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ORIGINAL AIRDATE: November 27th, 1985 —
MacGyver meets his adrenaline junkie match in reckless oil prospector Bill Farren [SPECIAL GUEST: Cooper Huckabee!]
MISSION: When a fire breaks out at a friend’s oil derrick, MacGyver devises a plan to fight fire with dynamite.
This week’s highlights include:
SPECIAL GUEST: COOPER HUCKABEE!
This week’s show features a chat with veteran actor Cooper Huckabee (Marshall from Urban Cowboy and Lil’ Raj Brittle from Django Unchained). He shares some interesting behind-the-scenes info, like how MacGyver almost wasn’t Richard Dean Anderson! Check out the links below for some of Mr. Huckabee’s upcoming projects.
Keep an eye out for Band of Robbers hitting the festival circuit soon!
Also, let’s all keep our fingers crossed for Pee-wee’s Big Holiday!
The plot of Hellfire bears more than a passing resemblance to 1953’s Wages of Fear.
Editors note: In the draft of the Back to the Future script mentioned on the show, the popular “1.21 gigawatts” line is actually replaced with the significantly less interesting “4200 rads.” Also, the current population of Centralia, PA is down to 10 people (according to google anyway) although more recent articles on the matter cite a population of as few as 6 or 7 people.
UPDATE!: Listener Frank A Sirianni noticed something fun below!
Curie’s Law (Physics)
In a paramagnetic material the magnetization of the material is (approximately) directly proportional to an applied magnetic field. However, if the material is heated, this proportionality is reduced: for a fixed value of the field, the magnetization is (approximately) inversely proportional to temperature. This fact is encapsulated by Curie’s law:
Check out the article on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie%27s_law
Watch S1E8: “Hellfire” on CBS’s website or check the alternative streamability of this episode here.
C’est un peu comme combattre le mal par un autre, mais ça fonctionne. 🙂
The Hellfire episode also reminded me of the 1968 movie Hellfighters with Hopalong Cassidy (John Wayne). He has to put out the oil well fire with Dynamite.
I haven’t seen Wages of Fear but I like that the firefight was included here.
Wikipédia’s Hungarian episode summary page has the following to say about the first MacGyverism: “Mac jury-rigs a fuse in an extremely inappropriate way, and as a result, the well catches fire the same evening.”
While the the fix was indeed dangerous as you say, on first read I thought that the second part of the statement was just plain wrong as the lightbulbs didn’t blow due to overcharge but because the wind smashed them, but now I’m not so sure, would the charge in the bulbs have not been enough to spark an explosion without the fuse fix?
And to answer Patrick, let’s recall what the Mythbusters had to say in their second episode (the famous “am I missing an eyebrow?” one!) about static charge and mobile phones at petrol stations: “A properly-working cell phone poses almost no danger of igniting gasoline, even when surrounded by gasoline vapor with the optimum fuel-air mix for ignition. The actual risk comes from an electrostatic discharge between a charged driver and the car, often a result of continually getting into and out of the vehicle. This myth was revisited in episode 14 and it was busted again.”