Every Airwolf crew needs a pure flyer, and the 1987 team gets one with rank: Major Mike Rivers, the military aviator who joins the reformed operation and takes to the Lady like he was born in her cockpit. Where St. John carries the saga's history and Jo its heart, Rivers supplies its swagger — the confidence of a man trained by the book who has just discovered the book doesn't cover Mach 2.
Season 4 gives him its most spy-flavored assignments. In 'The Key' he goes inside an extremist disarmament cell holding missiles in both superpowers; in 'On the Double' he impersonates an East German pilot at a public air show, flying another man's aircraft under hostile eyes while a family's freedom hangs on the performance. If the mission requires charm under pressure, Rivers draws it.
Geraint Wyn Davies plays him with a light touch that cuts through the final season's grimmer patches — and genre fans would see him again soon enough as the star of Forever Knight.