Underrated but Great #4: Mission: Impossible Season 5 (1970-1971)

The general consensus regarding the great, original Missile: Impossible (1966-1973) series is that it reached its pinnacle in Years Two and Three.  Peter Graves took the lead role of Jim Phelps in Season Two, and both seasons featured Martin Landau and Barbara Bain in career-making performances, as master of disguise, Rollin Hand, and model-turned-spy, Cinnamon Carter, respectively.  In this case, the conventional wisdom is largely correct.  Seasons Two and Three of this series are sharp, inventive, and unforgettable. They likely do rank as the very best of the seven season run.

But Mission:Impossible had turbulent times ahead. 

The Landaus departed from the series during a salary dispute between the third and fourth seasons. This meant, among other things, that there was no female lead for the series in its fourth year, only a rotating cast of guest stars, including Antoinette Bower, Lee Merriwether, and Anne Francis, among them.  

Leonard Nimoy also joined the cast as the new master of disguise, Paris the Great, but as he told author Patrick J. White in The Complete Mission:Impossible Dossier, he felt more like an implant into a successful formula than an organic addition to the great cast, which included Greg Morris as electronics expert Barnier Collier, and Peter Lupus, as the strongman on the team, Willy.  He was substituting for Rollin Hand, but not really creating a unique character for Paris

Something else had happened by the fourth season too. 

The rigidly formulaic weekly format had become a little stale through all the repetition.  Everyone knew there was the tape scene, in which the mission was introduced ("Good morning, Mr. Phelps..."), and the portfolio scene, in which Jim selected his team for the specific mission, by going through his IMF satchel of portfolio.  Then there was the apartment briefing in which the team assembled and a few tantalizing details of the mission were spoken about.  Then there was the mission itself, and finally, the surreptitious getaway.  

Throughout the first four seasons, this sequence of key (trademark) scenes was played out again and again, and there was another thing too: the missions never went awry.  

On the contrary, the missions were pretty much picture perfect, timed to the second, on each occasion.  If something "seemed" to go wrong on the mission, it was revealed in the first four seasons to be part of the plan all along.  This was not necessarily bad, because the missions were so elaborate, and, frankly, brilliant, that that the pleasure in watching the series was in figuring out how it all fit together.  It is difficult to remember today, in an age when the movie series is all about ever-more impressive stunts, that the franchise was really once a thinking-person's show; probably one of the most tightly, and smartly-scripted hour dramas to come out of the sixties and seventies.

But, again, by Season Four, it was all feeling a bit canned.  So for Season 5, many changes were in the offing in an attempt to keep the series vibrant and fresh, and up to date for the 1970's.  And as fans today know, anytime a series makes big changes, it becomes a source for controversy. 

Welcome to Season Five! 

The first changes began with casting. Lesley Anne Warren, then only in her mid-20s, joined the series as the youngest IMF agent yet, Dana.  She was very different from Cinnamon Carter, and there was a subtext to her work that some liked and some didn't.  There were occasions, for example, when Dana seemed to disapprove of what the IMF was doing, or feel sorry for the "marks" who were duped. Warren attempted to layer a "person" over the mission personas, which was not something that previously happened a lot.  She simultaneously played the role, and commented on the playing of the role, in a self-reflexive manner.  Some people felt this made her performances look "transparent."  Others, such as this author, felt she brought something new and different to the series, and welcomed the attempt.

 Also joining the cast, for roughly half the episodes in Season 5 was a very young Sam Elliott, as Doug, a physician and IMF agent.  Doug was not nearly as successful an addition to the cast as Warren's Dana, in large part because a doctor was not always needed on missions. By the end of the fifth season, Doug was standing in for Willy, helping out Barney do his behind-the-scenes work in elevator shafts, in basements, and so forth.  The addition of Doug also meant that Willy's part was curtailed, and Lupus only appeared in half the season episodes. That cutting back of Willy's role was a mistake of colossal proportions, not because of anything to do with Sam Elliott or his work here, but simply because audiences loved Willy.  He was a beloved part of the IMF family, by this point, and removing him actually did the Doug character no favors. Why remove a fixture of the series for someone new, and then have that someone new fill exactly the same role?  This is the kind of switch-up that fans generally hate, and for good reason.

So the cast/character changes for Season 5 were certainly a mixed bag.  But series writers and producers did something bold in terms of their writing approach to the series.  They mixed up the formula in a dramatic way, to add a scintillating and new sense of surprise to Mission:Impossible episodes in a very real way.  

First, they removed the portfolio scene, and shortened the tape sequence.  The voice on the tape at this point, for example, sometimes did not remind Jim that "the secretary will disavow" any knowledge of his team's action if any team members are "caught or killed."  More importantly, however, unpredictable factors began to impact the missions, and so the series went off formula in dramatic and often explosive ways ways.  Where once we assumed that the IMF would always succeed, the writers for Season 5 began to explore twists and turns that called everything into question.

Gazing across the catalog of the fifth season, one can see how the writers developed new ideas to keep the series fresh, and in the process, revived the series in a dramatic way.

Here's a list of some of the most memorable and unique episodes from the underrated season.

"The Killer:" This was the season premiere of Season 5 (1970 - 1971), and saw the team go up against a hired gun, Lorca, played by Robert Conrad.  The twist in the format here was that the killer picked his murder techniques by a roll of the dice, so the IMF team could never predict his next move.  The question became: how do you stop a killer, when that killer doesn't even know his next move?  

The answer, as provided by the episode, was brilliant: you gum him up in transit, you slow him down so you have time to adjust!  Here, Leonard Nimoy's Paris played an incompetent taxi driver, who would drive too slow, take wrong turns, or drive into traffic so the scrambling IMF team could adjust to whatever destination Lorca set. That was just one piece of the puzzle. Another piece was a hotel actually taken over by the IMF, to monitor the killer.  This episode was so strong, and so suspenseful, that the script was re-used for the 1988-1990 revival series premiere.

"My Friend, My Enemy:" In this riveting episode, perhaps the very best of Season 5, the IMF team is itself, mission:impossible'd, if that's a phrase.  After a mission, Paris is captured by enemy agents, led by Dr. Tabor (Mark Richman). They program him to hate Jim Phelps, and to assassinate him.  This is a reverse of the typical format, as our beloved team members are the "mark," and led through a series of traps and puzzles, without their knowledge.  Increasing the value of the episode, we learn here some terrific and fascinating details about Paris's background, and his hatred for authority figures.  We learn how his father pushed his mother away, and she abandoned Paris as a child. And then, we learn how, his magician mentor murdered the love of Paris's life, again spurring a hatred for authority figures. Dr. Tabor uses that hatred, and tries to turn it against Jim Phelps, the team leader.

"The Missile."  This is an absolutely nuts episode, but deserves credit for the way it involves random fate. On a typical mission to trick enemy agents, a serial killer randomly lays eyes on Dana in a car repair garage, and becomes obsessed with her.  As Dana gets the information about how the enemy agents plan to assassinate Jim, the serial killer stalks and abducts her, and takes her to his apartment, so that she can't telephone that information to the team.  The idea of random fate interfering in the mission is one that hasn't played out before, and this is a terrific showpiece for Warren's Dana.  In this episode, she must escape the serial killer, and get the information to Jim, before it is too late to save his life.

"Squeeze Play."  As Patrick White explains it in his great book, a pillar of Mission:Impossible is the idea that the audience should never feel sorry for the mark.  The mark is the bad guy tricked by the IMF team.  They are often despicable characters, without redeeming quality.  They get what they deserve, in other words. 

This episode explodes that idea in a haunting way.  Here, an aging Mafia boss, Zembra (Albert Paulsen) who cares for his granddaughter, Eve (Victoria Vetri) is the mark, as he prepares to pass his power to a young replacement.  The IMF team interferes, and in a shocking moment, Eve learns the truth about their plans. Paris, playing a gangster who stands to inherit Zembra's kingdom, so-to-speak, must break character, and convince her that what the IMF is doing to her family is right, and just.  All that Eve can see, however, is the old man she loves. But, knowing that his decisions as a leader in the Syndicate cause people to die, she goes along with Paris. The end of the episode is bittersweet, as Paris tries to thank Eve for not interfering with the plan and convince her that she is free to live life away from the Syndicate.  Eve goes off instead,, to care for her sick grandfather, now defeated. She still loves him, and will stay tied to him, despite everything. In this case, the audience can see the human impact of an IMF mission. It isn't entirely pretty.

"The Hostage."  In this episode, Paris is mistaken for a role he played  during a just completed mission. In that mission he played a rich American hotel magnate.  After the mission is completed, he is captured and held for ransom because of his believed (really fake...) fortune. His captors don't realize that he is not the rich businessman he appears to be. The team must rescue him, and not break the illusion of his "role."

"The Innocent."  In "The Innocent," Barney is injured and can't complete a mission to sabotage an enemy computer.  This requires Jim to recruit somebody outside of the IMF, a young "hippie" computer scientist, played by Connelly.  But Connelly's character, Jerry, wants no part of the IMF, or the mission.  He is against American imperialism and interference in foreign affairs. He would just as soon turn in the IMF agents to the enemy, as complete his task.  So Jim must, basically, justify why the IMF does what it does.  This is one of the few times in the series that the work of the IMF is explored in moral and legal terms.  (After all, it is basically an organization operating above the law, inside the borders, often, of sovereign countries.  It tricks and entraps people. But of course, it does so on the side of the angels, right?)

"The Merchant."  In this episode, Jim and his team must attempt to take out a Nazi gun-runner, played by guest star George Sanders. The plan involves Paris wagering and winning 5 million dollars from Sanders' character, at a casino poker table.  It is all rigged perfectly, using an earpiece and computer designed by Willy. Then, in the last minutes, a drink is spilled on the table, short-circuiting the computer. Now, with five million dollars on the table, Paris must win the hand without any tricks, gimmickry, or inside help.

The above-episodes are just some of the most memorable and twisty ones of an inventive and ambitious season.  Other examples include "The Homecoming," guest-starring Loretta Swit.  That story finds Jim investigating a series of murders in his home town, at the height of the Vietnam War. A distressed veteran is tagged for the crimes, but Jim sees something else going on. Again, current events are acknowledged, which is a rarity on the series, and there is even a message about how America treats its veterans in an unpopular war.

Then there's the absolutely outrageous "Kitara," which involves using racism against a racist, basically.

Not all of these episodes are perfect, but they showcase Mission: Impossible changing thing up, taking chances, and moving forward into the new, more 'gray' territory of the 1970's.  The 1960's episodes were crisp, elegant, and perfectly plotted, like romantic James Bond movies, only much smarter, and more complex. As the series hit the 1970's, the formula, and even the IMF's "mission" came into question, creating a set of remarkable stories that still hold up today.

Lesley Warren and Leonard Nimoy both left the series at the end of Season Five, but their work here stands the test of time.  Although not widely loved, Season Five remains a late series high-point in one of the cleverest, most intelligent TV series ever produced.