Bob Johnson's taped words commissioning the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) with another assignment became synonymous with the techno-sophistry of Mission: Impossible. "This tape will self-destruct in five seconds." They were as oft-cited as the title itself and the opening visual and aural motifs: a match striking into flame and Lalo Schifrin's dynamic theme music.

    The program ran for 168 episodes between 1966 and 1973 on CBS, returning for a further 35 episodes on ABC between 1988 and 1990 (shot in Australia for financial and location reasons). The original executive producer, Bruce Geller, wanted to deploy "the Everyman-superman" in a "homage to team work and good old Yankee ingenuity." The leader of the Force was expected to choose a team to deal with each given task, usually comprised of a technical expert, a strong-man, a female model, and a man-of-disguise. Major actors at different moments in the series included Peter Graves (head of the IMF after the first season and through the revived series), Barbara Bain (model), Greg Morris (technical expert), Peter Lupus (muscle-bound), and Martin Landau (disguise artist).

    By the time the program first began, TV producers were under intense pressure to include black characters in positive roles. Mission was held up in the TV Guide of the 1960s as a paragon of virtue in the representation of African-Americans, with the character of Barney Collier hailed as one of television's "New Negro figures." This didn't avoid criticism for making the token African-American a "backdoor" technical expert, one-dimensional and emotionless.

    The instructions to writers of the first series read: "The tape message contains the problem. An enemy or criminal plot is in existence; the IMF must counter it. The situation must be of enough importance and difficulty that only the IMF could do it. The villains (as here and later portrayed) are so black, and so clever that the intricate means used to defeat them are necessary. Very commonly, but not inevitably, the mission is to retrieve a valuable item or man, and/or to discredit (eliminate) the villain or villains ... avoid names of actual countries as well as mythical Balkan kingdoms by being vague. This is not a concern at early stages of writing: use real names if it's easier." The force would accept its assignment and devise a means to carry out the task in an extremely complex way. Some aspect of the plan would go awry, but the team would improvise and survive.

    The IMF was a U.S. espionage group, private-sector but public-spirited, that "assisted" Third World countries, opposed domestic organised crime, and acted as a spy for the government. Because its enemies were great and powerful, the Force required intricacy and secrecy ("covertness"). At the very time that the famous words were being intoned in each disembodied, taped assignment ("Should you ... be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions") the real-life U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, Arthur Sylvester, was supporting covert operations. The program's considerable overseas sales (sixty-nine countries and fifteen dubbed versions by its third season) were said to have given many viewers around the world an exaggerated impression of the CIA's abilities.

    David Buxton describes Mission as an exemplar of the 1960s British/American "pop series." These paeans to the fun of the commodity, to the modernity of design, fashion, and knowingness, leavened the performance of quite serious service to the nation. They had an ideological minimalism, open to a range of interpretations anchored only in the need to preserve everyday Americanness, in the most general sense of the term. The opening tape's "promise" of official disavowal in the event of failure established entrepreneurial initiative as a basis for action and gave an alibi for minimising additional references to politics. Instead, episodes could be devoted to a scientifically managed, technicist private sphere. The IMF represented an efficient allocation of resources because of its anonymously weightless and depersonalised division of labour, and an effective tool of covert activity as a consequence of its distance from the official civilities of diplomacy. This effect was achieved stylistically through a visual quality normally associated with the cinema: numerous changes in diegetic space, lighting that could either trope film noir or action-adventure, rapid cutting, and few lengthy reaction shots.

    The first Mission was valorised by many critics for its plots. It was unusual for American TV drama to have episodes with overlapping and complex story-lines at the expense of characterisation. Following each program's twists became a talisman for the cognoscenti. The inversion of heroism, whereby treachery, theft, kidnapping, and destruction were qualities of "good" characters, made the series seem both intellectually and politically subversive. Once new people were introduced in a segment, they immediately underwent bewildering transformations that problematised previous information about their psyches, politics, and conduct. Geller's fantasy was that actants be just that: figures performing humanness, infinitely plastic, and ready to be redisposed in a moment. The series lasted much longer than its many spy-theme counterparts on network television through the 1960s, perhaps as a consequence of this decentred, subjectless approach.

    Each episode of the original Mission cost $225,000, for which CBS paid $170,000. Geller was shooting upwards of fifty thousand feet of film per screen hour, more than twice the average, and spent 30% longer than the norm doing so. Special effects and writing costs also went far beyond studio policy, in part to make for the feature-film look that was a key factor in the program's success. Geller instilled a knowing self-reflexivity into the series. He became renowned for the remark that "[n]othing is new except in how it's done."

    A 150-day 1988 strike by members of the Writers' Guild of America over creative and residual rights payments cast Hollywood's attention towards remakes and towards Australia, where the A$5000 cost of a TV script compared favourably with the U.S. figure of A $21,000. Paramount decided to proceed with plans to bring back Mission, a reprise that it had attempted intermittently over almost a decade. Four old scripts were recycled, and new ones were written after the industrial action had concluded. Mission offered "a built-in baby boomer audience" and the opportunity to avoid California unions. This attitude produced a very formulaic remake.

    Consider the IMF's efforts to smuggle dissidents out of eastern Europe ("The Wall"). Posing as a Texan impresario keen to hire a chess player and a magician, Graves is accused by a KGB officer of making "capitalist offers." He replies good-naturedly that "[b]usiness is business the world over." And so it is, when his team is able to grant U.S. citizenship as it pleases whilst supposedly remaining independent of affiliation to any particular state. The IMF (what irony in an acronym shared with a key tool of First-World economic power) establishes a sphere of the "other" that is harsh and repressive compared with its own goodness and light. These spheres represent state socialism and capitalism respectively, as captured by a close-up of the East German Colonel Barty's highly polished boot grinding a little girl's lost doll into the mud as he arrests her defecting family. The shooting script calls for Graves to have a "broad American smile" to contrast him with a "slow, unfriendly" East German. The cut from unpleasantness at the Berlin Wall to Jim playing golf fully achieves the establishment of a lifestyle and polity distinctiveness, illustrating the IMF's efforts to assist elements "behind the Wall" that favour a new political and economic openness. Graves' patriarchal condescension is as much geopolitical as gendered in his remark to a ravaged Ilse Bruck in Act Three: "You're a very brave girl, Ilse. But we're still in East Berlin and you'll have to call on all your reserves to help us get back to the West." Indeed she would.

    -Toby Miller

    CAST (1966-1973)

    Daniel Briggs (1966-1967)............................... Steven Hill

    James Phelps (1967-1973)......................... Peter Graves  

    Cinnamon Carter (1966-1969)..................... Barbera Bain  

    Rollin Hand (1966-1969)........................... Martin Landau

    Barney Collier............................................. Greg Morris  

    Willie Armitage ...........................................Peter Lupus

    Paris (1969-1971)................................... Leonard Nimoy  

    Doug (1970-1971).......................................... Sam Elliot

    Dana Lambert (1970-1971)................ Lesley Ann Warren

    Lisa Casey (1971-1973)..................... Lynda Day George  

    Mimi Davis (1972-1973)....................... Barbara Anderson

    PRODUCER  

    Bruce Geller

    PROGRAMMING HISTORY

    171 Episodes

    CBS

    September 1966-January 1967   Saturday 9:00-10:00

    January 1967-September 1967   Saturday 8:30-9:30

    September 1967-September 1970   Sunday 10:00-11:00

    September 1970-September 1971   Saturday 7:30-8:30

    September 1971-December 1972   Saturday 10:00-11:00

    December 1972-May 1973   Saturday 10:00-11:00

    CAST (1988-1990)

    Jim Phelps............................................... Peter Graves  

    Nicholas Black .......................................Thaao Penghis  

    Max Harte............................................ Antony Hamilton  

    Grant Collier................................................. Phil Morris  

    Casey Randall (1988-1989)....................... Terry Markwell  

    Shannon Reed (1989-1990).......................... Jane Badler  

    The Voice on the Disk............................... Bob Johnson

    PRODUCERS

    Michael Fisher, Walter Brough

    PROGRAMMING HISTORY

    ABC

    October 1988-January 1989   Sunday 8:00-9:00

    January 1989-July 1989   Saturday 8:00-9:00

    August 1989   Thursday 9:00-10:00

    September 1989-December 1989   Thursday 8:00-9:00

    January 1990-February 1990   Saturday 8:00-9:00

    May 1990-June 1990   Saturday 8:00-9:00

    FURTHER READING

    Beatie, Bruce A. "The Myth of the Hero: From Mission: Impossible to Magdalenian Caves." In, Browne, Ray B., and Marshall W. Fishwick, editors. The Hero in Transition. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1983.

    Buxton, David. From The Avengers to Miami Vice: Form and Ideology in Television Series. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1990.

    Lewis, Richard Warren. "Is This Mission Possible? The IM Force Struggles to Overcome Cast Changes, Power Plays, Hollywood Intrigue." TV Guide (Radnor, Pennsylvania), 1969.

    Miller, Toby. "Mission Impossible: How do you Turn Indooroopilly into Africa?" In Dawson, Jonathan, and Bruce Molloy, editors. Queensland Images in Film and Television. St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1990.

    _______________. "Mission Impossible and the New International Division of Labour." Metro-Media and Education Magazine, Autumn 1990.

    White, Patrick J. The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier. New York: Avon, 1991. 

    Thumbnail of Lalo Schifrin

    Lalo Schifrin on composing the Mission: Impossible theme

    12:42
    Thumbnail of Reza Badiyi

    Reza Badiyi on directing Mission: Impossible

    05:14
    Thumbnail of Herbert F. Solow

    Herbert F. Solow on the development of Mission: Impossible and how it became a pilot and was turned into a series

    16:01
    Thumbnail of Henry Colman

    Henry Colman being an executive on Mission: Impossible  when producer Bruce Geller died in a plane crash

    02:13
    Thumbnail of Leonard Nimoy

    Leonard Nimoy on being cast as master-of-disguise "Paris" in Mission:Impossible, and how ultimately he found the job unfulfilling

    02:02

    Howard Anderson, Jr.

    Howard Anderson Jr. on creating the opening titles for Mission: Impossible

    01:29

    Reza Badiyi

    Reza Badiyi on directing Mission: Impossible

    05:14

    Reza Badiyi on his favorite episodes of Mission: Impossible

    15:17

    Reza Badiyi on the three parter "Falcon," -  the most troublesome episodes of Mission: Impossible

    09:44

    Eric Braeden

    Eric Braeden on guest-starring on Mission: Impossible

    00:33

    Robert Butler

    Robert Butler on feeling constrained as a director on Mission: Impossible; on directing suspense

    02:01

    Henry Colman

    Henry Colman being an executive on Mission: Impossible  when producer Bruce Geller died in a plane crash

    02:13

    Kevin Eubanks

    Kevin Eubanks on loving the theme song to Mission: Impossible

    00:14

    Gerald Perry Finnerman

    Gerald Perry Finnerman on being cinematographer for Mission: Impossible

    02:29

    Gerald Perry Finnerman on working with Barbara Bain and Steven Hill on Mission: Impossible

    04:48

    Dorothy C. Fontana

    Dorothy Fontana on Star Trek's production schedule and how the series was initially picked up

    03:36

    Robert Justman

    Robert Justman on working on the Mission: Impossible pilot and the Star Trek pilots

    09:46

    Robert Justman on the Mission: Impossible pilot and series

    02:07

    Leonard Nimoy

    Leonard Nimoy compares the shooting schedule of Star Trek to "sister series" Mission:Impossible

    00:56

    Leonard Nimoy on being cast as master-of-disguise "Paris" in Mission:Impossible, and how ultimately he found the job unfulfilling

    02:02

    Leonard Nimoy on his Mission:Impossible character "Paris" and his lack of three-dimensionality

    01:23

    Leonard Nimoy on the cast of Mission:Impossible— Peter Graves, Greg Morris, Peter Lupus, Sam Elliot, and Lesley Ann Warren

    02:13

    Leonard Nimoy on his favorite episode of Mission:Impossible

    00:41

    Leonard Nimoy compares his two '60s series: Star Trek and Mission:Impossible in terms of approach to the written word

    00:39

    Leonard Nimoy on having more "down time" on Mission:Impossible versus Star Trek during shooting

    00:57

    Lalo Schifrin

    Lalo Schifrin on composing for Mission: Impossible; on his Mission: Impossible theme

    12:42

    Ralph Senensky

    Ralph Senensky on the difficulty of directing Mission: Impossible; on working with the stars of the show

    04:02

    Herbert F. Solow

    Herbert F. Solow on the development of Mission: Impossible and how it became a pilot and was turned into a series

    16:01

    Herbert F. Solow on the legacy of Desilu's productions, including Mission: Impossible and The Untouchables

    01:40

    Herbert F. Solow on Bruce Gellar as a producer on Mission: Impossible

    01:04

    Herbert F. Solow on Steven Hill as the original "Mr. Briggs" on Mission: Impossible

    01:44

    Herbert F. Solow on Peter Graves being cast as the new lead on Mission: Impossible

    02:06

    Herbert F. Solow on working with Peter Graves on Mission: Impossible

    00:41

    All Shows

    Loading Shows...