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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  A Game Of Chess
The Chess Computer   (8 of 10)

A world-famous chess champion plans to steal a supply of gold from the vault of the very hotel he's playing a competeition at, because the nearest bank it could have been stored at was recently destroyed.  The gold was stolen from the opposition forces in a Communist bloc country.  Jim's mission is to retrive the gold and return it to the opposition party!

NOTHING is ever easy with these guys.

Don Francks (HEAVY METAL) is "Nicholas Groat", the chess master, who winds up playing against Rollin-- not knowing (at first) that every move Rollin makes is being directed by a computer used by Barney.  When Groat loses, he practically throws a childish hissy-fit!  "NO ONE can make moves like THAT!"  Sure enough, he learns he's right... and, in classic con-man style, Jim winds up showing off their computer, and casually mentioning what it can do, effectively putting it into the mind of the baddie to use it to help him pull his heist, without Jim ever having to say so.

Chess masters must have had a bad reputation in Hollywood, as I was reminded a bit of the one Laurence Harvey played a few years later on COLUMBO in "The Most Dangerous Match" (1973).
   (2-28-2025)

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Condemned
Framed For Murder   (9 of 10)

A childhood friend of Jim's is falsely accused of killing a man in a Latin American country.  Jim decides to have the team perform a "personal" mission, to save him from being executed.

Kevin Hagen (LAND OF THE GIANTS) is "David Webster", who calls our hero "Jimbo", swears he never met the murdered man, and winds up spending several hours on his feet hiding behind a fake wall while the prison guards think he's mysteriously escaped with the aid of 2 men posing as priests (Rollin & Willy).

Marianna Hill (HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER) is Louisa Rojas, Webster's girlfriend, who, because she refused to give David an alibi, is immediately Jim's top suspect in whatever plan there was to frame David.

Peter Donat (THE CHINA SYNDROME) is "Arthur Warner" who in reality is the supposed murdered man "Robert Corley", who killed someone else and made sure the body would be mistaken for himself, then had plastic surgery done to hide his true face.  How twisted can you get?

Will Kuluva (the unaired pilot of THE MAN FROM UNCLE) is "Edmund Constantine", who engineered the theft of a priceless crown from a Greek museum with Corley, mistakes Jim for Corley's associate, and makes a deal with Jim to split the profit once the crown is recovered.

Nate Esformes (ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN) and Steven Marlo (THE TOWERING INFERNO) are Police Captain Vicente Barrera and his aide "Diego", who Jim approaches about recovering the crown. Because Jim seems less concerned with their seemingly-escaped prisoner, they bug his apartment, and quickly learn about the jewel thieves!  I was particularly impressed with how Diego figured out that a pair of reading glasses with a very unusual prescription matched the ones belonging to the "dead" man.

Not for the first time, I found myself wondering, WHAT is Barney doing with that car?  When I suddenly figured it out near the climax, I found myself LAUGHING all the way through to the end of the story!

Definitely my FAVORITE episode so far.  This is what's known as "playing with the format".

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Counterfeiter
The Fake Pharmaceutical Racket   (6 of 10)

The owner of a chain of clinics is also running a counterfeit drug operation.  Jim's mission is to put him out of business.  As usual, the IMF takes the most complicated, confusing path to accomplish their goals.

Edmund O'Brien (FANTASTIC VOYAGE, where he played a military guy whose running gag could have been "Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up amphetamines") is "Raymond Halder".  The team manages to find a way to give him headaches and seizures, so that he believes his OWN life is in terrible danger, and the only cure is a certain pill-- except, HE knows the pill someone is trying to give him is FAKE and WORTHLESS!  What a way to coerce a confession out of strong-willed dirtbag.

Frank Campanella (526 episodes of FROM THESE ROOTS and countless other roles on TV) is "Eddie Burke", Halder's right-hand man.

Jon Lormer (3 episodes of STAR TREK) is "Charles Gant", a member of a board of drug manufacturers who are working to get ahead of the counterfeiters.

Among the fun in this story is seeing Jim pose as a Fed who's willingly on the take, Rollin as an equally-corrupt cop, and Cinnamon as a woman who is falsely accused of smuggling.  With all this going on around him, Halder didn't stand a chance.  More than usual, the team takes great pleasure in letting the baddie KNOW they were the ones who took him down at the end.
   (3-19-2025)

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Town
The Small Town Murder Conspiracy   (6 of 10)

While on vacation, Jim stumbles across a murder plot involving every single person in a small town. Rollin arrives, is told Jim had a stroke, but figures out thru Jim's use of blinking his eyes in Morse Code what's going on.  Rollin summons the team, who must rescue Jim, and, prevent the assassination of a Russian scientist in L.A. by a married pair of killers.

Boy, talk about "playing with the format"!

Will Geer (IN COLD BLOOD) is "Doc" (they couldn't even bothered giving him a name?) the man in charge of the conspiracy, who drugs Jim with curare to prevent him moving or speaking. As things progress, Rollin winds up impersonating him. It felt so good when the guy wound up bound, gagged and helpless.

Eddie Ryder (4 episodes of GET SMART) is "Williams", the gas station attendant & repairman, the #2 man in the group. I couldn't be sure at one point if he tampered with Barney's limo, or if Barney was just screwing with the guy.  Either way, I was waiting most of the episode to see HIM get clobbered.

William O'Connell (HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER) is the "Instructor", over-seeing the meeting of the towns-people as they learn what their various assignments are.  I generally DO NOT LIKE stories where every single person in some small town are all involved in a conspiracy, with the notable exception of that Clint Eastood film, mainly because, when Eastwood's "Stranger" arrives, he pretty much takes over and terrorizes everyone else!  So it's an interesting bit of type-casting to see O'Connell was in this, years before that film.  Like that film, before it's over, the towns-folk never knew what hit them!
   (2-19-2025)

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Killing
The Haunted Hitman   (8 of 10)

A man runs a murder-for-hire operation for organized crime, where the bodies are never found, but never does any of the killings himself.  Jim's mission is to provide evidence so he can be prosecuted, not just his hired hitmen.

Gerald S. O'Laughlin (THE ROOKIES) is "Bert Gordon", head of this show's equivalent of "Murder Inc." He's tough, smart, but his one weekness appears to be that he's also superstitious.  The team uses this against him to the max when they first convince him his neighbor's house is haunted, then has him involved in a killing, only to find the newly-dead man coming back from the grave to haunt HIM.

Roy Jenson (STAR TREK: The Omega Glory) is "Connie", Gordon's assassin, who not only bumps people off, but gets rid of the evidence by dumping their bodies into a furnace at a lumber yard.

While Jim and Rollin pose as brothers who are haunted by a dead sibling, and Cinnamon poses as an unhappy wife who wants her drunk of a husband dead, Barner & Willy knock out the hitman and spent an awful lot of time installing mysterious equipment in Gordon's house.  When we learn what it's all used for, that's when the episode becomes genuinely HILARIOUS.  Conning a hardened killer into believing in a haunting may not make much sense, but I don't recall any other episode of this show I had so much fun watching.

One of my favorite moments had to be when Jim, apparently shot dead in "self defense", is rescued from the furnace seconds before it really gets going.  Come to think of it, that was the 2nd time on this show I've seen that kind of thing happen (the previous time was at a mortuary crematorium).

Funny thing, it was checking the credits online just now that I suddenly realized all these years I was confusing 2 similar-looking actors:  McLauglin (who was on THE ROOKIES) and Tige Andrews (who played a similar role on THE MOD SQUAD).  It was Andrews, not McLaughlin, who once appeared on STAR TREK (as a Klingon).
   (3-27-2025)

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Phoenix
The Artificial Assassination Attempts   (6 of 10)

A formerly-prominent member of a foreign government, who's been reduced to administering a prominent art gallery, hopes to regain his former position by smuggling a rare alloy hidden in a metal sculpture.  Jim's mission, is to prevent both from happenning.

While awaiting a visit from the head minister, the man finds himself the target of an apparently failed assassination attempt.  Quickly, Jim shows up posing as a security official, with Barney & Willy in tow, to investigate, and interrogate a pair of vengeful locals (Rollin & Cinnamon) who hold a grudge against their target.  And while this is going on, Barney & Willy spend an inordinate amount of time with a welding torch taking apart and putting back together the sculpture in question, one of the ugliest things I've ever seen passing itself off as "modern art".  I wondered for most of the story, WHY it was taking them so long to get their job done... until the end.

Alf Kjellin (ICE STATION ZEBRA) is "Stefan Prohash", an absolutely ruthless and ambitious man responsible for the deaths of countless innocent people in the pursuit of "law and order" in his country, who, suffice to say, GETS what's coming to him by the end.
   (4-8-2025)

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  Recovery
The Defective Self-Destruct Mechanism   (8 of 10)

A B-52 has crashed in a small Iron Curtain country, its self-destruct device has failed to operate, and an American defector is planning to take it apart and find what makes it tick.  Jim's mission, is to bring back not only the device, but the defector as well!

Bradford Dillman (THE ENFORCER) is "Paul Shipherd", a defector whose motives are never explained, and who appears on the surface to be a low-key WIMP, until he violently strikes out at someone he believes is an American pilot who refuses to help.

Peter Coe (THE MUMMY'S CURSE) is "Laso", the man in charge of the "Institute" where Shipherd is doing his research.  (I thought all the other men in the complex looked exactly the same, with no discernible personalities, which is either a fault on the part of whoever cast this episode, or a commentary on Eastern bloc conformity.)

Jim plays 2 roles in this-- a black-haired B-52 pilot briefly in custody before being turned over to his embassy; and a white-haired paper-shredder repairman.  (Is it possible no one in the building laid eyes on "both" men to recognize they were they were the same person?)

Rollin & Cinnamin play a married American couple, with him being hinted at as the man who designed the "fail safe" device, causing the baddies to kidnap his wife to force him to dismantle it.  Were they in for a shock when their prisoner DIES of a heart attack before he finishes his job!

Much of this episode involves a paper-shredding chute big enough for a man to crawl through.  As story editors & writers Woodfield & Balter did extensive work earlier on VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, I rather imagined the man they intended to KIDNAP might wind up lowered down thru said chute.  I was surprised at what they really did!

It has nothing to do with this episode, but every time Bradford Dillman was onscreen, I couldn't help but think of the classic scene from THE ENFORCER where Clint Eastwood inspired him to say, "THAT's it, Callahan, you just got yourself a sixty day suspension!" "Make it NINETY!" "A hundred and eighty.  Give me your star."  "Here's a seven-point suppository, Captain." "WHAT did you say??"  "I said stick it in your ASS." I know Dillman has a range of roles and acting, but that one scene will forever encapsulate his entire career for me.

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Heir Apparent
The Fake Princess   (7 of 10)

A small European country is in danger of being taken over by a military dictatorship, unless one remaining heir to the long-dead royal family can be installed as ruler.  Jim's mission is to prevent the military from seizing power.

Charles Aidman (narrator of THE TWILIGHT ZONE from 1985-1987) is "General Envir Qaisette", determined to become absolute ruler of his country, and hell-bent on proving that the old woman who claims to be the long-missing "Princess" is really a fraud.  (In this case-- HE'S RIGHT!)

Rudy Solari (STAR TREK: The Paradise Syndrome) is "Zageb", Qaisette's loyal henchman.

Torin Thatcher (THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION) is "Archbishop Djelvas", who by law is the only one who can confirm someone as the country's new ruler.  He prays for a miracle, and gets it... in the form of the IMF.

Jim poses as a very annoying conman who claims the old woman he's travelling with is the long-lost Princess-- or, at least, she believes she is (and it's pretty clear he doesn't, but he'll go along with it anyway).  He lets himself be "coerced" by Qaisette into letter the old woman be proven a fraud... but it doesn't quite work out that way.

Cinammon, under heavy make-up, portrays the long-dead Princess, whose family was murdered, it turns out, by Qaisette. 

Barney & Willy manage to get themselves arrested and thrown into solitary confinement, in a cell they KNOW will allow them access to a secret tunnel connected to the very church where a royal relic is kept, which they must tamper with to alow Cinammon to be able to open it, despite her portraying a blind woman.  I couldn't believe how, after they succeeded, they snuck BACK into the prison cell, so as not to be suspected.

Rollin plays an old doctor that Qaisette believes can "unmask" the "imposter".  The most mind-boggling scene in the story has to be when he slowly REMOVES his make-up, while sitting in the church, surrounded by people, and NOBODY notices!  Of the many improbable things that go on on this show, this had to be one of the most unbelievable.

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Condenter, Part 1
The Fight Game   (6 of 10)

A gangster  involved in fixing boxing matches intends to extend his influence into other sports as well.  Jim's mission is to stop him.

Barney gets a bigger job than usual in this episode, having to train to impersonate a young boxer who was injured during his time in the army, pretending to make a "comeback".

Ron Randell (THE OUTER LIMITS: The Duplicate Man) is "Charles Buckman", a gangster with great ambitions.

John Dehner (KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER: The Knightly Murders) is "Dan Whelen", who's also involved in the conspiracy.

Sugar Ray Robinson (real-life boxing champ) is "Wesley", henchman in the scheme.

Robert Phillips (BATMAN: Fine Feathered Finks) is "Ernie Staczek", the henchman who pushes a boxer who refuses to play ball down an open elevator shaft.

Biff Elliot (I, THE JURY) is "Kid Wilson", a retired boxer who now works as a night watchman.

Robert Conrad (THE WILD WILD WEST) is "Bobby", who is briefly seen training Barney.  I found it hilarious how the cameraman went to such lengths to make it not too obvious that the star of a then-current top-ten rated TV series was moonlighting on this show on the same network!

The plot, involving fixing fights by forcing certain boxers to throw matches-- OR ELSE-- was a greatly-expanded variation on an earlier episode of 21 BEACON STREET (1959-60), a show that M:I was sued for ripping off the format of!

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Contender, Part 2
The Fix   (6 of 10)

Rollin is "forced" to sign the contract with the crooked promoter, knowing his protoge will have to do whatever he's told-- including taking a DIVE when it's called for.  "You even got the eliminations rigged!"  Sure enough, "Richie" wins several fights in a row, leading to the big match, where he's expected to lose at the moment when everyone is betting for him to win!  But the IMF has something sneaky and underhanded going on (don't they always?)

My big question was, WHO played the extra member of the team, the black-haired woman who placed that huge bet?  IT WASN'T Barbara Bain, yet they con the baddies into thinking it was, and, she's not listed anywhere in the credits.

I got a huge kick when the announcer said that "Ernie Staczek" (Robert Phillips) was "from CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY".  Camden had not yet gone to hell as a city when this was filmed.  I'll always remember Phillips from the STAR TREK pilot when he said to Jeffrey Hunter, "NICE place ya got here, Mister Pike!"  Compared to that brief scene, he had a HUGE role in this episode.

I'm also pretty sure Robert Conrad was one of the guys Greg Morris fought in an elimination match.  The cameraman was taking an extreme amount of trouble NOT to let you get a good look at his face.

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE:  The Mercenaries
The Jungle Gold Heist   (8 of 10)

A brutal mercenary (see Brutal Mercenary Magazine) who is robbing both locals and his employers, has amassed a stash of gold bars.  Jim’s job is to stop the man, and get the gold back.

Pernell Roberts (BONANZA) is “Col. Hans Krim”, who has a seemingly-secure armed camp in the middle of a jungle, and a pile of stolen gold bars in a nearby bank vault.  But NOT FOR LONG.

Jim and Cinnamon pose as missionaires with Bibles, who are really arms smugglers.  They make a deal to supply Krim.  Things appear to go sour when Krim sets his sights on Cinnamon, but later finds out she’s “just there to keep the customers happy”.

Rollin poses as a former member of an earlier mercenary band, who are rumored to have fled the area leaving a cache of gold bars behind.  His job is to lead Krim to those bars, which Krim has no intention of sharing with his men.

Barney and Willy’s job is to break into the bank vault and steal the gold bars.  But how they do it is so wild, I can’t bring myself to describe it here.  However, after it was all over, I was reminded of one of my favorite-ever bits from MAD magazine, an exchange in their “Mission: Ridiculous” parody, between one of the agents and a hotel waiter.  “Sir, I have your champagne!”  “Slip it under the door.”  “But sir, it won’t FIT under the door!”  “Then POUR it under the door.”  “Alright, sir, but if you don’t mind my saying so, this seems VERY suspicious!”

Among Krim’s henchmen are Skip Homeier (STAR TREK: Patterns Of Force, and The Way To Eden), Vic Tayback (STAR TREK: A Piece Of The Action), Bo Svenson (WALKING TALL, McCLOUD: Top Of The World, Ma!), and William Lucking (DOC SAVAGE: THE MAN OF BRONZE, THE A-TEAM).

Crazy insane fun!  I’m really wondering when I started watching this show, because this far in, I still haven’t seen one story I remember from the 1960s.