Mission Impossible: The Fifth TV Season
Directed by Barry Crane et al
Studio: Paramount
Year: 1970-1971
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Running Time: 1155 minutes
Rating: NR
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 English ; 2.0 mono English, Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish, Portuguese
MSRP: $ 54.99
Release Date: October 7, 2008
Review Date: October 7, 2008
The Series
3.5/5
By the 1970-1971 season, Mission Impossible had begun to lose its luster. Once the most innovative and exciting of series, by season five, the plots had begun to lose their spark, the cast seemed more robotic, and in an effort to juice up the proceedings and get the ratings back into the Nielsen top ten, stories were varied a bit, some to the point of not even being about impossible missions at all. It did no good. Though the show was ultimately to last two more seasons, it never regained its Nielsen dominance from earlier in its run.
Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) is still the leader of the IM force, and electronics expert Barney Collier (Greg Morris) and team muscle Willy Armitage (Peter Lupus) are also still performing their duties with their customary expertise. (When a person with medical expertise is needed for the team, Sam Elliott’s Doug Robert is drafted for service often in place of Willy.) Leonard Nimoy was in the second year of his two season run on the show as master of disguise Paris. Joining the show this year as resident woman-of-many-faces is Lesley Warren (having dropped her middle name “Ann” in an effort to break away from her Disneyfied ingénue roles) as Dana Lambert. Warren is a game actress and tries everything the writers throw at her, but at this stage of her career, she didn’t possess the innate sophistication or suavity to pass muster as a Jill-of-all-trades. (She always seems like a young girl playing dress up.) Though the network went all out giving her a massive publicity buildup prior to the season premiere, her work was not applauded, and she left at the end of the season.
While most of the episodes still revolved around Phelps receiving a tape recorded message in an isolated location describing his potentially hazardous mission, there were some one-shots that didn’t involve instructions from a recorded voice. One involved a murder mystery in Jim’s hometown. Another involved Paris’ abduction with a device implanted in his skull that turned him into a killing machine. Sometimes, the stories begin in the middle of a mission we know nothing about, but due to a foul-up, one of the team is captured or injured requiring a change in plan to rescue that individual. Though these unique episodes did vary the scenarios, it was the premise’s formula that always generated the best episodes of the season. And the show’s reputation still guaranteed it a stellar list of guest stars. Among the great ones who made appearances this season were Robert Conrad, Sal Mineo, Robert Alda, Larry Linville, Chris Connelly, Loretta Swit, Sharon Acker, Mark Rickman, Jill Haworth, James Shigeta, Benson Fong, Anthony Zerbe, Mark Lenard, Albert Paulsen, Lou Antonio, Ken Swofford, Lloyd Bochner, Abbey Lincoln, John Beck, Denny Miller, Henry Darrow, John Vernon, Andrew Duggan, Marion Ross, William Smith, Antoinette Bower, and George Sanders.
Here is the list of the season’s 23 episodes contained on six discs in the set:
1 - The Killer
2 - Flip Side
3 - The Innocent
4 - Homecoming
5 - Flight
6 - My Friend, My Enemy
7 - Butterfly
8 - Decoy
9 - The Amateur
10 - Hunted
11 - The Rebel
12 - Squeeze Play
13 - The Hostage (my favorite episode of the season)
14 - Takeover
15 - Cat’s Paw
16 - The Missile
17 - The Field
18 - Blast
19 - The Catafalque
20 - Kitara
21 - A Ghost Story
22 - The Party
23 - The Merchant (a very Casino Royale-like episode)
Video Quality
4/5
The series’ original 1.33:1 aspect ratio is delivered faithfully in these DVD transfers. Most of the episodes are surprisingly sharp and feature wonderfully saturated color. Yes, there are the occasional dust specks, but the encoding is very solid otherwise featuring none of the usual shimmer or aliasing that usually afflicts nonanamorphic transfers. All of the studio photography is so vivid that freckles are easily glimpsed, and the makeup on the actors’ faces is often garishly obvious. Some location work sometimes is softer than studio-shot scenes, and occasionally soft focus photography is used on certain actors, but only infrequently is the contrast between sharpness and soft focus a problem. The episodes have been divided into 6 chapters.
Audio Quality
3.5/5
The Dolby Digital 2.0 mono tracks are solid audio mixes of the period. I listened to most of the episodes using the repurposed Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Naturally, the sound is very front centric with only the occasional ambient sound effects channeled to the rears. Still, it’s nice to have the soundfield opened up a bit and thoughtful to be given the option of two English language tracks.
Special Features
0/5
Apart from previews of other Paramount classic titles like Perry Mason, Mannix, and I Love Lucy, there are no bonus features in the set.
In Conclusion
3.5/5 (not an average)
Mission Impossible chugged along fairly predictably during its fifth year despite some additions to the cast, but the writing was on the wall; the series was running out of steam. Still, this box set features many beautiful transfers of vintage material and an audio track that’s a nice upgrade to the standard mono of the time which is also included for purists.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
