Martin Landau as Rollin Hand, master of disguise and voice master
Barbara Bain, as Cinnamon Carter, femme fatalle.
Gregg Morris as Barney Collier, head of Collier Electronics, master technician and inventor of many cool gadgets; who just happened to be African American.
Peter Lupus, as Willy Armitage, weight lifter and decoy.
With this cast the series ran for one year, Hill as Briggs, was complex and had many facets, but he was vulnerable, he had become known by some people, especially in the Mafia and an episode exploiting this weakness was aired.
Many of the first season episodes were tightly written, and had character driven stories. Special affects and gadgets were a back drop, but never pstaged the story or characters.
There were reasons, never clearly stated, why Hill left, or was asked to leave the series.
In 1967, Hill was replaced by Peter Graves, and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, began its' descent into being a lackluster series.
Where as Hill, was an everyman, and could pull off foreign nationals to a great degree, because of his looks, as much as voice. Graves looked like the stereo-type American and came across as an American trying to impersonate a foreign national.
Much of the complex writing started to vanish, episodes began to be two part, a problem, that any good series avoids, because two part episodes usually indicate that a script was not revised properly and poorly executed.
Dialogue began to be played down and more and more MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, became special affects driven, where at least half an episode was nothing but effects.
In 1969 the decision was made to replace Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. Landau was replaced by Leonard Nimoy, who was given nothing really to do, except replace Landau, he had no personality or depth.
Bain was replaced by numerous actresses who ended up with recycled scripts written for Bain, and in many cases the actress was merely mirroring Bain.
By 1973 The series had run its course, and went off the air.
What ruined the series, was the fact that network executives and studio executives kept messing with what had started as a strong complex series, with diverse characters, and truly interesting plot elements.
If you want to see the series at its' peak, watch the first year, then stop.
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| Original Cast Barbara Bain, Steven Hill and Martin Landau |
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| Cast 3 Peter Graves, Leonard Nimoy, Peter Lupus, and Gregg Morris |
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| Loenard Nimoy as Paris. |
