OTD 2025 MacGyver went Klingon

[Maurice]

Today's the 40th anniversary of the MacGyver premiere on ABC-TV in 1985. And there's a Star Trek connection that I spotted ages ago that y'all might find amusing.

That first episode—"Pilot"— featured a scene where the series star & a guest star made their way through a control room set that is actually a redress of the Star Trek 2/3 torpedo deck (TMP Klingon bridge). Hell, they even exit through the torpedo loading hatch!

Tweeted about it here.

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And on Bluesky here.

I spotted that the first and only time I saw that episode, because that set is super distinctive even when they try to hide what it is.

 

[Christopher]

I'm embarrassed to admit that, as far as I remember, I never noticed the reused Trek sets here.

I'd love to see a Fact Trek level of analysis applied to the MacGyver pilot. Its director Jerrold Freedman was credited as Alan Smithee, meaning he took his name off under protest of something about the production. And its credited writer, Thackary Pallor, has only one other IMDb credit, making me wonder if it's a pseudonym. It's odd in itself that the credited creator of the series, Lee David Zlotoff, isn't credited with writing the pilot, since the creator credit usually goes to the writer(s) of the pilot and/or the series bible. So I've long been puzzled about just what went on there.

Obviously there were some changes made after the pilot -- they dropped the kid sidekick who was going to be a regular, and they gave up on the idea of MacGyver living in the Griffith Park Observatory. I think they toned down Mac's accent after the pilot as well.

 

[Maurice]

MacGyver's way outside our wheelhouse., but hazarding a couple of semi-educated guesses:

Dropping Griffith Observatory was possibly due to the cost of schlepping up there and having to work around whatever was going on in the area on any given day, as it's a busy park.

Thackary Pallor may have been an in-studio pseudonym used when writers were heavily rewritten. Probably the pilot went through a lot of hands and the creator didn't want his name on a script so heavily revised by others. What's on the credits doesn't necessarily reflect what went on behind the scenes as far as the WGA is concerned.

As to the created by credit, one doesn't have to have written a bible (many series don't have one) to get the created by credit: you can have written the original pilot (however revised it is) and format, and you're still the creator. When it gets messy, then it goes to WGA arbitration.

 

[Christopher]

One interesting bit of trivia about MacGyver's first season is that it was the only American show that Doctor Who/Blake's 7 writer Terry Nation managed to work on during his failed attempt to break into Hollywood. He was a producer on episodes 2-7 and wrote three of the "Opening Gambits," the James Bond/Indiana Jones-style mini-adventure prologues that opened the episodes in season 1 and were unconnected to the main plots, so they were written and shot separately (and probably not assigned to a specific episode until later).

I thought the Opening Gambits were kind of a cool idea, and I was a bit disappointed when the show dropped them after season 1.

I wonder if anyone's ever riffed on the Terry Nation connection and written a "MacGyver vs. the Daleks" fanfic. I'd be surprised if no one had.

 

[PumpkinSpiceFoodCube]

I want to see MacGruber take on the Klingon in Broken Arrow, now. There needs to be a "Klingon Control Room" though.

MacGruber, making life saving inventions out of household materials
MacGruber, retired on a farm away from alladose aliens
MacGruber, his rifle's outta plasma!
MACGRUBER!!!!!!!

 

[Pumpkin Bread]

The early episodes were my favorites. About the time the decided to declare that Mac had been a professional race car driver and just never mentioned it to anyone (even in his narrations) my eyeroll factor just got too high.

 

[Shawnster]

Dropping Griffith Observatory was possibly due to the cost of schlepping up there and having to work around whatever was going on in the area on any given day, as it's a busy park.

Why would they do that? Film it once and reuse stock footage for the establishing shots. The rest can be shot on a set.

That's literally how they did every other TV series at the time.

 

[Pumpkin Bread]

I remember MacGyver did it with explosions.

 

[Maurice]

And still do. I'm not familiar with MacGyver's production history, but perhaps even building a standing set for his observatory digs wasn't a cost-effective idea?

 

[Christopher]

Maybe they just realized that it made no sense for a private citizen to live in the Griffith Observatory, a public facility owned and operated by the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

How many homes did MacGyver have over the course of the series? The main one I remember is the houseboat, though I recall him moving to an apartment building in later seasons. I think there was at least one more before the houseboat.

That's literally how they did every other TV series at the time.

Not every series. M*A*S*H did regular outdoor shooting on location when weather permitted, otherwise shooting on the indoor soundstage version of the 4077th, which had some obvious differences in layout from the location version. Other shows often had a mix of interior shots on the soundstage and newly shot exteriors on location or backlot -- for instance, any show that had scenes in the front yard or street of the characters' house as well as indoors (as, say, Buffy or Charmed frequently did), or something like The Rockford Files where scenes often took place outside of Rockford's trailer on location as well as inside on the soundstage. I'd say it was actually pretty uncommon for a show to have no exterior footage beyond the initially filmed stock library. Even Power Rangers sometimes went to the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, Vasquez Rocks, or both to shoot exterior scenes around the Command Center (which was represented by a composite image of the former matted atop the latter).

 

[publiusr]

The Atomium is a bit underused.