Mission: Impossible is an American espionage television series created by Bruce Geller, and financed and produced by Desilu Productions. It aired on CBS for seven seasons from September 17, 1966, to March 30, 1973. The series chronicled the exploits of a small team of covert government agents, known as the Impossible Missions Force, and their sophisticated methods of deceiving, manipulating and thwarting, amongst others, hostile Iron Curtain governments, third-world dictators, corrupt industrialists, and crime lords.
In the first season, the team is led by Dan Briggs (played by Steven Hill); Jim Phelps (played by Peter Graves) takes charge for the six remaining seasons. Briggs and Phelps usually assemble the same core team of agents, all of whom have careers and some degree of celebrity outside of espionage. The team is occasionally supplemented by other specialists. The series also starred Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, Greg Morris, Peter Lupus, Leonard Nimoy, Lee Meriwether, Lesley Ann Warren, and Lynda Day George.
Over the course of its initial run, Mission: Impossible won 10 Primetime Emmy Awards (including two for Outstanding Drama Series) and three Golden Globe Awards (including one for Best Television Series – Drama). It was revived in 1988 for two seasons on ABC, and later inspired the series of theatrical motion pictures starring Tom Cruise beginning in 1996.
Premise The identity of the agency that oversees the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) is never revealed. Only rare, cryptic bits of information are ever provided, such as in the third-season mission "Nicole", where the IMF leader states that his instructions come from "Division Seven". It is suggested that the IMF is an independent agency of the United States government. This is implied by the fact that, for several years, towards the end of the taped briefing messages, the narrator states: "As always, should you or any of your IM force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions".
No main character was ever killed or disavowed in the original series, but a character could disappear between episodes or seasons without explanation or acknowledgment. Mimi Davis is the only character whose recruitment as an IMF agent was shown on screen, although such a scene was filmed for Dana Lambert (Lesley Ann Warren) and discarded.
Inspiration A key inspiration for Geller was the 1964 Jules Dassin film Topkapi, innovative for its methodical depiction of an elaborate heist. Geller switched the focus away from criminals, but kept Dassin's style of minimal dialogue, prominent music scoring and clockwork-precision execution by a team of diverse specialists. Several episodes show close-up shots of an agent's wristwatch to convey the suspense of working on a deadline.
Geller also insisted on minimal character development because he felt that seeing the characters as blank slates would make them more convincing in undercover work, and because he wanted to keep the focus on the caper. Geller vetoed attempts by writers to develop the main characters. Even after Geller was removed from the show, the agents were rarely if ever seen in their "real" lives, and had only one scene where they interacted at Phelps's apartment.
The producers of Mission: Impossible were sued for plagiarism by the creators of a short-lived NBC show called 21 Beacon Street. The suit was settled out of court. Geller claimed never to have seen the earlier show; 21 Beacon Streets story editor and pilot scripter, Laurence Heath, later wrote several episodes of Mission: Impossible.
Writer William Read Woodfield was a fan of David Maurer's nonfiction 1940 book about con artists, The Big Con (also an unofficial inspiration for The Sting), and many episodes are strikingly similar to cons described in the book.
The tape scene is very similar to one described in the 1964 Nick Carter-Killmaster novel Saigon, published in December 1964 and repeated in the 1966 novel Danger Key (copyright registered in February 1966). In the novels, secret agent Carter receives a package from his superior which, when activated, plays a tape-recorded message that self-destructs after playing once.
IMF agents
The IMF was initially led by Dan Briggs, played by Steven Hill. As an Orthodox Jew, Hill had to leave on Fridays at 4 p.m. to be home before sundown, and he was not available until after dark the next day. Although Hill's contract allowed for religious observances, the clause proved difficult to work around due to the production schedule, and as the season progressed, Briggs appeared less and less. Hill had other problems, as well. After cooperatively crawling through dirt tunnels and repeatedly climbing a rope ladder in the episode "Snowball in Hell", in the following episode ("Action!") he balked at climbing to the rafters via a sound stage staircase and locked himself in his dressing room. Unable to come to terms with Hill, the producers re-shot the episode without him (guest cast member billed as 'co-starring' Tom Troupe as IMF Operative 'David Day' instead took the role envisaged for Briggs in the episode climbing the staircase etc.); another member of the team, Cinnamon Carter, listened to the taped message; the selected operatives' photos were displayed in "limbo"; and the team meeting was held in a different apartment. Briggs's presence in the five remaining episodes was kept to a minimum. As far as Hill's religious requirements were concerned, line producer Joseph Gantman simply had not understood what had been agreed to. He told author Patrick J. White, "'If someone understands your problems and says he understands them, you feel better about it. But if he doesn't care about your problems, then you begin to really resent him. Steven Hill may have felt exactly the same way."
Hill was replaced without an official explanation in the second season by Peter Graves (brother of Gunsmokes James Arness), in the role of Jim Phelps. Phelps remained the team's leader for the remainder of the original series as well as the 1988–1990 revival.
In theory, Briggs and Phelps are the only full-time members of the IMF. As the series was originally conceived, they would form teams composed of part-time agents from a variety of professions based on the particular skills required for the mission. In practice, however, Briggs and Phelps choose the same core group of three or four agents for every mission, occasionally supplemented by guest stars playing agents with unique skills.
The regular agent line-up during the first season consisted of: Cinnamon Carter (Barbara Bain), a top fashion model and actress Rollin Hand (Martin Landau), a noted actor, makeup artist, escape artist, magician, and "man of a million faces" Barney Collier (Greg Morris), a mechanical and electronics genius and owner of Collier Electronics Willy Armitage (Peter Lupus), a world record-holding weight lifter
The agents' fame in their private careers never compromised their identities during missions.
Bain and Landau were married in real life. Landau was cast as a guest star in the pilot episode with the understanding that he would be one of four or five rotating guest-star agents. His contract gave producers an option to have him "render services for (three or four) additional episodes". To fill the void left by Hill's Sabbath absences, the producers eventually struck a deal with Landau to appear in the remaining first-season episodes. He was always billed as a "guest appearance" so he had the option to give notice to work on a feature film. Landau contractually became a series regular in season two.
Bain, who won the Emmy for her performances as Cinnamon Carter three years in a row, and Landau both left the series at the conclusion of the third season. Replacements often possessed the same skills as their predecessors. For example, "The Great Paris," Rollin Hand's replacement played by Leonard Nimoy in the fourth and fifth seasons, is also an actor, makeup artist, magician, and "master of disguise". Bain was replaced in season four by a series of guest stars, only one of whom made more than one appearance: Lee Meriwether as Tracey, who appeared in six episodes. Season five added Dana Lambert, played by stage and movie actress Lesley Ann Warren (billed as "Lesley Warren"). In seasons six and seven, The Great Paris and Lambert were both replaced by cosmetologist and mistress-of-disguise Casey, whose full name was only established in the 1988–1989 revival. During her maternity leave, Casey actress Lynda Day George was replaced in a third of the season seven episodes by Mimi Davis, played by Barbara Anderson, who had been on Ironside.
Also seen in seasons five and six is Dr. Doug Robert, played by Sam Elliott. According to White, the character was introduced to add a fresh element at a time when the writers were running out of story material, but the idea was dropped once the producers realized that there was no special function that a physician could fulfill in the IMF, and as a consequence Dr. Robert consistently played little role in the stories. Most often he simply served as a surrogate for Willy Armitage, who the producers were gradually easing out of the show. After a deluge of fan mail expressed mostly negative reactions to Armitage's disappearance, however, Lupus was talked into returning.
Morris and Lupus were the only actors to remain through the entire run of the original series, although neither appeared in every episode. Morris also appeared in two episodes of the revival series, in which the character's son, Grant Collier (played by Morris's real-life son, Phil Morris), is also an IMF agent.
Actor Character Seasons1234567 Steven Hill Dan Briggs Main Barbara Bain Cinnamon Carter Main Greg Morris Barnard "Barney" Collier Main Peter Lupus William "Willy" Armitage Main Peter Graves Jim Phelps Main Martin Landau Rollin Hand Recurring Main Leonard Nimoy Paris Main Lesley Ann Warren Dana Lambert Main Sam Elliott Dr. Doug Robert Main Lynda Day George Lisa Casey Main Barbara Anderson Mimi Davis Recurring
Cold War subtext Although a Cold War subtext is present throughout the entire series, the actual Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is rarely mentioned. (See, for example, the mission objectives for "The Trial" and "The Confession" in season one.) However, in the early years, specific locations behind the Iron Curtain are named (such as Lubyanka prison in the episode "Memory"), and many of the targets appear to be leaders of fictional Slavic countries, including the "European People's Republic" and the "Eastern European Republic." Additionally, real languages spoken in Eastern Europe are used. In the season-one episode "The Carriers," one of the villains reads a book whose title is the (incorrect) Russian Na Voina (About War). Police vehicles are often labeled as such with words such as "poliiçia," and "poIiia," and a gas line or tank would be labeled "Gäz," which is a Romanian translation. This "language," referred to by the production team as "Gellerese" after producer Bruce Geller, was invented specifically to be readable by non-speakers of Slavic languages, and was actually intended as a source of comic relief. Uniforms of the target regime frequently include peaked caps, jackboots, and Sam Browne belts, hinting at covert connections with Nazi Germany or the Warsaw Pact.
In 2004, Douglas Little of Clark University published a lengthy academic article explicitly linking the TV series to CIA history: "Mission Impossible: The CIA and the Cult of Covert Action in the Middle East".
Adversaries unrelated to the Cold War