CHARLIE ROBINSON

Charlie Robinson and MacGyver had served together in Vietnam. They had a reputation for being one of the best bomb diffusing teams, and together they had diffused 51 bombs. Charlie used to put a scratch on the wall above their bunks every time they would get back from diffusing one, saying that they were going for the record. They had become close friends as well, with fond memories of their time in country, such as the night Charlie had hocked some of their tools for a night out in Saigon and MacGyver had spent one of his most memorable evenings in the French Quarter. Since the end of the war, Charlie had married, and his wife Shirley was expecting their first child.

MacGyver had not seen Charlie for some time, but when an anonymous bomber calling himself Viking placed bombs aboard the cruise ship Victoria and threatened the lives of the 1100 passengers unless he was given $6 million dollars in exchange for instructions to diffuse the bombs, Pete Thornton brought MacGyver and Charlie together for the mission. MacGyver tried to urge Charlie not to accept the assignment because of the danger and his responsibility to his new family, but Charlie was excited about the prospect of using his skills again and was anxious to use the $25,000 that the job would pay to stave off bankruptcy. Also working the case from Los Angeles was Mike Donahue, another bomb expert and Vietnam veteran who had run a bomb squad out of Da Nang and who had lost a leg while commanding the lead sabotage control group in Cam Ranh Bay.

MacGyver and Charlie Robinson took a 5-hour jet to Midway and a 2½-hour helicopter flight to the Victoria's location in the North Pacific Ocean, leaving them approximately three hours to disarm the bomb. An earlier explosion had killed Captain Howard, leaving First Officer Carole Tanner, now the acting captain, and Second Officer Atkins in charge of the ship. Carole Tanner escorted the team to the bomb they had discovered in the engine room, but as the search of the ship continued, Second Officer Atkins brought word that two more identical bombs had been located. The bombs were clearly the design of an expert. Disguised to look like a fake electrical panel behind sealed glass, they included a yellow chemical powder in a dish, a heat sensitive thermocouple, cylinders of acid which carried an electrical current, and a timer.

MacGyver and Charlie began working to diffuse the first two bombs, maintaining radio communication between them and with Thornton's team in Los Angeles. However, as Charlie penetrated the seal around the cabinet in order to test the yellow chemical, he breached the vacuum inside and triggered the bomb. Charlie died in the explosion.

In the moment before he died, Charlie had called out "vacuum," giving MacGyver the information he needed to bypass the trigger. The yellow powder had been phosphorus, which flashed when exposed to air and triggered the thermocouple, setting off the bomb. Carole Tanner volunteered to take Charlie's place and to work in tandem with MacGyver to successfully diffuse the remaining two bombs. In doing so, MacGyver recognized that the chemical detonator, thermocouple, and unstable electrolyte fluid would have all been familiar to Donahue from his time in Cam Ranh Bay, and Donahue was identified as Viking and taken into custody in Los Angeles.

Portrayed by: Steven Williams

Cross Reference: Officer Atkins, Mike Donahue, Captain Howard, Carole Tanner, Victoria, Viking

Episode Reference: Countdown