This is Gotham Calling’s 600th post!
As usual, I like to signal these benchmarks with longer listicles (a hundred posts ago I listed my favorite westerns), so today I’m doing a follow-up to the post from last September ranking the top episodes of the original Mission: Impossible TV series. While that show had plenty of duds in its portfolio, there were nevertheless way more than fifty gems, so here are another thirty cool episodes that are worth checking out whenever you’re in the mood for some unpretentiously fun spy thrillers.
Technically, thirty is not an accurate number… Like last time, I’m counting multi-part episodes as single entries. This time, however, I’m listing the episodes in chronological order of when they first aired, although you can watch them in whatever sequence you choose, since they have practically no continuity.
I also tried to get a healthy sample from each season, as they have distinct flavors. The first season has a looser vibe, with the show still figuring itself out before settling into a rock-solid formula. The second and third seasons are where M:I found its groove, with the best cast and direction. Plus, they surely look the slickest – and so does season 4, in fact, even if the team’s plans became more and more outlandish… (This is the ideal era to draw on whenever DC finally gets around to greenlighting the inevitable Batman ’66 meets Mission: Impossible crossover – seriously, that thing practically writes itself!)
Since early on, there had been occasional elements of spy-fi, most notably the ultra-realistic face masks – a fantasy device that can be highly amusing (as in the classic French comedy Fantomas Unleashed) but which M:I manages to play dead straight, asking for just the right amount of suspension of disbelief. As the show progressed, this dimension appeared to be to gaining weight, but it was once again scaled down in the final seasons.
Those last seasons also look grittier and browner – and the focus shifted more towards domestic organized crime (they often feel like TV versions of The Seven-Ups). The overall quality became more inconsistent, but there is plenty to like here as well: there is a renewed willingness to experiment (especially in season 5, which includes some of the show’s finest scripts) and the plots tend to require greater improvisation from the IMF agents, making the stories more unpredictable.
For a show that could be quite repetitive, then, there were plenty of different moods across the years!
The Legacy
Let’s kick things off with a treasure-hunting adventure! Along with communists, terrorists, and mobsters, Nazis were a recurrent adversary in Mission: Impossible. In the first episode to explore this theme, Rollin Hand infiltrates a cabal of sons of Nazi officers and tries to improvise his way into finding out Hitler’s hidden stash. On top of the striking visuals and ingenious set pieces, one after the other, ‘The Legacy’ culminates in a rare gun battle.
Snowball in Hell
The head of an infamous former prison in the tropics has memorized a dangerous formula and he’s also keeping an explosive sample in the premises (despite having to keep it refrigerated, somehow). The IMF’s mission is to prevent the formula and the sample from falling into the wrong hands, which they do through their usual combo of roleplaying and sweaty manual labor. Beware of some harsh imagery, as the sadistic warden (guest-star Ricardo Montalban) is made even more hateful through his glee in whipping a black prisoner.
A Cube of Sugar
In one of the series’ trippiest episodes (along with ‘Flip Side’), the IMF has to rescue an American agent captured behind the Iron Curtain who is being tortured with psychedelic drugs. As if that wasn’t enough, they also have to recover a microchip hidden in a cube of sugar soaked in LSD. You know, just in case you forgot the show was made in the late 1960s…
The Widow
Speaking of trips: the IMF broke down their fair share of drug cartels. As early as season 1, they put away an especially slimy drug baron played by Lloyd Bridges, in ‘Fakeout’ (which is not a bad episode, even if it didn’t make it to this list). Yet I have a soft spot for this particular entry, in which the team simulates an elevator crash and passes off Cinnamon as a dealer’s widow in order to con his partner while also making use of a number of low-key gadgets… including a heroin-sucking suit! (Plus, seeing Martin Landau pretend to be a crime lord is like watching a rehearsal for his role in 1972’s blaxploitation flick Black Gunn.)
The Money Machine
The IMF trick a corrupt financial speculator in a small African nation by luring him into a bogus money counterfeiting scheme. A fine, competent con that mostly stands out because of the original milieu and charismatic villain.
The Seal
In the name of Cold War diplomacy, the IMF is tasked with recovering a jade figure taken from a strategic ally in the Sino-Indian border, which is another way of saying that they have to steal a small McGuffin from a super-secure building. Yes, it’s another pure heist narrative, albeit pleasantly complicated, as the team’s plan involves everything from sabotaging old computers (through a fake punch card) to Rollin posing as an Asian mystic… and even a trained cat. Ridiculous fun.
The Phoenix
In order to prevent a foreign minister of culture from selling an experimental alloy (disguised as an abstract sculpture) to a communist nation, the IMF pull off one of their signature capers, using a phony murder attempt to distract their mark. For M:I standards, this is a relatively simple plan, but the execution is as elegant as it gets.
The Test Case
The mission is to destroy a type of weaponized meningitis being developed by the enemy. Once again, the team goes about it with a two-pronged approach, infiltrating the experiment (Rollin replaces the test subject) while simultaneously framing the scientist in charge. The atmosphere is tighteningly tense, thanks to both Lawrence Heath’s clever script and Sutton Roley’s taut direction.
Nitro
When a Middle Eastern general conspires to sabotage his kingdom’s peace treaty with its neighboring state, it’s up to the IMF to foil his plans and discredit him along the way, once again resorting to manipulative ruses and disguises. This could’ve been an average episode, but the tension is even more nerve-racking than usual, since the mission relies on the notoriously unstable explosive from the title… As Phelps puts it: ‘With nitroglycerin you’re never more than a split second away from eternity.’
The Interrogator
A typical puzzle-like script by Paul Playdon, as the IMF have to break an enemy agent to get vital information on a plan against the US, the twist being that he is an interrogation expert, so they perversely get him to interrogate himself… Weird mind games aplenty, which should delight those for whom the series’ ultra-convoluted schemes are an appealing feature, not a bug.
The Numbers Game
An archetypical M:I plot, with the IMF deceiving a war-bent deposed dictator and his followers through the team’s usual bag of tricks (including a false illness, a human-looking dummy, and a time warp). It’s all been done before, but the level of professionalism – of the show staff and of the fictional agents – nevertheless makes this a satisfying watch.
Robot
Between a goofy premise involving the titular robot, Jim Phelps’ cover as a lame comedian, and the preposterous parade of face masks and double bluffs (not to mention the sexy performance of Lee ‘Catwoman’ Meriwether), this one should appeal to those of you who are into Silver Age fun!
The Double Circle
The one where the IMF team create a replica of the villain’s apartment and, by rigging the elevator, sow dissent – and confusion – among business partners. There are nods to classic tales of intrigue (the villain is called Victor Laszlo and the IMF tempt him with a relic, a la The Maltese Falcon), but the result is pure M:I, including plenty of elaborate gadgetry (which no doubt looked futuristic at the time, but now feels groovily retro).
The Falcon
Everything feels pulpier and more over-the-top in ‘The Falcon,’ from the contrived old-fashioned palace intrigue and cartoony characters (including a childlike ruler obsessed with clocks) to the IMF’s flamboyant plan (which involves an illusionist act and the titular bird), not to mention the shocking plot complications. No wonder they had to make this one a three-parter!
Terror
More orientalism-tinged adventure, as the IMF goes to the Middle East to prevent a dangerous power-hungry terrorist from getting pardoned. A relatively original background for the show’s familiar breed of deception and manipulation.
The Hostage
It had to happen sooner or later… An IMF agent’s cover is so convincing that he gets abducted by rebels (unrelated to the mission) who think he’s an actual US industrialist. Besides the effective thriller element, there is something enthralling about the way the team nonchalantly joins forces with a Third World regime against the local revolutionary militia, creating a diverting snapshot of Cold War imperialism. That said, this is also one of several episodes where, unlike the callous heroes, the IMF’s adversaries actually seem richly conflicted between ideology and personal sacrifice.
The Missile
Another one of season 5’s many mission-gone-wrong episodes, ‘The Missile’ has the wildest of wild cards, seriously endangering a couple of IMF agents during what at first appeared to be a relatively low-key operation to intercept an enemy attempt to acquire the schemes for a US missile guidance system. I was let down by how underdeveloped the new threat turned out to be (in particular, I expected more from Dana in dealing with it), but I really enjoyed the idea of the team facing an obstacle totally out of left field, so I recommend this one anyway.
Kitara
One of a couple of episodes dealing with segregationist white minority rule in Africa, set in M:I’s version of Rhodesia or South Africa, where the IMF is tasked with freeing a revolutionary leader being tortured by a white colonel. Fascinatingly, tastelessly, and surely not without a sense of irony, this time the team’s zany scheme involves using the regimes’ own racism against the colonel. It’s a preposterous premise, for sure, but – along with episodes like ‘Two Thousand’ and ‘Phantoms’ – it reinforces my conviction that Jim Phelps is a Twilight Zone fan.
The Merchant
M:I had several episodes about gambling, but ‘The Merchant’ is one of the most James Bond-ish, with the team pushing a creepy arms dealer (George Sanders, an expert at playing heels) into a high-stakes poker game. For once, the resolution comes down to sheer luck, which you can take as a frustrating betrayal of the show’s spirit or as a refreshing reminder that, ultimately, we are all at the mercy of fate (or of storytelling conventions, if you do a meta reading of the closing line). It’s the final format-breaker in a season that was full of them.
Encore
One of the IMF’s most ambitious/ridiculous plans involves convincing William Shatner that he’s back in the 1930s. The magic of this show, of course, is that everybody manages to play this oddball idea compellingly straight, complete with well-engendered moments of tension and the sort of practical details that help sell the bigger lie (Jim removes an extra’s sunglasses: ‘Squint.’). Yes, it’s silly, but I like to imagine the team just got bored and so they found a pretext for their boss to fund a large-scale cosplay game. Or maybe they were just stretching their muscles to see if they were actually able to pull the whole thing off! (Who am I kidding – I just love those closing shots so much that I’m willing to forgive any contrivance to get us there…)
The Tram
One of the niftiest of the IMF’s missions against organized crime, ‘The Tram’ stands out not just because it’s finely written and directed, but also because of the visually memorable setting: the team has to sabotage an important gangsters’ reunion on a mountain-top resort, but the only way in and out of the location is a perilous cable-car ride.
Mindbend
The title is appropriate. This episode – in which the IMF infiltrates an organization that has been brainwashing fugitives into carrying out political assassinations – is full of freaky, unsettling sounds and visuals, generating the kind of paranoid feel popularly associated with the early 1970s. The premise and the epilogue are a bit hokey, but M:I knows how to deliver a smart thriller with more than enough surprises to steadily tighten the suspense.
Invasion
A tantalizing premise: the IMF convince a traitor that the US has lost the Cold War and give him a taste of what it would be like to live in a totalitarian United States under foreign occupation. Unfortunately, the potential of this provocative idea is squandered by an insufficient budget and unimaginative writing. Still, the sheer ambition and the proficient execution of the team’s usual trickery make ‘Invasion’ a worthy curio.
Stone Pillow
By this stage, Mission: Impossible had practically reinvented itself as a crime series, but not a bad one… Although past its prime, the show could occasionally still churn out successful little thrillers, of which ‘Stone Pillow’ is a particularly neo-noirish example, telling a hardboiled prison yarn full of entertaining lingo. (Still, I’m legally obliged to point out that Leslie H. Martinson did a much livelier directing job in Batman: The Movie.)
Break!
The IMF team goes after a gambling empire, pulling off its con tricks and spy-fi shtick in a New Orleans pool hall. Needless to say, ‘Break!’ is not The Hustler or The Color of Money… but it’s a solid hour with a moody underworld vibe and enjoyable pool action.
The Deal
As much as I love the IMF’s clockwork-like plans, I also have a fondness for the occasional improvisational missions, where agents have to rework their strategy or resort to backup solutions, pitting these bastions of order against the chaos of contingency. In ‘The Deal,’ they have a tight deadline to find the key to a safe-deposit box (in order to prevent a mob-backed coup in the Caribbeans), which they try to do through different routes. M:I’s heydays are far behind (imperfect editing ruins an otherwise powerful cliffhanger early on), but there is something to be gained from our familiarity with the IMF’s modus operandi… Rather than a rushed script, I think of this one as a rushed mission where the team goes over their old tricks as if they didn’t get the chance to prepare a more elaborate scenario or in-depth method impersonations. In other words, the lack of radical innovation actually makes the whole thing feel more urgent!
TOD-5 (aka The Carrier)
A classy hour. In order to stop a terror group from getting their hands on a biological weapon, the IMF go all the way and simulate a damn epidemic, hijacking a whole town. What makes ‘TOD-5’ special is that much of the episode follows the perspective of the villain, who basically finds himself in a sort of horror movie. (Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if George Romero watched this one before doing The Crazies.)
Movie
To get their hands on a ledger detailing how the Syndicate is taking hold of the entertainment industry, the IMF crew manage to get a mobbed-up studio boss to produce a film dramatizing his own criminal activities. Like I mentioned last time, the team’s plans often incorporated strategies lifted from audiovisual fiction, but this episode seems particularly meta, as they use dubbing, editing, and improv acting in a literal studio lot in order to frame a film executive. ‘Movie’ also benefits from a couple of extremely Hitchcockian set pieces.
Ultimatum
When a rogue scientist threatens to detonate a nuclear bomb in an American city, the IMF is assigned with tracking down his accomplices (and the bomb itself, of course). They also get more means than usual, working with a large task force. The premise’s scale, the novelty factor, a couple of wild cards, and some neat visual touches make ‘Ultimatum’ a remarkable episode, despite the relatively low-energy execution…
Imitation
In the final mission of the original series, the team has to recover some stolen crown jewels. Although ‘Imitation’ certainly isn’t among the very best episodes, it’s not a bad send-off, as we get many of the show’s various trademarks: fictitious nations, domestic criminals, heists, cons, gadgets, a face mask, a charming villain, slangy dialogue, even a bit of romance. Plus, I love that final shot, with Barney’s dead stare reminding us that Mission: Impossible has always been about cold-hearted professionals willing to sacrifice personal feelings (their own and their marks’).