Mission: Impossible ran from 1966 to 1973. The show was about a team of secret agents called the Impossible Mission Force, or the IMF, who go on covert missions to fight and defeat Syndicate crime lords and evil dictators. Each week the
Team Leader would get his assignment from a tape recording left at an isolated location. He would then assemble his team of specialists from a photo dossier, cut ahead to one final briefing, then move out into the field. The IMF team typically was composed of
The Master of Disguise, the
Femme Fatale, the
Technical Genius, and
The Strongman. However, they would bring in additional specialists as necessary, anyone from a safe cracker to a contortionist to a memory expert.
The team would used advanced technological gadgets, disguises, drugs, psychological manipulation, and a series of elaborate ruses to break into impenetrable safes, despose dictators, set two bad guys against each other, etc. If they couldn't get the villain punished for a crime he committed, they'd frame him for something he hadn't done or trick him into shooting another bad guy. Each week at the end the team would quietly slip away in a vehicle, their mission completed.
Although the formula varied only slightly from time to time, and very little was ever revealed about the team members' background, the show proved popular enough to run seven years and outlast the other spy shows of the era.
Opening Theme
Recaps
7x16: The Question recap: Nicholas Varsi arrives at the airport and goes to a locker but finds it empty. An enemy agent approaches him and demands to see his passport for identification purposes. Coleman then gives him new identity papers. They’re interrupted when a government agent, Ben Nelson, arrests them both. Varsi fingers the other man and says he’s here to defect with a lot of information...
read more.7x6: Cocaine recap: A silver Mercedes disgorges two men who enter a building, Importado Cosas de las Americas. These are Carl Reid, cocaine distributor for the syndicate, and Joseph Conrad, his right hand man. They meet Reid’s chief supplier Fernando Laroca. Laroca shows how he will smuggle cocaine within a sculpture crafted by Rene Santoro. The base is large enough to hold 500 kilos, the largest single shipment into the United States ever. At $20,000 a kilo, Reid’s wholesale price is $10,000,000. Santoro wants no part of this and leaves. On his way out a gunman silences his objections permanently...
read more.7x2: Two Thousand recap: Nuclear physicist Joseph Collins arrives at an abandoned building and picks up a briefcase filled with money. He gets a call informing him the rest is in a Swiss Bank account and he tells the buyer, Haig, that the material is in the same place as the previous year. Collins is unaware that federal agents are listening in...
read more.5x23: The Merchant recap: Jim goes to closed pharmacy at night and picks up his briefing. Armand Anderssarian is one of the world’s largest illegal arms dealers, and is completing his biggest deal with the resale of American arms captured in Vietnam. He plans to sell them to guerilla groups throughout the world, causing bloodshed everywhere. The IMF must put him out of business for good...
read more.5x22: The Party recap: In the U.S., enemy agent Alexander Vanin of the EEPR goes to a payphone and makes a call. American agents watch him from nearby as Alexander calls his wife, Olga. Alexander gives his wife a series of numbers and tells her to memorize them. The American agents listen in using a parabolic mike and record the numbers. Once Olga hangs up, security chief Valenkoff asks if anything is wrong and Olga assures him that everything is fine...
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