Mission: Impossible: The Original TV Series Blu-ray Review

Mission: Impossible was a ground-breaking television series in its day, and many of its achievements are still a part of our culture, certainly never to be forgotten.

The Production: 4/5

Ingenious, twist-infested narratives and a cast of enigmatic chameleons combined to make CBS’ Mission: Impossible a seven-season phenomenon. Slow to catch on with the vast television audience of the time (though the Emmy Awards certainly were ahead of the curve: the show’s first two seasons earned the Best Drama Series Emmy award), it wasn’t until season three that the series vaulted upward turning into one of television’s top-rated programs, and as the show’s gripping formula and pulse-raising theme music were easily identifiable and even more simple to parody, the show’s slow rise to popularity and then swift fall from grace with numerous cast defections and a slashed budget happened almost within a blink of an eye. Still, over seven seasons and 171 episodes, Mission: Impossible plotted out quite a niche for itself, a status which made a hit movie adaptation franchise an achievement which has considerably lengthened the reputation of the original series.

The first four seasons held to a relatively stable blueprint: a main title sequence with a jazzily thumping beat featuring quick jump cuts showing highlights of action in the show to come melted into an ordinary setting where Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) or Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) would listen to a recorded message identifying the squad’s targets and mission, the aforesaid man would select from a dossier of choices a certain number of people to carry out an intricate plan of attack, said plan with various gadgets needed to complete the mission would then be discussed in a black, white, and gray setting by all of the protagonists, and then the complex mission would unfold. The cleverness of the set-up was that the entire plan was never hashed out within the audience’s earshot so that we were often as surprised as the victims while the caper played itself out. Sometimes things would go wrong – occasionally on purpose to heighten the drama of the tale but sometimes unexpectedly when the team would then have to improvise to get itself out of various dire situations.

The cast for the first three seasons remained mostly stable. Though season one leading man Steven Hill was replaced by Peter Graves in season two (highly appropriate: Hill never seemed to enter into the larkish spirit of the capers whereas Graves seemed up for anything), the other players were quite dependable and easy to like: electronics guru Barney Collier (Greg Morris), man-of-a-thousand-faces-and-voices Rollin Hand (Martin Landau), resident femme fatale and lady-of-all-trades Cinnamon Carter (Barbara Bain), and team muscle Willy Armitage (Peter Lupus). When twice Emmy-nominated Landau and three-time Emmy winning Bain bolted the show at the end of season three in extended salary disputes, Leonard Nimoy was brought in for two seasons as magician and impersonator Paris, but Bain’s leading lady was not immediately replaced, her role filled by an assortment of capable actresses (Lee Meriwether was the best of them and appeared in six episodes making it hard to understand why she wasn’t just hired as the permanent replacement for the remainder of the series).

The plots of the first three or four years found the team engaged in espionage behind the Iron Curtain, in certain (fictional) eastern European countries, or in fictional Latin or South American locales thwarting crooked regimes, dictators, even Nazis attempting to regain power with just an occasional foray into organized crime in the United States. But as the ratings dropped after season three, new producers began tinkering with the formula, the missions, and the cast. Seasons five and six found the show beginning not with the main titles but with a prelude introducing us to some of our villains followed by the taped instructions for Phelps and then the main titles. The black, white, and gray explanation of the plan was sometimes skipped altogether (and occasionally the taped instructions were skipped with the necessary information given at the initial meeting of the agents). Missions remained planted in the California area for the most part and were focused on bringing down various members of the mob, called “The Syndicate” on the show. One wonders why an elite team of spies was carrying out missions which any capable FBI agents should have been able to handle.

What’s worse, the cast deteriorated with the addition in season five of Lesley Warren as Dana Lambert. Not cable of the wide range of personas needed for the show’s leading lady, she seemed at sea for much of her one season on the show, not possessing the innate sophistication or suavity to pass muster as an international Jill-of-all-trades. (She always seemed like a young girl playing dress up.) Though the network went all out giving her a massive publicity buildup prior to the fifth season premiere, her work was not applauded, and she left at the end of the season. Lynda Day George (mostly) and occasionally Barbara Anderson (with an assist from Marlyn Mason) completed the show’s final two seasons though the missions (including the series finale) didn’t always require a female presence. Peter Lupus was going to be written out of the show in season five to be replaced by Sam Elliott’s Dr. Doug Robert, but the show’s millions of fans weren’t having it, and a heavy letter-writing campaign brought the amiable Lupus back to the cast of regulars and gave him more to do.

But all of the seasons contained some highly impressive outings. The plots were intricate and loaded with twists and turns, and even the weakest episodes were still capable of holding one’s attention despite the increasing fantasy of some of the electronics’ capabilities. Often the gadgets the audience was shown during the early mission rundown were used quite amusingly and unexpectedly during the adventure, and the show routinely ended with the team reunited and driving away from the scene of their triumph (which, in retrospect, often involved their adversaries killing themselves or one another putting an end to their wickedness). And through the seven years, the show was loaded with acting talent, many of them proud owners of Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys. Almost every television star of note who didn’t have a show of his own during this era appeared on this show, some multiple times playing different characters.

The set is contained in a box with seven accordion-style cardboard holders, one for each of the seasons:

Season 1 – 28 episodes on 7 discs

Season 2 – 25 episodes on 7 discs

Season 3 – 25 episodes on 7 discs

Season 4 – 26 episodes on 7 discs

Season 5 – 23 episodes on 6 discs

Season 6 – 22 episodes on 6 discs

Season 7 – 22 episodes on 6 discs

Video: 4/5

3D Rating: NA

The show’s original 1.33:1 television aspect ratio is faithfully retained in these transfers, all in 1080p resolution using the AVC codec. Though the sharpness is mostly excellent and the color usually rich and lifelike, the transfers aren’t perfect. There are occasional dust specks, a string of occasional spotting, a slight scratch here and there, and various small anomalies which weren’t eliminated in the remastering. While some episodes look like they were shot yesterday, others suffer from dated color or poor optical close-ups, all of which were likely a fault with the original photography. The extra resolution allows us to see the makeup and masks more closely and that in cost-saving measures, rear screen footage sometimes wasn’t used in the rear windows in car sequences, sometimes to detrimental effect for the show’s realism, and that lousy vault footage continues to look soft and dull, the kinds of things poor analog reception of the era would have disguised. There is sometimes some flicker in the image, too. Each episode has been divided into 6 chapters.

Audio: 4/5

Though the DVDs allowed the user the choice of original mono or repurposed surround, these discs only offer for English listeners DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 encodes (and you’ll get very tired of the DTS-HD audio logo at the start of every one of the 46 discs in this set if you do any binging of episodes). Of course, there is very little in the way of ambient sounds for speakers other than the center, but there are occasional bits of music or sound effects in the surrounds. The sound is clear and completely clean of age-related hiss or other distortions, but purists are certain to be disappointed at the lack of a mono English track. There is (very loud) mono in French and German.

Special Features: 0/5

The discs do not include bonus material of any kind.

Overall: 3.5/5

Mission: Impossible was a ground-breaking television series in its day, and many of its achievements are still a part of our culture, certainly never to be forgotten. This Blu-ray set of the entire seven original seasons (ABC rebooted the show for an unsatisfying two-season run in the 1980s) looks and sounds very good indeed, but the lack of any bonus material celebrating the show’s many accomplishments is very disappointing.

Matt Hough

Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.