Trek guest actors in maybe surprising roles

[The Old Mixer]

I'd have liked it better if it hadn't become such a familiar episode template by this point. They'd just used the "immerse bad guy in alternate reality to get him to spill his Swiss bank account number" plot five episodes previously in "The Numbers Game". I did appreciate how the gradually closing in police search made it feel like the IMF team was in real danger from an outside force (though of course they had a plan for that all along); the fake submarine rig-up may be Barney's niftiest toy to date; and the ending with the police colonel laughing at how he and the ex-Nazi had been conned was a novel touch. Did you ever find yourself balking at the ludicrous speed with which Jim & co. were able to plan and pull off such elaborate schemes, though? This whole shebang took place in the space of three days from when Jim listened to the tape.

 

[Mysterion]

Watching Keye Luke (Donald Cory from Whom Gods Destroy) in an episode of Magnum P.I. entitled Forty Years From Sand Island.

 

[Christopher]

I'd have liked it better if it hadn't become such a familiar episode template by this point.

Most M:I plots are formulaic. What's so great about "Submarine" is the execution. And not just the cool submarine set (no doubt left over from some movie, with the episode being written around it) or the cleverness of the misdirect with the trucks -- what really makes it great is the character work and the guest acting, with Ramon Bieri being a particular standout.

They'd just used the "immerse bad guy in alternate reality to get him to spill his Swiss bank account number" plot five episodes previously in "The Numbers Game".

The goal of the mission is the least important part of an M:I episode. It's just a MacGuffin, a catalyst for what the story is really about, which is the mechanics of the caper and the interplay of the characters. There are many M:I episodes where there's no really good reason why such an elaborate plan is needed to achieve the stated goal. It's just an excuse.

Did you ever find yourself balking at the ludicrous speed with which Jim & co. were able to plan and pull off such elaborate schemes, though? This whole shebang took place in the space of three days from when Jim listened to the tape.

I forget, did they actually say that in the tape? Because I tend to assume there's a fair amount of time for research and planning between the tape scene and the apartment scene. One thing the '88 revival tended to miss is that the original series' apartment scenes were usually the end of the team's planning process, not the beginning -- the final confab where they brought each other up to speed on the finalized details of the plan, the last rehearsal before raising the curtain. Sometimes it would even be mentioned that one team member had already established a cover or infiltrated an operation. So there can be days, even weeks, between the tape scene and the apartment scene. So was it three days after the tape or after the apartment scene?

What amuses me about the tape scenes are all the ways the Voice on Tape avoids telling Jim the actual name of the country he's being sent to. You'd think that's something he'd kind of need to know...

 

[diankra]

Comments from the director of, I think, a Champions episode: "I asked the writers, where's the script? They said We'll write it once the boss tells us which left-over set we're using this week."

 

[The Old Mixer]

I forget, did they actually say that in the tape?

Yep...Guy on Tape said that the ex-Nazi was going to be released from the Eastern European Republic in three days. They pulled this scheme off in the EER, while he was still being interrogated. Once ex-Nazi got out, there was supposedly a neo-Nazi coup already in place just waiting for the funding.

What amuses me about the tape scenes are all the ways the Voice on Tape avoids telling Jim the actual name of the country he's being sent to. You'd think that's something he'd kind of need to know...

They've been making up country names in recent stories, at least. What always amuses me is when Guy on Tape feels the need to expand his abbreviations of the fictional countries...if Jim's such a master operative that he can orchestrate these elaborate schemes in a few days, I imagine he'd know what EER stands for.

 

[Christopher]

What with all the different imaginary Eastern European countries they had in M:I, Eastern Europe in that universe must've been huge.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Now this dredges up...awkward associations.

("Mastermind," Nov. 23, 1969)

 

[Nerys Myk]

Now this dredges up...awkward associations.
View attachment 12299
("Mastermind," Nov. 23, 1969)

Did agents from Easteuroslavia steal Paris' brain to run a supercomputer?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Did agents from Easteuroslavia steal Paris' brain to run a supercomputer?

If they did, it would all be part of Jim's plan.

 

[Nerys Myk]

If they did, it would all be part of Jim's plan.

But the audience wouldn't be sure until the last act.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Watching 'Have Gun Will Travel' on MeTV this morning.
Paladin is transporting a princess across the desert and there in the background is the Vasquez Rock formation.
It's a different angle then what we normally see on television, but it's there just the same.

Hardly a week goes by that I don't see Vasquez Rocks pop up two or three times on Me and H&I's westerns.

Vasquez Rocks had a good agent, man. I hope he's still getting residuals.

 

[Christopher]

Now this dredges up...awkward associations.

And Paris was actually pretending to be a psychic in that one.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Faking a full Mind Meld with a comatose mob boss....

 

[MAGolding]

What with all the different imaginary Eastern European countries they had in M:I, Eastern Europe in that universe must've been huge.

I guess I can imagine an alternate universe where Kievien Rus broke up into separate principalities, as in our timeline, but nothing ever happened to gather them together again into Moscovy and later Russia, and where Poland and Silesia divided into principalities, as in our timeline, .but they were never reunited by various powers. And maybe the Balkans were even more Balkanized than in our time line, and maybe Hungry also split up into several countries.

Maybe the holy Roman Empire fell as in our timeline, but the independent states never reunited to form powerful natins like Italy and germany.

So the alternate universe of Mission Impossible could have one or two dozen more small countries in eastern Europe than in the 1960s in our timeline..

And possibly small countries in central Asia are also considered to be part of eastern Europe in the timeline of Mission Impossible.

 

[Christopher]

So the alternate universe of Mission Impossible could have one or two dozen more small countries in eastern Europe than in the 1960s in our timeline.

Although a number of those countries were portrayed as major powers analogous to the USSR, since of course most of them were stand-ins for it.

I doubt any of them are in Central Asia, though, since their populations were always depicted as European/white. The original M:I almost entirely avoided doing episodes in Asian countries, except for the one episode set in Japan which very unconvincingly pretended that Leonard Nimoy with latex epicanthic folds could fool real Japanese people. And it's kind of fortunate that they did, because '60s TV portrayals of non-Western countries tended to be pretty racist. (The Man from UNCLE seemed to go out of its way to portray negative and condescending stereotypes of as many cultures as possible -- even Inuit.) And the '80s Mission: Impossible revival, which was filmed in Australia, did a lot of episodes set in Asian or Pacific countries and was often dreadfully racist about it.

 

[FormerLurker]

and maybe Hungry also split up into several countries

Hungry spread its influence across the face of the Earth, and forces each of us to give attention at least three times a day.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Hungry

Hungary

 

[The Old Mixer]

Hungry spread its influence across the face of the Earth, and forces each of us to give attention at least three times a day.

This joke will self-destruct in five seconds.

 

[Kor]

... The original M:I almost entirely avoided doing episodes in Asian countries, except for the one episode set in Japan which very unconvincingly pretended that Leonard Nimoy with latex epicanthic folds could fool real Japanese people...

I wondered if they were inspired by "You Only Live Twice."

Kor

 

[Christopher]

I wondered if they were inspired by "You Only Live Twice."

It wasn't the only time Nimoy played an Asian character in M:I, just the only time it was claimed that actual Asians would be fooled by it. He had the kind of appearance that '60s Hollywood considered "exotic" enough to cast as any ethnic type, so he sometimes played Asians and Native Americans. That was probably a factor in casting him as an alien too.