season 4) , Joachim Nottke (season 6)
Richard Lawson	Jesse Colton				•	•		•	3	Martin Keßler
Cuba Gooding junior	Ray Collins				•				1	Frank Schröder
Cuba Gooding junior	Billy Colton					•		•	3	Charles Rettinghaus
Cleavon Little	Frank Colton					•		•	2	Peter Neusser (season 5) , Martin Keßler (season 7)
Mayim Bialik	Lisa Woodman					•	•		3	Caroline Ruprecht
Dick Butkus	Earl Dent						•	•	3	Helmut Krauss
Della Reese	Mama Colton						•	•	2	Barbara Ratthey
Kimberly Scott	Mama Lorraine							•	3	Barbara Ratthey

Before Dana Elcar played the role of Pete Thornton from the eleventh episode, he appeared in the pilot episode as a supporting character Andy Colson. Also Elyssa Davalos and Cuba Gooding Jr. were seen her recurring roles in the series in other unique roles before. Beyond these examples, there are a number of actors who appeared in alternating supporting roles within the series, mostly played in one episode per season:

Vernon Wells

Caitlin (Season 1)
Paul Donnay (Season 3)

Anthony De Longis

Piedra (Season 1)
Kosov (Season 3)

Kai Wulff

Stepan Frolov (Season 1)
Hans Visser (Season 4)
Ladysmith (Season 5)
Nicolas von Leer (Season 6)

Christopher Neame

Quayle (Season 1)
Erich von Leer (Season 5)
Duncan (Season 7)

John Considine

Foxworth (Season 5)
Aaron Sandler (Season 6)
Andrew Lawton (Season 7)

Herb Edelman

Tubbs (season 5)
Gorman (Season 6)
Riggins (Season 7)

137 episodes were dubbed in German for the Sat.1 television broadcast by Arena Synchron Berlin, dialogue director and dialogue book author was Peter Wesp . Wolfgang Völz , the German spokesman for Dana Elcar, made a brief appearance as a pallbearer on the inner-German border in the episode An Invisible Opponent (Season 1); Archive material from the film Finale in Berlin . Episodes 92 ( The Ten Percent Solution , Season 5) and 111 ( Harry's Will , Season 6) were initially not dubbed in German. The former was re-dubbed for DVD release, with Richard Dean Anderson receiving a different dubbing voice since its original voiceover Michael Christian had passed away in 2006. They resorted to Erich Räuker , who also spoke Anderson in the series Stargate - Kommando SG-1 .

Television broadcast

In 1993 the series was broadcast in 87 countries around the world.

		US premiere on ABC		German-language first broadcast on Sat.1 and RTL Nitro
Season	Episodes	Period	Rank in the Nielsen ratings	Period
1	22nd	76845812925 ♠29 Sep 1985 - May 7, 198676870557575 ♠0	47	76920232925 ♠Aug 29, 1987 - Nov 1, 1994 77197447425 ♠0
2	22nd	76883860150 ♠22 Sep 1986 - May 4, 198776908976900 ♠0	41	76931209875 ♠Dec 19, 1987 - 77199959100 ♠Nov 28, 1994
3	20th	76922465525 ♠21 Sep 1987 - May 9, 198876948140425 ♠0	53	76977443300 ♠0Feb. 4, 1989 - 77203121950 ♠Dec. 30, 1994
4th	19th	76965070975 ♠Oct 31, 1988 - 76987396975 ♠May 15, 1989	46	77007676425 ♠0Dec 9, 1989 - May 5, 1990 77025165125 ♠0
5	21st	76999583250 ♠Sep 18 1989 - 77024513950 ♠Apr 30, 1990	?	77051584225 ♠0Jan. 1, 1991 - 77124887925 ♠Dec. 21, 1992 (except Ep. 9) , Sep. 9. 2014 (Ep. 9) 77966206025 ♠0
6th	21st	77038188625 ♠17 Sep 1990 - May 6, 199177063956550 ♠0	52	77074840475 ♠Aug. 27, 1991 - 77124980950 ♠Dec. 22, 1992 (except Ep. 7)
7th	14th	77076794000 ♠16 Sep 1991 - 77087026750 ♠Dec. 30, 1991 (up to Ep. 12) , 77101445625 ♠Apr. 25, 1992 (Ep. 13) , 77104050325 ♠May 21, 1992 (Ep. 14)	74	77121725075 ♠Nov 19, 1992 - 77124515825 ♠Dec 17, 1992
2 television films		77180795950 ♠May 14, 1994 - 77199587000 ♠Nov. 24, 1994	-	77207680175 ♠Jan 15, 1995 - 77208331350 ♠Jan 22, 1995

United States

MacGyver started on September 29, 1985 on the American broadcaster ABC . ABC had the original one and a half hour long pilot episode shortened to one hour. The series ran from then on in a weekly rhythm in the evening program. During the first season it changed the day of the week several times and was mainly broadcast on Sundays and Wednesdays. From the second season, ABC broadcast the series, with a few exceptions in 1991/92, on Monday evening. During the second and third seasons, the start of broadcasting on the US West Coast was dependent on the end of the previously broadcast Monday Night Football , before the series began in the fourth season on the West Coast at the fixed time of 10 p.m. The series was mostly placed in the 50 most watched programs of the weekly Nielsen Ratings , but rarely reached one of the top 20 ranks.

After the twelfth episode of season seven, which first aired on December 30, 1991, ABC discontinued the series due to poor audience ratings. At the time, MacGyver was the longest one-hour entertainment series aired by ABC. The Los Angeles Times According to ABC presented the series one after the seventh season, the new series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles broadcast, but only smaller audience could reach. The episode Death in China was advertised as the series finale and on April 25, 1992 as part of the "Night of Long Goodbys at ABC" following the last two episodes of the series Who's Here the Boss? and our noisy home premiered; it was seen by 13.1 million viewers. The episode Schweres Wasser , which first aired on May 21, 1992, was not originally intended to be broadcast. ABC only decided to broadcast it after assessing the ratings of Tod in China . The first TV movie, Lost Treasure of Atlantis (The Lost Treasure of Atlantis) , was erstausgestrahlt in the US on May 14, 1994, the second TV movie, Skyjacked (Trail to Doomsday) , on 24 November 1994th

German-speaking countries

First broadcast by Sat.1
transmitting echelon	from	to	Episodes	rhythm
1	76920232925 ♠Aug 29, 1987	76945163625 ♠0Apr 9, 1988	29 from seasons 1 and 2	Saturdays
2	76977443300 ♠0Feb. 4, 1989	76992048225 ♠0July 1, 1989	22 from seasons 1, 2 and 3	Saturdays
3	77007676425 ♠0Dec 9, 1989	77025165125 ♠0May 5th 1990	all 19 from season 4	Saturdays
4th	77051584225 ♠0Jan. 1, 1991	77061910000 ♠Apr 16, 1991	15 from season 5	Tuesdays
5	77073538125 ♠Aug 13, 1991	77079026600 ♠0Oct 8, 1991	8 from seasons 5 and 6	Tuesdays
6th	77115306350 ♠Sep 14 1992	77124980950 ♠Dec 22, 1992	31 from seasons 5, 6 and 7	Mondays to Thursdays
7th	77194842725 ♠0Oct 5, 1994	77203121950 ♠Dec 30, 1994	13 from seasons 1, 2 and 3	Mondays to Fridays

In the German-speaking area, the 137 German-dubbed episodes were first broadcast on Sat.1 from August 1987 to December 1994 , in a sometimes very different order. Of seasons 1 to 3, which Sat.1 first aired from 1987 to 1990, the station initially held back 13 episodes and only first aired them in 1994. Sat.1 first showed the television films in Germany in January 1995, albeit in the reverse order. Episode 92 ( The Ten Percent Solution , Season 5), which deals with neo-Nazism , was first broadcast in German on September 9, 2014 by RTL Nitro , under the title The Woman in the Background . Episode 111 ( Harry's Will , Season 6) was never broadcast in Germany.

Home theater publication

Videotapes

The distribution company CIC published ten episodes of the series on five German-language VHS cassettes, on each of which two episodes were cut into a film. The cassettes were released before the German-language first broadcast of the episodes they contained. The first four cassettes contain episodes from the first season.

1986: MacGyver - He fights with all tricks , contains the episodes Explosion Underground and snapshots with consequences

1986: MacGyver 2 - The Adventurer , contains the episodes Small Fish, Big Fish, and Goldbroiler MacGyver

1986: MacGyver 3 - Killer Ants , contains the episodes The Ant War and The Thief of Budapest

1987: MacGyver 4 - Black Gold Company , includes the Torches and Six Hours to Eternity episodes

1990: Curse of the Holy Rose , includes the double episode The Legend of the Holy Rose (season 5)

DVD

First DVD release
Season	United States	TOP, ROOF
1	77595594425 ♠Jan 25, 2005	77734852850 ♠Sep 18 2008
2	77608803975 ♠0June 7, 2005	77742480900 ♠0Dec 4, 2008
3	77617641350 ♠06 Sep 2005	77754481125 ♠05th Mar 2009
4th	77626571750 ♠0Dec 6, 2005	77772155875 ♠03rd Sep 2009
5	77639223150 ♠14 Mar 2006	77799226150 ♠0May 6, 2010
6th	77648060525 ♠June 13, 2006	77811412425 ♠0Sep 9 2010
7th	77660991000 ♠Oct 24, 2006	77830017425 ♠Feb 17, 2011
2x F	77803040175 ♠June 15, 2010	---

All seven seasons appeared for the first time under regional code 1 in English on seven DVD boxes between January 2005 and October 2006; the films appeared for the first time in June 2010 in a DVD edition with the title MacGyver: The Movies . The films are also included in the full DVD release, released on April 7, 2015 under the title MacGyver: The Complete Collection .

The seven seasons also appeared in German-speaking countries (in regional code 2). They were released from September 2008 to February 2011 at intervals of several months by Paramount Home Entertainment in one box per season; the boxes are approved by the FSK from 12 years of age. Some episodes contain scenes that were cut during the German television broadcast. Relevant scenes from the first season were subsequently dubbed for the DVD release. From the second season they are integrated in the original sound and provided with German subtitles. An example of a longer such scene are the pictures of the rapidly aging scientist Dr. Milhouse in the episode Danger from Outer Space (season 3). Episode 111 ( Harry's Will , Season 6) is only available in the original English language with German subtitles . Apart from that, all episodes have the German and English soundtracks in Dolby Digital .

In addition to the German first publication, the seasons appeared in German in the following DVD editions:

On June 9, 2011, the seven seasons appeared in a total of 14 boxes, i. H. in two boxes per season.
On October 2, 2014, the seven seasons were released again in seven separate boxes.
On July 2, 2015, the seven seasons appeared in the MacGyver - The Complete Collection .

The two television films have not yet been released in German.

Blu-ray

After CBS commissioned a remastering , the series has also been released with high-resolution images on Blu-ray since 2018 . The first season has been available in German since November 8, 2018.

Video on demand

The series is available for video-on-demand in the United States on at least Amazon Instant Video , iTunes , Vudu, and CBS All Access .

Awards

MacGyver was nominated four times for a Primetime Emmy Award for makeup, sound editing, and costumes , but did not win it. The series won a BMI TV Music Award in 1991 and a Genesis Award in 1991, which is given for outstanding work in connection with animals. In the 1989/90 season, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Holly Fields were each nominated for a Young Artist Award . Richard Dean Anderson was nominated for a TV Land Award in 2005 in the Most Uninsurable Driver category and in 2007 in the Greatest Equipment or Most Admirable Apparatus category for his Swiss Army Knife and Tape .

price	year	category	People)	episode	result
Primetime Emmy Award	1987	Best make-up for a series		memories	Nominated
	1989	Best sound editing for a series		Gold rush	Nominated
	1990	Best sound editing for a series		Of violins and crooks	Nominated
	1992	Best costumes for a series		Knight MacGyver , part 1	Nominated
BMI Film & TV Award	1991		Randy Edelman		Won
Environmental Media Award	1991				Won
Genesis Award	1991	Best television drama	Paul B. Margolis , Henry Winkler		Won
Golden Reel Award	1991	Best sound editing, TV episode, dialogue and ADR	Ashley Harvey	Knight MacGyver , part 2	Won
TV Land Award	2005	Most uninsurable driver	Richard Dean Anderson		Nominated
TV Land Award	2007	Best equipment or most admirable apparatus	Richard Dean Anderson	For the Swiss army knife and the tape	Nominated
Troféu Imprensa	1990	Best series			Won
Young Artist Award	1990	Best Young Guest Actress in a TV Series	Holly Fields		Nominated
Young Artist Award	1990	Best Young Guest Actor in a TV Series	Cuba Gooding Jr.		Nominated

The series was also recognized in 1989 by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence , which is directed against gun violence .

Effect and adaptations

Cultural meaning

At least in everyday English and German usage, the name MacGyver found its way into as a synonym for improvised repairs, inventions or handicrafts. For example, the German astronaut Alexander Gerst said of his mission on the international space station : "We had to repair it in MacGyver-style". Sometimes “MacGyver” is also used as a verb and is inflected ; What is meant is the creation of an improvised repair, invention, handicraft or misuse. As a verb, MacGyver was included in both British and American English in 2015 in the online dictionary OxfordDictionaries.com operated by Oxford University Press . Several MacGyver-based words of various parts of speech have also been entered by users in the Urban Dictionary , an online dictionary for English jargon expressions.

The series is highlighted as an icon of the 1980s mainly because of the ingenuity of its main character . The series' importance is also evident in its inclusion in several books on popular television series. In the book A Cult for All Cases - The Ultimate Series of the Eighties ( Suhrkamp 2013), for example, MacGyver is presented as one of twelve television series typical of the 1980s, with MacGyverisms being emphasized here too. The technology magazine Wired named MacGyver - in a row with real people like John McAfee and Steve Jobs - as one of the most important "Tech Superheroes" (German for example: "Technology Superheroes").

The award-winning US radio show This American Life featured some real MacGyverisms in a 2003 issue entitled MacGyver . The English book What Would MacGyver Do? ( Penguin Books 2006) is a collection of 45 MacGyverism-like inventions or repairs that originate from real people. For example, it explains how to repair a clutch pedal that was needed in a desert without the tools available. The US magazine ReadyMade regularly featured The MacGyver Challenge , in which readers competed to create something useful from a list of simple objects.

The 100th episode (2008) of the US documentary series MythBusters - Die Wissensjäger is a MacGyver special in which various MacGyverisms were recreated and tested for their usefulness. One of the results was that, contrary to what was shown in the first MacGyver episode, it is not simply possible to blast a hole in a wall with a small amount of sodium that reacts with water .

MacGyver is often used to explain the lifehacking internet phenomenon that emerged in the 2000s . It means something like finding solutions to everyday problems by using objects from the surrounding area for purposes other than those intended. So-called " life hacks " or "everyday hacks" have been described as modern MacGyverismen.

Several rappers , including Ice Cube and Big Punisher , mentioned MacGyver in their songs. Some parents gave their son the first name MacGyver, following the example of the main character in the series . A man who amputated a trapped arm himself in order to survive said that, like MacGyver, he had previously looked for possible solutions in his vicinity. The name MacGyver was also given to an app that was used by criminals for credit card fraud at least from 2015 .

The fictional character MacGyver was associated with the anthropological concept of bricolage (French for "tinkering") by Claude Lévi-Strauss and described as an archetypal style of action. Accordingly, MacGyver is often referred to in French as a “bricoleur”, a hobbyist.

Importance in education and science

The producers of the series reported numerous letters of thanks from parents for the increased interest of their children in school and scientific learning material. As early as the 1980s, educators in the United States were adapting the series for learning material. They ran projects inspired by the series to teach children creative thinking and problem solving.

At least in Germany, several university ideas and creative competitions arose, which MacGyver's inventiveness serves as a model. The Technical University of Braunschweig, for example, has been organizing the industrially sponsored MacGyver ideas competition since 2005 , in which students and schoolchildren invent and construct machines and devices, such as an egg-throwing machine and a cocktail machine (as of Sep. 30, 2016). In a lecture that took place in 2014 as part of a lecture series at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen , the MacGyverisms used in the series were examined for their functionality in reality and, in summary, assessed as partially exaggerated, but as practical.

As part of a research project carried out at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta , which the US Navy funded with 900,000 US dollars, a robot based on the model of MacGyver was developed; H. a robot that uses its environment to solve problems.

When MacGyver medicine (German about "MacGyver medicine") is about the patient's treatment in exceptional circumstances, d. H. under conditions in which the medical professionals have to improvise.

In a paper published by BioMed Central in 2011, the New Zealand scientists Perera and Moriarty explained how health services research works using the MacGyver effect . H. on the "ability to apply scientific principles and use everyday objects in innovative ways to create something that can overcome obstacles posed by third parties."

The US economist Robert F. Engle , winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics , looked at the financial mathematical model Dynamic Conditional Correlation , which is used to estimate correlations in the return on total capital and, like the ARCH model , is a stochastic model for time series analysis . In a 2007 paper, he presented a new, dedicated estimation method, which he named "MacGyver method" based on MacGyver's ability to solve problems with the means available at the time. He praised the television series as a “triumph of brain over brawn”, in German, for example: “Triumph of the mind over muscle power”. The paper was published in 2009 in an anthology with essays in honor of econometrician David F. Hendry .

MacGyver creator Zlotoff developed the concept "The MacGyver Secret", originally called "The MacGyver Method", based on the series, which serves to effectively solve any problem and uses the subconscious to do so . He presented it at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2013 . The concept was tested in studies at the University of Michigan School of Psychology starting in 2013 .

Nikita Coulombe and psychologist Philip Zimbardo introduced the “MacGyver test” in the 2015 book Man (Dis) connected , which is used to assess whether men are portrayed stereotypically in film and television . Because of his ability to find non-violent and creative solutions, MacGyver served the book authors as a male hero with a role model and therefore as a namesake.

Offshoot

A pilot was made for an offshoot television series called Young MacGyver , but it never aired. In the film, Angus MacGyver's nephew Clay MacGyver is at the center of the plot, in which the twentieth year gives up school and joins the Phoenix Foundation. As with the original series, Winkler, Rich and Downing acted as executive producers . Directed by Stephen Herek , the main character played Jared Padalecki . The film was produced by Paramount Television and sold to The WB network in 2002 after ABC refused the purchase. The series was supposed to be broadcast from 2003, but it was never realized. The film is available on the Internet.

Lee David Zlotoff planned to produce a MacGyver movie in 2008 . In the following year it became public that the film production company New Line Cinema was developing the film and that Raffaella De Laurentiis would also be the executive producer. In 2012, Variety announced that the Australian James Wan would be the director. In March 2015 it was announced that directing the film was no longer an option for Wan.

Since 2016, the US broadcaster CBS has been running a TV series about MacGyver at a younger age than the original TV series. The title role was cast with Lucas Till (→ main article: MacGyver (2016) ) . In addition to this revival as a television series, the US film studio Lionsgate is planning a screen adaptation of MacGyver (as of February 2016).

In 2015, the international competition The Next MacGyver was held, the aim of which was to collect ideas for a new television series in which a female engineer with skills similar to MacGyver's is the focus. The prospective series aims to inspire young women to embark on a career in engineering . The competition, worth $ 5,000 for each winner, was hosted by Zlotoff's MacGyver Foundation in conjunction with the National Academy of Engineering and the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering. The five winners selected from almost 2,000 participants were given the opportunity to develop a script for a pilot film with Hollywood producers, including Roberto Orci and Anthony E. Zuiker , as mentors.

criticism

In response to the episode Blood Brothers (season 4), the US firearms organization NRA campaigned to avoid the series and boycott its sponsors. The conservative US organization Media Research Center judged the series in higher seasons derogatory than too liberal and therefore put it on its blacklist in the 1990/91 season .

During its first broadcast, the series received little media attention. With the start of the reboot television series of the same name in 2016, however, some critics paid tribute to the original series. Jürgen Schmieder, for example, a journalist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung , assessed it as “a solid, coherent action series with a wonderfully innovative figure”. Nonetheless, it was "not a television philosophical highlight, not a social commentary, not a ramified drama". In the US magazine The Atlantic , Megan Garber said in 2016 that, by today's standards, the series may not have been great television and even barely good television, but something unique and singular, something winfully strange and - just like its protagonist - bold be.

Possible inspiration for acts of violence and explosives

There have been several press reports that the series was used as a model for children in the United States to build bombs. Executive Producer Steven Downing reported in the Los Angeles Times in 1990 that the series had often been accused of being a source of inspiration for acts of violence. In December 1990, an elementary school in Los Angeles was evacuated after a timed explosive device was found consisting of two model rockets , two batteries and a timer, which a 10-year-old said he had constructed, inspired by MacGyver . Downing said of the incident that the series never showed a bomb designed in this way. In March 1991, The Baltimore Sun reported that at least eight Baltimore area adolescents had been seriously injured in the past five months while playing with bottle bombs made from household chemicals and learned to build while watching the show. In response, the producers and the Paramount film studio said they were not aware of any guilt.

There were similar reports from France. In 1992 a major fire broke out in a school in a northern French village, which was started by a group of boys who wanted to imitate one of MacGyver's inventions. That same year, two French teenagers died from the explosion of a homemade bomb made of sugar and weedkiller that they set off to test a technique MacGyver used. The mother of one of the two deceased then sued the heads of French state television and the regulatory authority for film and television. The French broadcaster France 2 , which broadcast the series up to two months before the accident, denied responsibility for the deaths in a reaction and announced that no scenes with overt chemical manipulation had been shown.

In the English-speaking world - mainly in the press, but also in police reports - the expression "MacGyver bomb" (German for example: "MacGyver bomb") established itself as a synonym for a chemical explosive device.

Importance for advertising

Richard Dean Anderson (2012)

Because of its high popularity in Taiwan as MacGyver, the Taiwanese beverage manufacturer Vitalon Foods hired Richard Dean Anderson for some television commercials. They were produced in 1990 and 1991 and advertise the sports drink Super Supau. In an English-language television commercial for McDonald’s , a mother asked, "What would MacGyver do?"

In addition, Anderson played the character MacGyver in several other commercials. This includes a 30-second spot for the credit card company Mastercard , in which MacGyver pays for some everyday objects required for MacGyverisms with a Mastercard. It was shown publicly for the first time in 2006 during a break from the 40th Super Bowl . Another commercial followed in 2009, which was shown during a break in the 43rd Super Bowl and is one of several MacGruber sketches that advertise Pepsi (→ main section: MacGruber ) .

In 2012 Richard Dean Anderson took on the role of MacGyver for the three-part, approximately ten-minute long web series MacGyver and the new Citan , which advertises the new Mercedes-Benz Citan van . MacGyver runs a mobile repair service with his daughter Caitlin. During a repair job in the office building of an insurance company, they witness a robbery in which terrorists stun employees with gas and steal a combat robot from an underground, secret research laboratory. MacGyver, wearing a gas mask, uses a self-made acetylene bomb to attack the terrorists, who then hand the robot over to their client. MacGyver overwhelms the people and the runaway robot, also using his Citan.

Theming in television series

MacGyver has been mentioned in numerous episodes of mostly American television series, often as a synonym for an inventor, engineer or repairman. Frequent mentions series include Navy CIS , Alaska's Most Dangerous Job, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 .

In the US animated series The Simpsons , MacGyver is the favorite series of the sisters Patty and Selma Bouvier , who tend to take drastic acts of revenge in the event of insults against their television heroes. In the episode Kiss Kiss Bang Bangalore ( season 17 ) Patty and Selma kidnap their idol Richard Dean Anderson at a Stargate convention. In the episode, the real Anderson, who played a long-standing leading role in the series Stargate - Kommando SG-1 from 1997 , acted as voice actor .

MacGruber

In the US comedy show Saturday Night Live , which airs weekly on NBC , MacGyver was parodied from 2007 to 2010 with the MacGruber sketch series . Will Forte played the main role of MacGruber . The one to two minute skits each begin with an exaggerated version of the opening credits underlaid by “MacGruber” calls and always show a similar scenario. In it, MacGruber, also with a mullet hairstyle, is locked in a room with two other people in which there is a timed explosive device that he has 20 seconds to defuse. Most of the time, MacGruber gets into an argument with one person and neglects - despite heckling from the second, female person about the remaining time - the defusing of the bomb, for which he already has tools such as shoelaces, paper clips and vegetables ready. The room is usually located in a large structure - such as a freighter or a refinery - which explodes in a ball of fire due to the bomb at the end of the sketch. The first, additional person is sometimes MacGyver, played by Richard Dean Anderson and visibly aged, through whom the viewer learns in brief flashbacks that he is the father of MacGruber. When defusing the bomb, MacGyver suggests - as in the television series - that we proceed with caution and without hectic. There are six MacGruber skits that feature MacGyver and which are commercials for Pepsi .

From the MacGruber -Sketch series emerged in 2010 the movie MacGruber , also designed as a parody of MacGyver , also with Will Forte in the title role. Val Kilmer and Powers Boothe can also be seen in other roles . In the plot, MacGruber, who has retired in a monastery, is reactivated to rescue from a nuclear disaster that a villain tries to set off with a nuclear missile aimed at Washington, DC . With gross revenues of $ 9.3 million worldwide, the film narrowly missed recouping its $ 10 million budget. The reviews were mixed: while the German lexicon of international films praised the film as an "amusing and knowledgeable parody", the British Guardian was disappointed that the film ended up being less imaginative than the material it claims to parody. In Germany, the film did not appear in theaters, but was released on DVD in 2011 and first broadcast on RTL in 2013. Before the film was released in the US, Zlotoff announced in the media that he would be examining legal action against the production company Relativity Media and the distributor Universal Pictures because the film was infringing copyrights . In 2016 it became known that a sequel to the movie was in preparation.

Other parodies

In April 1991, the US satirical magazine MAD published a 5-page comic parodying the series, entitled MacGimmick . MacGimmick, who looks very similar to MacGyver, lives in a boat that has been converted into a tree house. He helps a woman who works for an export company convict the company boss who illegally delivers weapons to the third world . Before the penetration in the company building MacGimmick confused the cable of the danger alarm system , which he attempts to overcome, with a power cable, and therefore receives an electric shock . While he is tearing down a wall with a forklift to gain access to the building , the woman enters the building through an unlocked door.

MacGyver has been parodied in some movies. This includes Scary Movie 2 , in which Cindy, a main character, uses everyday objects to build a mini bulldozer .

Merchandising products

The English title MacGyver on Ice was published by Armada Books in 1987, the only novel on the series to date. Written by Mark Daniel , it is set in Alaska and is about MacGyver in an effort to prevent a general from wiping out the Russian population with a biological weapon .

From 2012 to 2013 Image Comics published the five-part comic miniseries MacGyver: Fugitive Gauntlet . It is about MacGyver in Kenya , where he meets his former biology professor who believes he has found a breakthrough in solving the world hunger problem. He is endangered by a bounty on him and by killers who pursue him as a criminal. Series creator Zlotoff, who was the author of this comic series, had an engineer help him work out the MacGyverisms it contained. Minor characters known from the series do not play because Zlotoff only owned the rights to the main character and the pilot episode of MacGyver . The comic series has not yet appeared in German.

In May 2014, a 3-dimensional, interactive puzzle mobile game for the platforms Android (from version 2.3) and Apple iOS (from version 4.3 ) appeared in both English (title MacGyver: Deadly Descent ) and in German (title MacGyver: Tödlicher Abstieg ) ). In it, MacGyver finds himself in a race against time in which he must reach and rescue trapped people trapped in an underground structure as a result of a computer virus outbreak. The game was developed by Fairplay Media together with Lee David Zlotoff. Golem.de criticized that the game, apart from the name and title character, lacks reference to the television series.

In 2014, the US web mail order company IFixit offered the MacGyver Action Hero Toolkit for sale, a box of everyday items such as a candle, shoelace, adhesive tape and elastic.

literature

Harald Keller: Cult series and their stars , Volume 3: The compulsory program (Edition Splitscreen, Volume 6), Dieter Bertz Verlag , Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-929470-16-0 , pp. 96-99

Web links

MacGyver in the Internet Movie Database (English)
MacGyver at Fernsehserien.de
MacGyver in the online film database

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b MacGyver , in: fernsehserien.de, accessed on June 19, 2015

↑ ^a ^b Ep. 101: Of violins and crooks (season 5)

↑ Ep. 123: Business is Business (Season 6)

↑ Ep. 46: A Deadly Love 2 (Season 3)

↑ cf. Ep. 43: Black-Out (Season 2)

↑ Ep. 116: Hot Love (Season 6)

↑ Ep. 87: Armistice (Season 5)

↑ Ep. 1: Explosion underground (season 1)

↑ Ep. 12: An Invisible Adversary (Season 1)

↑ Ep. 89: The Valley of Death (Season 5)

↑ Ep. 21: Behind the Wall (Season 1)

↑ Ep. 13: Old Friendships (Season 1)

↑ Ep. 41: The Liberation (Season 2)

↑ Ep. 34: Family Matters (Season 2)

↑ Ep. 40: The dead live longer (season 2)

↑ Ep. 50: GX-1 (season 3)

↑ Ep. 75: No children's game (season 4)

↑ Ep. 84: The Legend of the Holy Rose, Part 1 (Season 5)

↑ Ep. 117: The Dead Land (Season 6)

↑ ^a ^b Ep. 96: The School of Life (Season 5)

↑ Ep. 124: The Black Stream (Season 6)

↑ Ep. 129: The Fire Devil (Season 7)

↑ Ep. 8: Torches (Season 1)

↑ Ep. 71: The man in the background (season 4)

↑ Ep. 33: Phoenix in Danger (Season 2)

↑ Ep. 84/85: The legend of the holy rose , parts 1 and 2 (season 5)

↑ Ep. 118: The Eye of Osiris (Season 6)

↑ Ep. 98: Manco's Treasure (Season 5)

↑ Ep. 78: Gold Rush (Season 4)

↑ Ep. 97: Fight for the Forest (Season 5)

↑ Ep. 68: Rockets for the rebels (Season 4)

↑ Ep. 77: Feelings of Guilt (Season 4)

↑ Ep. 94: The Madonna (season 5)

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^ ^A ^b Anne Eaton: MACGYVER TELEVISION SCHOOL OF GADGETRY , in: Newsday, July 6, 1986, accessed online from the Richard Dean Anderson website on June 13, 2015

↑ Susan King: Retro: RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON: Producing MacSequels , in: Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1994, accessed June 13, 2015

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↑ Canceled , in: Newsweek of December 13, 1991, accessed from MacGyver Online on June 25, 2015

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↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Brendan Vaughan: What Would MacGyver Do? True Stories of Improvised Genius in Everyday Life , Penguin Books , London 2006, ISBN 1-59463-024-0 , pp. 1-4

^ The Mountain of Youth Trivia and Quotes , in: TV.com, accessed Jan 25, 2010

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This article was added to the list of excellent articles on July 16, 2015 in this version .

[ea-de-1] MacGyver , in: fernsehserien.de, accessed on June 19, 2015

[ep101-2] Ep. 101: Of violins and crooks (season 5)

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[25] Ep. 33: Phoenix in Danger (Season 2)

[ep84+85-26] Ep. 84/85: The legend of the holy rose , parts 1 and 2 (season 5)

[27] Ep. 118: The Eye of Osiris (Season 6)

[28] Ep. 98: Manco's Treasure (Season 5)

[29] Ep. 78: Gold Rush (Season 4)

[30] Ep. 97: Fight for the Forest (Season 5)

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[32] Ep. 77: Feelings of Guilt (Season 4)

[33] Ep. 94: The Madonna (season 5)

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[43] Leo Smith: FLICKS FILM AND VIDEO FILE: On Location: The idea of filming TV shows in Ventura County is catching on. , in: Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1991, accessed June 11, 2015