I didn't think I'd get much out of Mission: Impossible 7 - The Final TV Season (1972-73) yet I found myself enjoying it a whole lot more than I thought I would. Despite a strong sense of déjà vu throughout, some outrageously unbelievable plot points, and a general air of marking time, I personally found this season a bit better overall than the fourth season, which is the last season this reviewer looked at, having skipped seasons five and six entirely.

By Mission: Impossible's seventh season, the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) consisted of leader Jim Phelps (Graves), electronics genius Barney Collier (Morris, this season sporting a mustache in some episodes), and muscle Willy Armitage (Lupus). Nimoy's Rollin Hand-wannabe, "The Great Paris," departed after the end of season five and no further attempts were made to replicate Martin Landau's original character. When Landau's real-life wife, Barbara Bain, left the show the same year as her husband, the producers had trouble replacing the female member of the team. In season four there was no official replacement at all, but a series of guest actresses all but auditioning for the slot. Dana Lambert (Lesley Ann Warren) became a regular in season five, but she in turn was replaced by actress Lynda Day George as Casey for the rest of Mission's seven-season run.

If that wasn't confusing enough, between the sixth and seventh season George announced she was pregnant, and is on maternity leave for a good chunk of Mission's final year. In some episodes her slot is taken over by another IMF recruit, Mimi Davis (Barbara Anderson, who had only recently departed Ironside, playing a similar part here, further confusing things), though like season four various women pinch-hit for the new mother. In other episodes Casey appears in a few scenes at the beginning and/or the end, her very-pregnant status discreetly hidden behind a lampshade, a puffy dress, or sofa pillows. Then for the rest of the show Casey works "undercover," hidden behind an elaborate mask or make-up - i.e., her part played by another actress.

This attempt to make Casey the center of episodes with actresses other than Lynda Day George stretches suspension of disbelief way, WAY past the breaking point. For instance, in the season-opener, "Speed" - filmed on location in San Francisco - Casey (played in most of this episode by Jenny Sullivan) masquerades as Margaret Hibbing (also Sullivan), the troubled, drug-addicted daughter of a mobster (Claude Akins). With little more than an elaborate Don Post-style rubber mask over her own features, and often only a few feet away from the gangleader-father, the bad guys never suspect Casey-as-Margaret. Even Margaret's drug-dealing boyfriend, who kisses and touches the fake rubber face doesn't catch on right away. To paraphrase writer pal Bill Warren, believability doesn't go out the window - it never enters the room.

Similarly outrageous is "Two Thousand," with the IMF tasked with getting rogue nuclear physicist Joseph Collins (Vic Morrow) into revealing the whereabouts of 50 kilograms of stolen plutonium. Phelps and his team come up with a wild scheme to make Collins believe he's suddenly recovered from a 27-year-long state of shock after the onset of World War III, that the year is 2000, and that he's now a 65-year-old man scheduled to be put to death in this dystopian future.

To achieve this the IMF, masquerading as police detectives, arrest Collins and sedate him when the "nuclear missiles" strike (a rear-screen special effect projected just outside a false window). They then apply old man makeup that, we're told, will melt after 12 hours. It's a big stretch assuming Collins would buy the E-ticket wizardry faking the nuclear holocaust and elaborate post-apocalyptic future and reveal the plutonium's location exactly as planned, but that he wouldn't realize that he's wearing rubbery old man makeup is absurd.

The "been there-done that" feeling permeating "Two Thousand" and several other episodes is not unwarranted. The one's a remake of a first season show called "Operation: Rogosh" (with Fritz Weaver in Morrow's part). In that more acceptable show only three years have supposedly passed, and there's no nuclear holocaust, but other particulars are almost identical, such as Barney masquerading as a prison inmate with a Caribbean accent. For its last season Mission: Impossible essentially remade several episodes from the Steven Hill first year, probably because those shows were out of circulation and not widely seen in the early-'70s. Additionally, writer Stephen Kandel was hired to fix a backlog of heretofore-unusable scripts, unproduced stories with budgetary, structure or characterization problems. By this time it was simply less expensive to find a way to make those shows work than commission new ones. (This was apparently quite common in long-running series. The Twilight Zone also did this in its last year.)

Despite all the recycling and lack of believability, shows like "Two Thousand" are enormously fun anyway, and the outrageousness is actually part of the fun. The plot to make Collins reveal the location of the nuclear material is on the scale of an epic, multi-million dollar motion picture, involving not just the tight-knit IMF regulars, but also dozens of other players in on the gag, from speaking supporting parts to extras playing post-apocalyptic world soldiers, and what must have been massive cooperation from local government authorities. This episode is rife with high-tech gadgetry and elaborate sets; someone ingeniously thought to use the half-destroyed remains of a large hospital felled in the 1971 Sylmar Earthquake north of Los Angeles. No doubt Dick Cheney would've argued water-boarding as a cheaper, more expedient alternative.

(The many co-conspirators is a significant change from earlier seasons, where taped messages made clear the IMF was on their own, and that the government would disavow their existence. Also breaking away from earlier seasons, seventh season shows dispense with the "dossier scene" entirely, replacing it with openers showing the villains and their operations prior to Phelps learning about them in the "tape scene." Many seventh season shows also toss in a wild card element, generally unrelated outside forces that threaten to expose the IMF team.)

Other fun shows include "Break," which is basically The Hustler, Mission: Impossible-style, with expert pool-shooter Phelps aided by Barney's computer controlled bank shots. (This episode also introduces the Mimi Davis character to good effect.)

At its best, even these last gasp episodes approach the greatest of the series when everything was fresh and frequently startling. "Kidnap," a welcome atypical episode directed by Peter Graves, has Phelps kidnapped in the opening reel by disgraced Syndicate chief Andrew Metzger (John Ireland, reprising a character he played in "Casino," from season six), who in turn blackmails the IMF to break into a bank deposit box. There's no tape scene, just Barney, Casey, and Willie under the gun to free their pal. The episode is a good showcase for doll-faced George, guest star Geoffrey Lewis has fun as Metzger's sadistic gunsel, Graves's direction is surprisingly good and, best of all, the show is complex yet also believable, a rarity by this point.

Guest stars this season - a surprisingly good lot, considering - include David White, Marvin Miller, Harry Lauter, Joanna Cassidy, Peter Mark Richman, Robert Middleton, H.M. Wynant, Robert Goulet, Pippa Scott, Dewey Martin, Robert Conrad, Francine York, Robert Mandan, Robert Webber, Van Williams, Lana Wood, Lloyd Bochner, Barbara McNair, Pernell Roberts, Charles McGraw, Thalmus Rasulala, Olan Soule, Oscar Beregi, Alex Cord, Marilyn Mason (as another IMF pinch-hitter), Peter Breck, Arthur Franz, Ray Walston, Michael Conrad, Ross Elliott, William Shatner, Stephen McNally, Milton Selzer, Gregory Sierra, Charles Napier, Gary Lockwood, Jason Evers, Elizabeth Ashley (also subbing for George), George O'Hanlon, Dane Clark, Robert Reed, Leonard Stone, John Vernon, David Brian, William Smith, Rhodes Reason, Douglas Henderson, Murray Hamilton, Madlyn Rhue, Donnelly Rhodes, Charles Drake, Roddy McDowall, John Larch, Val Avery, Richard Devon, Joseph Ruskin, George Maharis, Cameron Mitchell, Kim Hunter, Ed Nelson, Michael Ansara, Barry Atwater, William Windom, Joe Maross, Dean Stockwell, Scott Brady, and Frank Maxwell.

Video & Audio

Like the show's scripts, visually I found the transfers on Mission: Impossible 7 - The Final TV Season superior to the middle seasons, with a renewed brightness and clarity that marked the earliest years and which return almost to full flower here. The expanded use of bright, outdoor location shooting helps, but there really does seem to have been an infusion of fresh blood in the direction, photography, and editing of many of the shows I sampled. The full-frame episodes - 22 shows spread over six single-sided DVDs - are sharp with virtually no sign of age-related wear or damage. Episodes do not appear to have replaced music and are not time-compressed. The shows are offered in their original mono, but the audio defaults to a strong Dolby Digital 5.1 mix for the opening theme. A Spanish mono track is included, along with optional English, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles. There are no Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Mission: Impossible 7 - The Final TV Season doesn't exactly end the series with a bang, but personally I found these shows more entertaining than the middle-period, post-Landau/Bain episodes, despite their frequent lack of believability and partly because of their occasional outrageousness. Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV's latest audio commentary, part of AnimEigo's forthcoming Tora-san DVD boxed set, is available for pre-order, while his latest book, Japanese Cinema, is in bookstores now.