When MacGyver tries to retrieve a canister filled with a deadly chemical in Burma, he stumbles right into an area known as the Golden Triangle, where the military uses farmers as slaves on the opium fields. MacGyver is mistaken for a narcotics agent and is captured, but convinces the slaves to fight their oppression. MacGyver assists by setting several traps at the slave camp, and when the army returns to suppress the unrest, the real action begins.

MacGyver comes along on a expedition to Brazil with his friend, entomologist Dr. Alden. They meet with a landowner and recluse, Trumbo, who is initially hostile. However, when they realize that a mile-wide column of army ants is moving through the jungle, they team together to mount a defense.

A mysterious person who calls himself "Viking" has just bombed the cruise ship Victoria, underway in the North Pacific Ocean. He demands six million dollars or another bomb will go off within hours. So MacGyver gets called in, along with his old Vietnam bomb-defusal partner, Charlie Robinson, to disarm it. But when they get there, they find out there's more than one bomb on the ship. Complications arise when MacGyver's partner sets off one of the bombs, and the bomber decides that DXS operated in bad faith and refuses to hand over the bomb-disarming instructions after he gets the extortion money.