Yeah very interesting dash8brj.

I guess back in those days lasers were still pretty sci-fi so we all just accepted what we saw.

It's funny this episode came up today. With all the news about the new series I sat down last night and decided I was in the mood for Pilot. Just my opinion, but everything about the show seems so fresh and almost naive, looking back at it from the perspective of 2016. It was a nice break and made my day!

Unfortunately i fear the 2016 pilot will be nothing like this.

:-( Me too.

Am I the first person to notice that Spencer, although terrific, didn't seem to keep track of what shoes she was wearing? In some places, they have low, fairly chunky heels. In others, they are the same colour (beige-ish) but quite high, spindly heels. I'm sure she would have worn something more practical to work had she known what sort of day it would be ...

That gas chamber window glass gets cracked, just 1 second before Mac hits it.
I never noticed this, but for some reason when I now watched this episode for long time it caught my eye that there was some delay in the hit...crack came first

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You're right! I never caught that before either. They must have felt the need to amplify the noise?

It doesn't seem very realistic that someone who is scared (or hates) heights would be free-climbing a rock face.

Look how high he is! He would have frozen up or gotten vertigo ages ago.

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It's got to be a running show creator joke - he is CONSTANTLY climbing and jumping off things throughout the series (Widowmaker, Eagles are both extreme). You can argue that he is a bit of a fear junkie maybe - but then he doesn't love flying with Dalton

Like Mike, you're his best friend, he says he hates heights all the time, and you drag him up a mountain to tell him your feelings??

It's got to be a running show creator joke - he is CONSTANTLY climbing and jumping off things throughout the series (Widowmaker, Eagles are both extreme). You can argue that he is a bit of a fear junkie maybe - but then he doesn't love flying with Dalton

Like Mike, you're his best friend, he says he hates heights all the time, and you drag him up a mountain to tell him your feelings??

So he couldn't run away

It's got to be a running show creator joke - he is CONSTANTLY climbing and jumping off things throughout the series (Widowmaker, Eagles are both extreme). You can argue that he is a bit of a fear junkie maybe - but then he doesn't love flying with Dalton

Like Mike, you're his best friend, he says he hates heights all the time, and you drag him up a mountain to tell him your feelings??

So he couldn't run away

So he couldn't run away

could have told him on a rollercoaster then

So he couldn't run away

could have told him on a rollercoaster then

Well she did have him on an emotional one!

So he couldn't run away

Bwahahahaha!!!

So he couldn't run away

could have told him on a rollercoaster then

Mike: *talks about her feelings*
Roller coaster: *immediately speeds up*
Mac: *screams*

And to this day, no one knows whether he was screaming over the roller coaster or Mike

As MacGyver has began to air again on television here in Slovakia I was able to capture the complete pilot episode (with Czech dubbing). There are more things that are different from the release on DVD/Blu-ray than just the different opening theme and deleted pentagon scene.
Different background music at the beginning of the opening gambit. Notice the different order of scenes after the pentagon scene - first scene is the explosion in the lab and then comes the scene with Mac in the observatory and then the scene with helicopter.