Does anyone know why a pilot for this was done- but never actually aired?

I have no idea why they do that for any show. Guess they didn't think it would fly.

Another thing- how could Mac have a nephew if he was an only child?

Good question. Maybe that's why the pilot didn't air.

- enter exec to the meeting "You morons, MacGyver was an only child"
- other execs "oh crap"
- end meeting.

This may lead away from the original content of the thread, but what became of his son Sam in the two TV movies?

I haven't seen them, but I know he was not in them. The show ended making it look like he wanted to get away from a life of action and adventure so he could settle down getting to know the son he never knew he had.

Weren't they planning to do a spin-off at the time of a "Young MacGyver" with Dalton James?

Its common practice to film the pilot episode, so the execs get an idea of what the show will be like.

The process goes something like... pitch the idea to company... if they approve it, you then get money to film the first episode for the exec to watch.. from that they decide if it's something they want to run with or not.

I have seen more in depth discussion about this.. but I'll have to go hunting for it.. but thats the basics of why it was filmed but not aired.... they decided to drop it.

This was probably the biggest outcry from fans.. and may well have been one of the main reasons the show didn't go to air.. they realized what a huge muck-up they had made of the background story.

I guess the producers etc of the show, didn't know much about MacGyver.

The movies didn't follow the shows time line, so Sam wasn't in them, or mentioned.

The movies where basically separate entities. They take place in England, with new characters and background stories we never heard in the episodes.

I guess the best description might be "based on the TV show".

Well, I kind of always assumed the TV-movies to be set a little bit later- if you go by the "real time"- then it would have been 2 years in 1994 since MacGyver had taken off with Sam for some father-son bonding. So 2 years is pretty good time to go traveling around the USA and the rest of the world. And by this point, Sam might have gotten settled in LA, doing his journalism work. Perhaps MacGyver was in England for a while during these travels and had decided to stay there for a while- though I don't see him permanently staying there. (Of course, I also imagine that after a while he would finally come back to LA and go to work for the Phoenix Foundation again- but that's what fanfiction is for. )