Mission: Impossible - The Third TV Season

Well, here we are again with the third installment from the original Mission Impossible. This is the final season for Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. They will be replaced with Leonard Nimoy in the fourth season.Lots of good episodes here, including my favorite, "The Execution". The theme is the same as for the previous seasons. Jim gets a secret mission, selects and briefs his team (although we don't get every detail so there are always surprises), and then they go out and roust the bad guy. Most of these are credible and believable. Once in a while there is an episode which stretches reality. All are entertaining to watch, and the hour-long show is just about right, time wise.This set will be out in November and I'm looking forward to it with great anticipation. To date there are no extras on the DVD's and I imagine this one will follow suite. Still, the picture is sharp and clear and the audio track is reasonable (remember, these are from the 60's).Once again, if you've never seen one of the television episodes and only know Mission Impossible from the Tom Cruise movies, do yourself a great favor and buy or rent one of the sets. All are good. Many, many evenings of entertainment value for the whole family here.For those who want an episode list .....Episode 1: The Heir ApparentOriginal Air Date: 29 September 1968 Episode 2: The Contender: Part 1Original Air Date: 6 October 1968 Episode 3: The Contender: Part 2Original Air Date: 13 October 1968 Episode 4: The MercenariesOriginal Air Date: 20 October 1968 Episode 5: The ExecutionOriginal Air Date: 10 November 1968 Episode 6: The CardinalOriginal Air Date: 17 November 1968 Episode 7: The ElixirOriginal Air Date: 24 November 1968 Episode 8: The DiplomatOriginal Air Date: 1 December 1968 Episode 9: The PlayOriginal Air Date: 8 December 1968 Episode 10: The BargainOriginal Air Date: 15 December 1968 Episode 11: The FreezeOriginal Air Date: 23 December 1968 Episode 12: The ExchangeOriginal Air Date: 4 January 1969 Episode 13: The Mind of Stefan MiklosOriginal Air Date: 12 January 1969 Episode 14: The Test CaseOriginal Air Date: 19 January 1969 Episode 15: The SystemOriginal Air Date: 26 January 1969 Episode 16: The Glass CageOriginal Air Date: 2 February 1969 Episode 17: DoomsdayOriginal Air Date: 16 February 1969 Episode 18: Live BaitOriginal Air Date: 23 February 1969 Episode 19: The Bunker: Part 1Original Air Date: 2 March 1969 Episode 20: The Bunker: Part 2Original Air Date: 9 March 1969 Episode 21: NitroOriginal Air Date: 23 March 1969 Episode 22: NicoleOriginal Air Date: 30 March 1969 Episode 23: The VaultOriginal Air Date: 6 April 1969 Episode 24: IllusionOriginal Air Date: 13 April 1969 Episode 25: The InterrogatorOriginal Air Date: 20 April 1969

Mission: Impossible's third season was its best -- best stories, best cast, best guest stars, and best puzzle-boxes for the IM force to break into. In fact, the first episode features a literal puzzle box -- a toy that Cinnamon has to solve while impersonating a blind heiress (or not, like Anastasia) who could prevent a petty dictator from taking power in a mysterious country located somewhere on the border between Venezuela and Bulgaria, where everyone speaks English in a broken Eastern European accent, and blue-eyed silver-haired force leader Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) fits right in. Such was always the backdrop for the foreign settings of the missions, where the force could rely on outstanding intelligence to discover everything from the bad guys' preferred method of torture and murder to the existence of underground tunnels to take them to vaults full of gold bars. It's probably my personal bias, but I like these episodes the most because I remember them from when I was eight years old, watching this show in its original run. The DVD set includes my favorite episode -- well, two episodes -- "The Bunker", in which a nuclear scientist is working on a bomb for a small country that's holding his wife hostage. For the first time in the series, the IM force is also up against a third country that has sent an assassin after the scientist as well. There's also "The Mercenaries", during which Barney is able to melt a million bucks' worth of gold with a lawn-mower-engine powered set of curling irons in about six hours, after which Willy reconstitutes the molten gold into new bars that he is easily able to lift onto a forklift. Okay, so it sounds like you have to suspend disbelief until it cracks, but it works. The production values are at their zenith in this episode, if you overlook the fact that the basements all look identical for about five episodes in a row, and the guest stars (Pernell Roberts, Lee Meriwether, and the inimitable John Vernon, among others) were the cream of the crop in the '60s. The incidental music is the best the series had to offer as well. Like the previous sets, the DVDs don't come with lots of extras, but have good transfers and high sound and picture quality, and the package is trim as can be. As always, should you choose not to purchase these DVDs, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your action.

Many fans rate Season 3 as when Mission Impossible reached its peak, and I'd go along with this. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were soon to depart (this is their final batch of epsiodes), and things would never be the same again. Also, this period of the programme's run was when viewers had beome familiar with the format, so the writers started to add some welcome complications to the plots, where Mr. Phelps and his team have to do some fast improvising. Most of the stories are of very high quality, and they are brought vividly to life not only by the regular actors but a host of great stars, many of whom appeared in numerous TV drama series of this period and always gave solid performances.To sum up, if you are only going to buy one season of this enduringly entertaining series, I would definitely go for this one.

One of the best tv shows ever made, excellent cast as Peter Graves' Jim Phelps leads his IMF team on impossible missions toppling dictators and infiltrating the mafia and going to made up enemy foriegn countries. You know the score by now. The familiar theme music starts Phelps gets his assignment, the message self destructs, Phelps goes through a dossier of agents but nearly always picks the same ones each time though this season there are a couple of episodes that break formula including an episode where Cinamon played by Barbara Bain is captured behind enemy lines on a mission and Phelps breaks protocol to rescue her which is one of the best episodes in the series. Thrilling and tense.

Perhaps it's special season because it's the last time we will see Cinnamon and Rollin(Barbara and Martin) so that is a little of a turnig point in the serie. Not sure why they withdrawned from the serie - Money disputes With the studios. I guess... The gang here becomes more sophisticated solving problems more closer to home and less in Europe. Still a lot of suspence and just unique episodes. Willy is still the quiet one. Jim takes a lot more roles in the serie than Dan did(the first IMF agent) and if not for his smoking, I would have liked his role more.. So that season is a turnig point in the serie so it's very recommended.

Totally implausible, highly predictable, full of cliches. But still hugely entertaining, story telling at its most straightforward. This was the last series to use Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. It is easy to think of Miss Bain as "the ice-maiden", but she has some range as an actress and a claim to be the most beautiful human being ever. Jim Phelps, Barney Collier and Willy Armitage are unchanging beacons of reliability. And you know that when one of them hits a guard on the back of the head, the guard will wake up just fifteen minutes later, dazed but without brain damage. Who needs realism?

Maybe not quite as good as series 1 & 2 ... maybe a little 'hackneyed' - but still great fun to watch! i still found it hard to ration myself to one DVD a week; and I still found it VERY hard to believe that they could make Jim Phelps a baddy in the movie (What were they thinking of when they did it? Did the writer of the movie actually watch any of the earlier series? etc.)Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to watch, suspend all disbelief, and enjoy!