It seems funny to me that there were SO MANY different writers on the show! I mean, we owe all inconsistencies/slips in quality to that alone, in my opinion. I mean, I could probably write, or at least team write with other people and still have my senses to think of new and good ideas and pass on bad ones, but more than once they took a mediocre idea and made it an episode. I just think you'd get more pride in the writer's work and desire to keep the quality up if, in a way, it was their character and they had a sense of propriety about it.
Does anyone here know why it is that when you look at the list of writers there are 100 different ones? I mean, you're asking for problems in continuity etc. in my opinion, but is that industry standard?

Writer numbers for various shows (as listed in IMDb:

MacGyver........... 29
StarGate SG:1 ....28
A-Team ............. 17
Knight Rider ....... 20
B.H. 90210 ......... 40
CHiPs ................ 33
Dukes of Hazzard 14
6 mill dollar man..33
Man from atlantis.44

As you can see having a lot of writers doesn't seem that unusual. And note that SG:1 had about the same number as MacGyver, yet was able to maintain consistency throughout the show, so that tells me that there were other reasons for the inconsistencies in MacGyver, not just changing writers.

I always considered writing as a one-man-job. Of course there are cooperations if you look at Cleo Rock and Jenny's Chance.

You got inspiration, you write it, you sell it, boom!

But I do think that when a writer comes up with massive history on the character in an episode other writers have to keep that in mind for their future writings. Just to maintain the big picture of it's universe. Like, he was seven when his father died as he said in Runners, but in Passages he said he hasn't seen his father since he was ten.

The idea of the show was that almost every episode stood on his own. No main storyline for a whole season but each episode a new adventure. Which in my opinion was okay but I'm in favor of big story lines.

With the 29 writers of the show (which is actually pretty much) they did a good job, but every show has it's mistakes and holes.

All they had to do was to keep in mind what others had done importantly.

But to give a better opinion, I should see how things worked behind the scenes. Sometimes there were just one-time writers and we've had our recurring writers. Usually the most daring writers are my most favorites.

It also depends on how things are done behind the scenes and what show you're doing. With each episode standing on it's own, I think they didn't mind the inconsistencies.

At the very least they should have had character bios and history which was kept up to date for the writers to refer to and also to bring any new writers up to speed.

As I said before, other long running shows where able to do a better job then MacGyver did with back-story consistences which means they had something fundamentally wrong.

The other odd thing about MacGyver is how much the tone of the show changes depending on the writers. With other shows, there's a consistancy, and it feels like they're always aimed at the same demographic. With MacGyver, one week you get a show aimed at 8-10 year old boys, and the next week, you get a show aimed at anyone from 15-20. Some weeks you get total camp ("Harry's Will" "Honest Abe" "Cleo Rocks"), and other weeks you get serious, heavy-handed issues.
You don't see that sort of fluctation with most shows, despite the fact that they have multiple writers.

For me, the difference in stories was a good thing because that's life. Some days are heavy and some are light hearted. It gave us a nice range. However, I think the difference in the consistancy is the fault of the Exec Producers who are suppose to be paying attention no matter what the writers write. RDA was crucial to the quality of SG-1 behind the scense and the last two years of the show suffered in quality because he wasn't there to say "No" to the campy qualities that came after he left.

I've heard him say that he hadn't watched the 9th season but I'm sure he did and was trying to avoid commenting on the quality question. He offered to come back for the 10th season for as many episodes as they wanted to "tied up some loose ends and anything else" but they only had him in 5 episodes and only 2 of them were substatial(the Return Pt2 and The Shroud). Rob Cooper's ego ran rampant and he didn't want to go back to the quality show it was.

As far as the writers for MacGyver goes, the only problems I ever had was when they borrowed a little too much from other people's stories(Thin Ice and the Outsiders) and that they stopped haveing him actually go on missions. There were way too many "I was just in the wrong place at the right time/nieghborhood" episodes.. Those should have been the rare episodes not the other way around.