While this series took place during the Cold War, there is rarely a direct mention of or discussion about the USSR, but the influences of the Cold War are very present. Most missions involve some foreign government approaching a coup of one sort or another, and it's up to Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) and his M.I. Force to come up with a cunning scheme to not only make the coup turn out exactly how the American government wants it to, but do it in such a way that the foreign government doesn't realize they were involved.
For those that aren't familiar with Mission: Impossible, or their familiarity is limited to only the movies, here is a brief rundown of the standard episode structure. Most episodes start with Jim making his way to some hidden location containing an audio tape and pictures that explain what the team's mission is this time. If an episode contains a guest star, or someone who isn't a standard member of their team, then the show cuts to Jim flipping through pictures of the people he might need in order to get through the mission. Most of the time he chooses Cinnamon (Barbara Bain), Rollin (Martin Landau), Willie (Peter Lupus) and Barney (Greg Morris) to implement his brilliant plan. Sometimes Jim will bring on extra characters like the wife of a diplomatic aide ("The Diplomat") or a former boxing star ("The Contender"), but for the most part, it is this core five person team that makes the missions possible.
For the most part, this series doesn't need to be watched in any particular order. Most episodes are completely self-contained and you can jump into the show at pretty much any point. The only times this isn't the case are the pair of two-part episodes in The Third TV Season, "The Contender" and "The Bunker." In "The Contender" the IMF have to take out a rising bookie that has been fixing boxing matches and is close to taking over the sports-underworld. The team recruits a former boxer, turned war hero and, while he can't box anymore because of a war accident, asks him to train Barney to replace him in the ring, literally. With expert makeup (something that the team is known for), and a lot of training, the world believes Barney is this returning star so that they can get the bookie tripped up and appear to not have his game together.
In "The Bunker," the team has to get into a foreign nuclear testing facility and stop the scientists from developing their new devastating weapon. On top of all that, they need to rescue a kidnapped nuclear physicist and his wife. There were a few other episodes that really stood out for me and helped to make this season memorable. "The Freeze" has the team convincing a convict that he has a deadly disease and that he must be cryogenically frozen for eleven years when a cure will be found. All this effort is so that the team can find out exactly where the convict has hidden his stolen loot, so when the crook awakens in the ultra-shiny and very plastic 1980 (I always love looking back and seeing where people thought we would be in just a few years) to learn that a lot of neighborhoods have changed, the team follows the criminal until he pulls out stolen money and take him back to prison.
In "The Mind of Stefan Miklos," Jim and the rest of the IMF have to convince a similar foreign team that they have invalid missile silo locations, when they actually have the real thing. The IMF realize that this might be one of their most dangerous missions because they have to imply that the information the agents have is planted, while not revealing that it is all a game. This is a great example of Jim's ability to formulate plans within plans and just shows that even when we, the viewers, think the enemy has seen through the team's ruse and while we think the characters have a chink in their armor, it is just another step in their great plan.
In "The Exchange," Cinnamon is captured when a plan goes wrong and the IMF need to figure out a way to get her out, and without the government's help. This episode was an interesting psychological, suspense-filled episode because the enemy is torturing the female member of the team, but can she hold out until Jim and the others get her out? But the episode that takes the prize in mind games is the last episode in the season, "The Interrogator," where an "unfriendly country" has kidnapped a member of another "unfriendly country" in order to get information about a secret attack on America. In order to find out the information them, the IMF have to capture both people and switch their roles. They give the person who knows the plan amnesia and force the original interrogator to consider his sanity. While forcing the one who knows the information to go through the same motions he himself went through, their prey seems to remember his subject telling them the information they want. It's just a really good episode.
What I hadn't realized about this show until this episode was that the IMF itself is a fairly non-violent group. While they might throw the occasional punch, they rarely, if ever actually shoot or kill anyone. In fact, the only times I remember the main enemy of the episode dying, it was by their own misfortune.
Mission: Impossible: The Third TV Season is a good selection of episodes that expresses this show at its peak. Long-time fans of the show should definitely consider purchasing this boxed set, and as far as newer audiences are concerned, it is still a pretty good buy because it shows how Mission: Impossible is supposed to be, not the explosion-happy action movies that have come out, but a more quiet analytical series.
