Mission: Impossible: Season 7

Just as the sun must always set even the best television series around will eventually face cancellation. The best that can be hoped for is for it to go out on a high note; head held high as the show fades away. One series that had reached the pinnacle of popularity during the espionage fade of the mid to late sixties was ‘Mission: Impossible’. It was one of the most format intensive series ever produced and that helped it define a generation of television. Decades later the popularity of this series was still at a sufficient level to justify a new big budget action film franchise as well as a couple of popular video games. This was a favorite series of mine that I diligently watched while growing up. I mean that quite literally; the series started when I was 13 and this final series now of DVD wrapped when I was twenty years old. It was only natural that both my tastes and the presentation of the series altered radically over that time. A case may be made that after seven years the show was beginning to show its age and had completed its leap over that proverbial tank full of sharks. For quite some time now CBS Paramount has been diligently releasing full season sets of this well loved series and now all seven seasons are released. Even in this ultimate season; past its prime, the series managed to remain fun to watch. The series was created by Bruce Geller during the height of the cold war which provided fertile ground for spies to make a strong foothold in films and on television. By the year of this seventh season, 1972-1973, the world stage was beginning to change. The war in Vietnam was soviets. Domestic protest was common place and pushed most other stories off the front page. A mid sixties spy show just found it difficult to adjust to the concerns of a radically different decade.

As mentioned this series was one of the most formula driven ever. Each episode is pretty much divided into the same setup, execution and conclusion. This provided the show with a large part of its charm but also greatly increased the degree of difficulty with regard to coming up with novel missions week after week. The creator of the series, Bruce Geller, had left the show by this point and as is frequently the case when new producers take over, things just aren’t the same and many diehard fans simply drift away. There was nothing special done in the last season that would conclude things but since the format was no conducive to long story arcs it was able to just come to an abrupt end. There would be an attempt to revive the series in the eighties that turned out to be a mistake but it does demonstrate the loyalty and just how strong the premise was.

One of the things that provided the greatest entertainment value is when the mission at hand required scamming the bad guys, usually to trick them into giving up some otherwise well guarded secret of vast importance. Season seven gets right down to it with an episode where the team convinced nuclear physicist hat he is 28 years in the future (the year 2000). They make him believe he has been in prison facing execution in two days. I still love the look on the mark’ face when he realizes he has been ‘punked’ in the most elaborate fashion possible. This season has the greatest variety of opponents; most likely due to a more diverse and less defined type of threat prevalent at the time Organized crime with the ‘Syndicate’; sort of the ultimate Mafia construct. This time out the IMF has to break up a major cocaine distrusting ring. And naturally they have only three days to pull it off. This angle practically takes over all the episodes this season which pulled it far away from the spy stories that made it so popular in the first place. In many ways the series was degraded into run of the mill action crime show and a lot of fans saw the cancellation as a mercy killing. Much of the cast had left for greener pastures, new producers re-tooled the focus and the series just ran out of stream. There are just enough good moments here to warrant completing your collection with this set, it is sad when greatness fades but at least they didn’t make fans suffer beyond season seven.

Posted 11/03/09