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[DEC. 4,
2003]
A robot that's more
intelligent than its fellow agents, an agent whose shoe has a phone
built into it, a superhero who doesn't use a gun but can make an
airplane out of just a few items like a fan, wooden poles and duct
tape… Does it get any better than this?
Growing up in the '70 and '80s watching
"Get Smart" reruns and the hour-long "MacGyver" series, there were
plenty of gadgets, contraptions and inventions to entertain us on
TV. Today we take a look at the characters who relied on these
gadgets to foil the bad guys.
"Sorry
about that, chief."
Armed with such devices as a shoe
phone, a detonating pen that would activate all the booby traps in
his apartment, and the cone of silence for top-secret discussions
with the chief of CONTROL (which is not an acronym), along with
other inventions too numerous to list here, the bumbling Agent 86,
aka Maxwell Smart, had a high-tech advantage over the evil agents of
KAOS (also not an acronym).
Smart's main foe was KAOS' evil
Siegfried, whose official title on the show was "Vice President of
Public Relations and Terrorism." Siegfried had a sister who was head
of the KAOS Ladies Auxiliary.
One of the better contraptions on the
show was Hymie, the humanlike robot built by KAOS. Hymie once
kidnapped Max and Agent 99 but soon released them and defected over
to CONTROL because they treated him better than KAOS did. Hymie was
equipped with a TV camera, a built-in computer, a calculator bank
and a Xerox machine.
But this show was about more than just
clever gadgets. Like much of what comes out of Hollywood, there are
some interesting stories behind the show. For example, ABC had a
chance to air the show but rejected it. NBC then picked it up on the
condition that one of their own guys, Don Adams, would play Maxwell
Smart. After four seasons, NBC dropped it, and CBS picked it up for
the fifth and final season.
Maxwell Smart's love interest, Agent
99, never revealed her name on the show. After they married and had
twins, their twins' names were kept secret too. The reason probably
had something to do with being in the spy business.
[to top of
second column in this article]
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"With
this paper clip and that empty gas can, you've got all the
ingredients for a homemade bomb."
OK, so MacGyver never really said that,
but he did invent some pretty clever ways to get out of a jam, using
only a few basic items plus his science background and a creative
mind.
MacGyver could have used a gun to foil
the bad guys like most action heroes do, but the memory of a
childhood shooting accident caused him to detest guns. Instead he
chose to use his Swiss Army knife, duct tape and any other items
that were available to him at the time (such as a paper clip). The
informal MacGyver had the unofficial title of "troubleshooter" while
working for the mythical Phoenix Foundation.
MacGyver had his share of quirks too.
He was afraid of heights, and he always shook his hand in pain after
punching one of the bad guys -- you don't see many action heroes do
that on TV. Like Agent 99, he also kept his first name secret; his
friends usually referred to him as Mac. Even a college class picture
referred to him by his last name only. During the seventh and final
season, a dream revealed that MacGyver's first name was Angus, which
is probably why he used only his last name.
As a result of losing his parents and
grandmother in a car accident as a child, MacGyver was reluctant to
get involved in serious relationships because he feared that he
would lose anyone who got too close to him. In the series' final
episode, though, he learned that he had a teenage son, making it
possible that there could be a future MacGyver series starring the
young Sean Angus MacGyver, or "Sam" for short.
Hmmm. The
stars of both series have given us replacements for a future
generation of crime fighters. Could we see more humanlike robots and
homemade airplanes in the future? Stay tuned.
[Paul
Niemann]
Readers:
Are you looking for the perfect Christmas gift? If you enjoy this
column, then your friends would probably enjoy receiving the
"Invention Mysteries" book as a gift. It's available at
www.InventionMysteries.com.
Copyright Paul Niemann 2003
Last week's column in LDN:
"Can this inventor prove that
the Loch Ness monster does -- or doesn't -- exist?"
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