Talk:Mission: Impossible (1966 TV series)

message: Is the correct name "Mission Impossible" or "Mission: Impossible"?
The John Woo page lists "mission: Impossible II" but I'm fairly sure it was a "2" not a "II". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tarquin (talk • contribs) 08:20, 23 May 2002 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Purists may grumble, but the films were definitely huge successes. Sadly that success has yet to translate into a DVD release of the original series. I agree the movies should be kept separate, much as the film version of The Avengers is listed separate from the TV series version. 23skidoo 04:39, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I think a disambiguation page is the way to go. --Commander Keane 09:39, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought that the first movie basically blew, perhaps mostly because we know that Mr. Phelps would never betray his country or the IMF (okay, maybe Jon Voight would, but Peter Graves' Phelps wouldn't — the last time that Peter Graves betrayed his country was in Stalag 13, and it turned out that he wasn't an American traitor but just a German spy in that instance).  But hearing the soundtrack and the original theme song on a good theater Dolby system was almost worth the price of admission. Rlquall 02:06, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I was more against the idea of the writers abandoning the team concept that defined the series. Yes, there is still a team involved here, including characters who later appeared in MI-2, but for all intents, this film became the Tom Cruise Show and that's not what M:I is all about. It was never the Barbara Bain Show or the Peter Lupus Show, after all! 23skidoo 21:05, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Welcome to Hollywood. That's what you get when you pay somebody US$20M to be in a film: a need for the actor to be in damn near every shot...  Trekphiler 17:22, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: MI is suppose to be about the team. Hollywood ruins everything. They turned it into a series of generic action-hero movies. Jigen III 12:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Besides that, M:I is supposed to be about the *plan.*  The missions were not "impossible, unless you could pull off a lot of amazing physical stunts." M:I was never an "action" series at all. How many stunts or "action scenes" were involved in "The Mind of Stefan Miklos" or "The Council" or "Submarine"?  At the end of an M:I episode or movie I want to see the bad guys realize with increasing horror just how thoroughly they've been faked out, not counting their dead; and I want to be marveling at the team's ingenuity, execution of the plan, and ability to cope with setbacks, not at the amazing stunts and  "non-stop action."  Ptui!  Jeh 12:51, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was so horrified by the treatmant of Phelps in the first film I vowed to never watch it again, or see any sequel.  I've kept that vow. Jclinard 10:28, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Is that the same Barbara Anderson of "Ironside" (& a guest spot in "Conscience of the King" from "STTOS"?)? And, if I could source it, I'd mention "M:I" was produced by the same company that did "Mannix" & "STTOS": Desilu.  Trekphiler 17:22, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This was an ep of the 1980s revival. Someone had impersonated Phelps and framed him for a crime; the Voice On Tape felt this pretty much mandated Phelps's attention. Jeh 05:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

text: It'd be nice to have a complete list of these. Besides the above, "The Ransom" (gangster kidnaps daughter of Briggs's friend and demands Briggs spring gangster's cohort from jail before trial), and "The Town" (Phelps stumbles on a small town in which Will Geer is masterminding an assassination plot) are two more I remember.  "Homecoming" was the one where Phelps went home (guest starring Loretta Swit IIRC). I think they used some of the same sets as for Joe Mannix's homecoming episodes. ;) Jeh 05:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Trivia

message: Like many popular TV shows, "Mission: Impossible" has been spoofed:
*On The Avengers 1967 episode "Mission... Highly Improbable" Steed is shrunk to 6 inches tall!
*On Bewitched Endora leaves a message Balloon which will self destruct before Samanatha can finish reading the message!
*On Green Acres Lisa's Uncle Fydor claims he escaped from "Secret Police" by sking from Swiss Alps into Paris...In actual fact he is not fleeing "Secret Police" but the New York District Attorney's office for not paying alimony! Mr Haney tries to sell Mr Douglas a dog who can disguise himself as a chimpanzse  and Fydor flees the Douglas Farmhouse leaving a note that self destructs!
*On the Sandy Duncan Show, Sandy played an actress with a bit part on Mission: Impossible who flubs her lines and ruins the scene. Peter Graves guest starred as himself.
*In the Get Smart episode "Impossible Mission", Max gets his orders from a tape recorder which blows up a bus locker but not itself. The tape recording warns Smart that if he refuses to accept the mission he'll be fired. Then, in a parody of the "Dossier" scene, Smart rejects entertainer Tiny Tim and Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine.
*Mad Magazine did a parody called "Mission: Ridiculous" in which Phelps and the IMF team pull off another Impossible mission even though the tape recording blows up a movie theater soda fountain.
*In a Cracked magazine parody, the tape recorded message informs Phelps that he and his team are out of date and are all fired.
*In the Josie and the Pussycats episode "Never Mind a Mastermind," Melody is mistaken for a spy and is given a pair of wooden shoes which deliver a secret message and then self destruct.
*In the teaser of Inspector Gadget, the bumbling Gadget receives a message from the "Chief" which always self destructs the "Chief." 
*In a parody of both Mission: Impossible and Get Smart on the cartoon spoof The X's, spy Mr. X receives a shoe phone message which then self destructs.
*The secret message tape scene has been parodied in other shows.  One example is in the animated TV series The Houndcats where, after the Chief gives the Houndcats their instructions, he warns them that the "message will self-destruct in five seconds" at which point the team panics as it then desperately tries to get rid of the message before it explodes.
*In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Spy Buddies," SpongeBob and Patrick get an assignment through a recorded message in a Krabby Patty which self destructs.. Peter Graves guest starred as himself.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.49.133.43 (talk) 16:29, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Parodies

message: Does anybody know anything about the theme song?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.141.187.170 (talk) 18:36, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I imagine Lalo Schifrin does. :)  Seriously, if you want the original TV theme, as used in the series, along with many other recognizable tunes, look at the CD "The Best Of Mission: Impossible Then And Now - Music From The Original Television Soundtracks".  If you want the "music composed for the series" version, and the characters' theme pieces and so on, buy "Music From Mission: Impossible (1966-1973 Television Series)".  Both available through amazon.com .  Jeh 04:01, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I believe that the person playing the bass on the original theme is a female session musician called Carol Kaye. She also played bass on the Canadian soul pop hit When I Die by Motherlode.(Auto-maxx (talk) 14:29, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theme song 

message: Is an incorrect statement. Ethan Hunt was not given another assignment at the end of the second film. It will be erased.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Tebor (talk • contribs) 18:41, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, this article is supposed to be about the TV series. I don't consider this to be in any way notable anyhow, but even if it were I'd have moved it to the article on MI3. 23skidoo 19:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect Statement 

message: I seem to recall that there was an original M:I novel published in the late 1990s, but I can't remember if it was connected to the TV series or if it was a tie-in with the movie. Anyone remember this? 23skidoo 03:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There was a novelization of the first Tom Cruise movie. That's all I know about it, however. --Ted Watson (talk) 21:44, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: 1990s novel

message: The infobox should include information about the 1988-90 series as well, but I'm not sure how to add it without messing the formatting up. 23skidoo 16:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you have two infoboxes? Jeh 05:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

text: ... tested in the sandbox; yes, you can. Looks profoundly ugly, but it's better than not at all. Alternately the additional info might be folded into the existing one.  And speaking of ugly, it would be nice if there was some better way to refer to the 1980s revival besides writing "in the 1980s revival" all the time.  Jeh 05:16, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately, there really isn't any other commonly used terminology that I know of. Even White's book uses the term, since the 1980s revival/series wasn't subtitled "The Next Generation" or anything like that. I think it would be better to simply use one infobox for both series, since the 1980s version is explicity a continuation of the 1960s-70s series (just as the 2000s Doctor Who series is a continuation of the 1960s-80s series), and it is unlikely a separate article on the 1980s series would survive an AFD challenge since it's linked so strongly with this article (as opposed to the Cruise films which are independently notable). 23skidoo 23:30, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Infobox

message: Several seasons of the original series were released on LaserDisc. IMHO details of these should be added to the this section.--ukexpat 17:46, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point.  In the US, only six LDs were ever released afiak; I have them all. However there was a Japanese release of the first three or so seasons in boxed sets (two or more boxes per season). These show up on eBay once in a blue moon.  Probably a LaserDisc collector site -- if there are any left -- would be a reasonable source of details. Jeh 10:15, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Home Video 

message: Is the use of the initials IMF coincidence ? The other IMF, the International Monetary Fund, lend money to countries with a failing economy. LookerOn 08:30, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Other IMF ? 

message: Is it correct to say that in the dossier scene, the photographs of the characters to be chosen for each mission were in colour and those that weren't were in black and white? Alastairward 09:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Jeh 05:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Just to expand on Jeh's response, during the first season both Willy and Barney's photos were black-and-white, plus I recall a number of the "guest star" agents also had color photos. In fact I think for awhile only Landau and Bain had color photos and I'm willing to bet that was probably in their contract ... 23skidoo 00:21, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

text:  I can expand even further. I am partway through Season 2 on DVD having watched all of Season 1 in a short time frame. In Season 1, all of their packets in the dossier were "publicity" stills, rather than just a photo. Rollin was his "Man Of A Thousand Faces" theatre brochure photo (color), Cinnamon was her "Model Of The Year" magazine cover (color), Barney was a brochure for his electronics firm with a newspaper clipping photo (b&w), and Willy was an article about him setting a world weightlifting record (b&w). At the beginning of Season 2, Rollin and Cinnamon still had the same items in the dossier, but Barney and Willy now had color 8&10s. My guess is that was so everyone was in color. Partway through Season 2, Cinnamon's magazine cover was replaced with a different one in the dossier --BillFromDDTDigest (talk) 01:18, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dossier scene 

message: Regarding a content disagreement and reversions: I owned at the time a recorder of the same make and model as that frequently shown on the series. The tape movement on the show looked  the same as when my recorder was playing a tape forward at the normal speed, to the best of my recollection. I do not doubt that there were scenes of tape being rewound, especially when the smoke poured out to show the tape and recorder were "being destroyed." It is not worth mentioning that the sound was dubbed, since we would then need to mention that sound effects, sirens, explosions, etc are dubbed in movies and TV shows. Very little of the sound you hear was recorded as the film was shot in studio productions. Even the actors' voices are commonly dubbed in in the looping process. IMDB is not a WP:RS reliable source to prove a claim such as this, since it lacks signed articles and it lacks editorial supervision. Find a reliable source which makes the statement about the tape always being in fast rewing when it was supposed to be playing the message and I will certainly go along with the disputed claim about tape speed and direction. But remember that back at the time viewers knew exactly what a reel-to-reel tape recorder looked like when playing, and it would have been bizarre and surprising to show it playing the tape in a mode where playback was not generally done. The little reels would have turned briskly at 3 3/4 inches per second, and would not have been looked like the machine was  playing a message if whirring away in fast rewind. A variety of different audio players were used at various times. Again, this is not to say there was never such a scene. It just does not seem appropriate to add a statement that is both trivial and questionable. Edison 21:37, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I own a Craig 212 tape recorder, the most famous of the classic Mission Impossible tape machines. When in normal Play mode, the reels do spin that fast. But you dont have to own a Craig 212 to know that the machine is not shown in Rewind of Fast Forward mode. Queue up an episode with the machine "The Widow" from season 2 for example. Look at the control shift  - it's in the play position (down). And if those reels are really in FF mode - well, it would take a full half hour to respool a tape. I have no idea where the rumors of FF and Rewind started. Perhaps that really tiny tape recorder that shows up in several episodes? Ted 3000 21:16, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Tape speed/direction and dubbing

message: This section's a mess of unverified opinions.  (Take special note of the "Reaction" section, although "Change to theme song" needs some work too.)  I'm tempted to just strip the "Reaction" section out entirely, but maybe someone can still salvage it.--Roger McCoy/រ៉ាចើ (talk) 07:24, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Feature films 

message: *In one epsiode a flying saucer type spy camera-the strings are seen which control it in a air duct!
*In one epsiode supposedly taking place in a east European underground bunker-a clock on the wall was manufactored in "Elwood, Illinois"!—Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.53.145.36 (talk) 22:10, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In which connection one might also mention all of the supposedly European locations in which the southern Californian landscape is clearly identifiable.Lee M (talk) 17:55, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Plot Holes

message: The article states:
:As a side effect of this, cast turnover was never once explained on the show. None of the main characters ever died or were disavowed in the original series, but a character could disappear in an interval of one episode without mention or acknowledgment.
This is not true in at least one instance, when Casey (Lynda Day George) was missing from an episode (1972) and replaced by another female lead, Jim Phelps mentions that she was on assignment deep undercover in Europe and would not return for a while. — Loadmaster (talk) 22:53, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing characters 

message: Although we're allowed to cite sources like Amazon to confirm the release of products such as DVDs, reviews on Amazon are not acceptable under WP:RS so we need a better source for the claim that the Season 3 DVD used the edited versions of the episodes. (Also, remember releases may not be identical from country to country, so an edit in Region 1 may not necessarily be the same as the edit seen in Region 2). 23skidoo (talk) 19:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Edits to season 3 DVD

message: I altered the passage about the opening credits' montage of clips from the episode at hand because it was significantly off the mark. Most, if not all, of the Anderson-produced TV series opened that way and, as a check of its article indicates, Thunderbirds was produced before Mission, although not seen in the States until a couple of years after the spy show launched. The I Spy reference is exactly right—series co-lead Robert Culp lit a cigarette, then used the same light to touch off the fuse to a small, cliché-styled "bomb" which he would toss toward the camera; when the explosion effect cleared, his eyes would occupy the top half of the screen and clips from the episode about to be seen the lower half. They were not edited as tightly as M:I 's, however. I deleted the "production difficulties" statement as, along with the number of programs already doing such a montage, Mission 's was also used as the "next week's episode" trailer—they merely had to lay the fuse animation over it—and it was followed by a conventional sequence of series title & regular cast list. Couldn't have been all that problematical, but please note that I have not said so in the article. I forgot to say in my edit summary that I also fixed a couple of Wikilinks—T-birds went to a disambig. page and Galactica had a redirect; no big deal, just for the record. --Ted Watson (talk) 22:11, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clip montage revision 

message: In the sub-section "Fifth season": During the fifth season, White notes, the producers began to phase out international missions, deciding instead to task the IMF with battling organized crime figures.... White's actual statement is decidedly stronger: Beginning in year five...Phelps and company concentrated almost all their attention on a battle with organized crime.... However, his own episode-by-episode tour through the season demonstrates that this is simply not true. The fifth season has only three such operations. One is against the parent Mafia in Sicily (the tape message's "the Syndicate's Mediterranean branch" is ludicruous) and another is a personal mission to avenge the murder of Barney Collier's brother, a newspaperman. The third, with Robert Conrad guest starring as a mob hitman whose target the IMF must identify and protect while uncovering the killer's immediate supervisor, could have just as easily been about an foreign intelligence apparatus' assassin. The season looks different from previous episodes because more scenes were shot on real city streets, the countryside, beaches, airports, with much less work on the Paramount lot (according to new producer Bruce Lansbury, page 337 of White, albeit quoted in the overview for the following season, at which point he was on his way out). Therefore, the article should not say otherwise. --Ted Watson (talk) 21:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In going to get the page number (276) of my quote of White above (which I recommend you take a close look at), I noticed that he did finish the same paragraph by acknowledging Year 5 to be a gradual changeover period, with fourteen foreign and nine domestic adventures. This nevertheless does what his episode guide does even stronger, contradicts that statement of his that the syndicate would dominate the series from Year Five on. Indeed, as I said, one of the three organized crime stories of the season under discussion was set in Sicily, and therefore is not one of White's "nine domestic adventures." As for synthesis, understanding that 1+1=2, not 1, not 3, not 0, not 4, not anything in the world but 2 is not synthesis, but simply dealing with reality on its own terms. For a perfect example of synthesis, and my apology for it, see here. The episode guide is itself just as citable a source as White's season overviews, and more objective. --Ted Watson (talk) 22:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I may have the answer to this riddle. I think White actually made a typo which is causing all the confusion. The sixth season is when the focus on domestic adventures starts. In fact, the first four episodes in a row of the sixth season refer to targeting criminals "outside the reach of conventional law enforcement". --PoughkeepsieNative (talk) 23:24, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever this error by White might be, it's not a simple typo. He makes this statement in his overview for Year Five (the book goes through the series episode by episode, with overviews and wraps for each season), and there were significant changes of tone and format, including a reduction of foreign-set episodes, as of Year Five. I'd be willing to think that when he wrote his text for Year Five's overview, he misremembered the increase in Mob stories as happening there with all the other changes. However, note that in his overview for Season Six (specifically on page 337), he says, From now on, the IMF would stay home and fight "the Syndicate" in all but two segments (episodes 137, "Invasion" and 140, "Nerves"). The parenthetical aside is his, but those are the exceptions in that one season only, with actually another six in the seventh. Put the two together and add in the fact that his Year Seven overview makes no mention whatsoever of its non-Syndicate episodes, and it becomes difficult to think that White wasn't deliberately over-stating the Mob dominance of the program's later years, which was bad enough in reality. There was simply no justification or need for that, and he was presenting absolute, empirical evidence to the contrary right there in his book, anyway. More sensibly, the book wasn't the one-man-show it was presented as, but one person wrote the overviews, etc., and somebody else did the episode-by-episode analyses, with nobody catching contradictory statements between them. That would also explain another problem there, irrelevant to this discussion and the article (I don't think it's mentioned, off the top of my head here), so I won't go into it. --Tbrittreid (talk) 20:38, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Increased domestic syndicate? 

message: according to the grok about page, 
Q: What is the logic for redirects and when a page gets moved do the stats move?
A: It counts the title the page was accessed under, so redirects and moves will unfortunately split the statistics across two different statistics pages. 
:
Page                                             	Hits in Dec 2008
Mission Impossible [redirect, no punctuation]    	25,924
Mission Impossible I [redirect, no punctuation]  	7
Mission Impossible II [redirect, no punctuation] 	7,128
Mission Impossible III [redirect, no punctuation]	21,041
Mission: Impossible I [redirect]                 	6
Mission: Impossible 1 [redirect]                 	0
Mission: Impossible 2 [redirect]                 	768
Mission: Impossible 3 [redirect]                 	385
Mission Impossible 1 [redirect, no punctuation]  	247
Mission Impossible 2 [redirect, no punctuation]  	4,088
Mission Impossible 3 [redirect, no punctuation]  	8,897
Mission:Impossible [redirect, no space]          	2,464
Mission:Impossible I [redirect, no space]        	0
Mission:Impossible II [redirect, no space]       	16
Mission:Impossible III [redirect, no space]      	3
Combining all the punctuation variants
:
Page & its Variants                   	Total Hits in Dec 2008
Mission: Impossible [all variants]    	41,468
Mission: Impossible I [all variants]  	260
Mission: Impossible II [all variants] 	24,514
Mission: Impossible III [all variants]	65,110
Thus, the preference for Mission:Impossible III  is somewhat less overwhelming. 
This, however, does not say what thepe who typed in "Mission Impossible" were actually looking for. Intuitively, I think that those who were looking for the original film may have just typed it in, and the others used the II or III. But we can not distinguish those who typed something in the search br, fro those who followed a link, nor tell which link it was. I do not know if such statistics for Wikipedia are currently available. DGG (talk) 19:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Additional counts from that program

message: "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics". Didn't even think of redirects. So stats.grok.se gives counts by name used to access the article, which could be the name or redirect name typed in the search box, selected from a list of search results, or used as a link from another article. (There are some other mission impossible articles not in the list, but they do not show high counts).
I checked for all redirects, put it into Excel and came up with the following total (see User:Aymatth2/Impossible Stats for detailed counts):
:
Page & Redirects                     	Hits in Dec 2008	% of total
Mission: Impossible                  	39,332          	23.4%
Mission: Impossible (1988 TV series) 	2,464           	1.5%
Mission: Impossible (film)           	20,049          	11.9%
Mission: Impossible II               	31,642          	18.8%
Mission: Impossible III              	65,110          	38.7%
Mission: Impossible (NES)            	980             	0.6%
Mission: Impossible (1998 video game)	1,528           	0.9%
Mission: Impossible - Operation Surma	1,784           	1.1%
Mission: Impossible feature films    	5,175           	3.1%
The films still seem a lot more popular than the original TV series with 121,976 total page views, but that may not be entirely relevant. If someone types in "mission impossible 3" and goes direct to the article they want, it does not matter to them how the "mission impossible" article is structured.
What we can't see is how many people looked at several of the pages. I suspect the "mission: impossible" (and variants) number is a bit misleading, because people looking for one of the games or movies, particularly the first one, might well type "mission impossible" in the search box, see the original TV series, then navigate off to the movie they want.
I personally have little interest in Mission: Impossible in any of its forms, but considerable interest in using facts to assist in decisions. I see no reason why we should not do an experiment - I am happy to do it.  That is, make the moves as suggested, so that "mission impossible" becomes the disambiguation page, leave it for a week and check the result. It will be interesting will be to see the % changes. 
The more I think about what search terms people would use, what navigation patterns they would show if they got the "wrong" article, the more I suspect that the current structure is best. But it would be useful to do the experiment to confirm that. My prediction is, looking at percentages:
* Hits on the original TV show will go down a bit
* Hits on the first movie will go up a bit
* Hits on Mission: Impossible feature films will drop way down
* There will not be much change in the film II and film III percentages 
If the film II and film III percentages stay about the same, and the original TV show continues to get more hits than the first movie plus the games, the name change should be reversed. Makes sense? Sort of interesting in an obscure way. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:38, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Revised Counts for the Articles

message: Withdrawn Parsecboy (talk) 14:21, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with the approach above. It's actually a very interesting question that goes beyond Mission: Impossible. I would theorize that in the long run (say in another decade), the original TV series would once again be "the" Mission: Impossible and be the page that people go to most. However, the movie pages stand to be the more popular ones for a while. On the other hand, the original TV series invented the concept that the movies copied, so one could make the case that the original TV series should have the assumed top billing. My emotions aside, I think that the approach outlined above is a very good permanent approach. BillFromDDTDigest (talk) 17:37, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

text: *Original usage or cultural impact (which can be debated) should not be deciding points. Perhaps the Hilton hotel in Paris was once famous and many important events happened there, but today people who search for Paris Hilton are almost certainly not interested in the hotel. The term rightly points to the article on the celebrity by that name. The decision on where a search term leads should be based on what people are probably looking for. If one meaning dominates all others for a search term, they should be shown the article about that meaning with links to articles on other meanings, and/or to a disambiguation page, e.g. Rolling Stone. If there is no "dominant" meaning, they should be given a disambiguation page, e.g. OHS. The question is whether there is a dominant meaning for the search term "Mission Impossible", one article that most people will expect to find when they enter that term. I suspect that the statistics show there is. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  199.125.109.126 (talk) 17:57, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move (2009)

message: I wonder if a mention of the contributions of special effects master Jonnie Burke (imdb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0121737/ ) wouldn't be appropriate somewhere. His devices were key to the believability of many episodes. White's book mentions that at one point he built a remote manipulator device for a few hundred dollars; the real thing cost far more money and had less range of motion! Jeh (talk) 04:42, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Special effects 

message: I ran out of room in the edit summary, so I want to admit here that I did quite a lot beyond what I said there. Don't have time now to describe the additional work. Sorry. --Ted Watson (talk) 22:43, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits of 6/15 

message: As it turns out, "gas" utility covere really are labeled "gaz" in Poland; I'm in Warsaw this week and I spotted one ;) Jeh (talk) 18:20, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cold War Subtext and "Gellerese" 

message: The following was just added to the end of the first paragraph of the section "Dossier scene": "An error occurs in the second episode 'Memory', when Briggs tosses Rollin Hand's picture aside, though he was selected for the mission anyway." Not so. Hand becomes part of the team only once Dan is forced to change plans well along the way. In the first season Martin Landau was billed in the dossier scene (of the episodes in which he actually appeared) instead of the main opening credits because he was not yet officially a regular, so his photo had to be seen in that scene here for him to be billed. (Apparently actors' union regs prevented regulars from being among the discarded photos in episodes where they didn't play, which is a shame.) I could not get this explanation into an edit summary, so intend to link to here when I take it out. --Tbrittreid (talk) 22:54, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rollin in "Memory" 

message: Are Woodfield and Balter the subject of relied?  If yes, there should be a second dash before relied to balance the first; if no, what's missing? —Tamfang (talk) 17:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: William Read Woodfield and Allan Balter served as story consultants for the first two seasons and became producers of the third season—but did not last long, dismissed for believing that, in their new capacity, executive producer Geller had no authority over them.White, p. 163  According to White, Woodfield and Balter relied heavily on The Big Con ....
—Tamfang (talk) 17:10, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  a hole in the text? 

message: I did not see on the page an explanation of who they worked for.  It was not the CIA or FBI because each of these organizations has a "Director" and the tape always says "the Secretary" will deny, etc.  It also could not be the Dept. of Justice otherwise, because the DOJ has an Attorney General, who is refered to as "General Holder" or "General Ashcroft," etc.  That leaves the Department of State, the Department of Defense, or the Department of Energy.  The Department of Energy concens itself only with nuclear topcis, like Los Alamos, and State has no Impossible Missions capabilities, so it must have been the Department of Defense and the Secretary was the Secretary of Defense.  Where should this important topic be added to the main page?  It is one of the most fundamental questions about the show that Wikipedians would be concerned with. 173.79.12.166 (talk) 12:51, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Without a citation to a relaible source stating such it's original research. And as I understand it, it was left intentionally vague by the series creator. oknazevad (talk) 18:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It was never stated. The "Secretary" would be a Secretary of State. The Cruise movies always imply they are a part of the CIA, and in fact the first film was allowed to film in an actual CIA hallway. May have walked that particular hallway on a visit. 143.232.210.38 (talk) 18:21, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  For whom did the Impossible Missions Force work? 

message: As noted in White's book and on Peter Graves's wikipedia page, two pilots films were made with the same title "Call to Danger". Who removed them? They were completely in line with this page's chronology. 143.232.210.38 (talk) 18:27, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I had this sort of thing happen to me with the wikipedia so many times and it was usually clueless moderators who seemed intent on wrecking my articles so I gave up. They can do as they will.(130.255.18.180 (talk) 17:47, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  pilot films (removed) 

message: I'm just watching a documentary on Space 1999 and Gerry Anderson wanted Martin Landau and Barbara Bain as lead characters but nearly never got them as they kept demanding more and more and more money to appear in his series (though they had nothing else on at the time). It was touch and go but in the end, Lew Grade gave in to their demands. I wonder if something like this happened here where they wanted too much money so their contracts were not renewed after season 3? (130.255.18.180 (talk) 17:47, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Leaving the show

message: Hey, does anyone know the track played at the end of "Time Bomb" (when the bomb is disarmed while the clock is shown several times)? I think I heard it quite often when watching the show, but it doesn't appear on the soundtrack CDs I know.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.14.198.13 (talk) 20:47, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Music

message: The Mission: Impossible (film series) is proposed to be converted to a franchise article, see talk: Mission: Impossible (film series) for the discussion -- 70.51.203.69 (talk) 02:17, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It appears that the consensus has been to keep the film series article as is and create a separate franchise article. I support this completely. Charles Essie (talk) 16:35, 31 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: "Mission: Impossible"

message: adding   tag to the claim that the music from the theme song spells out MI in Morse Code. The claim sounds dubious, I couldn't find any reference to it. The "MI" in Morse is
 - - . .  while posts of a [sheet-music notation] suggests a beat of  - . - - .—Preceding unsigned comment added by Otheus (talk • contribs) 07:52, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The claim for the connection to Morse Code would be based on the instrumental "stabs" (which actually does consist of two dashes and two dots)and the bass line, not the 5/4 "beat" of the piece itself. As far as reference for the claim, I had no success in finding a source.THX1136 (talk) 21:40, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Morse Code 

message: I sure wish someone could find photos (with proper rights) for each season, especially season 2/3, like these photos.  • Sbmeirow • Talk • 08:54, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: These are color and black-and-white prints of the same photograph and I was really astonished by how utterly differently they strike the viewer. Racing Forward (talk) 13:15, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cast photos for each season 

message: Should it be noted in the article that the show displayed a large number of different uniforms? I was excited about the multiple types of uniforms the IMF-team encountered during their missions, later I noticed that many resembled more or less uniforms of the Third Reich and also "eastern" uniforms. --Exodianecross (talk) 01:42, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Nkt really needed. It's pretty trivial for a tv series to use stock costume pieces to represent fictional military uniforms. Not particularly notable. oknazevad (talk) 02:52, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand, but I found it very interesting. Sure, the base for many uniforms were the SS or the Wehrmacht, but the changes, to make them more distinctive, were remarkable! --Exodianecross (talk) 10:52, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uniform-creations 

message: We seem to be missing a franchise article to cover all the M:I properties. Mission: Impossible (franchise) should eb written to account for the missing coverage, so that the fictional universe of all the TV shows, videogames, novels, and films can be interrelated. A starting point can be the Mission: Impossible (disambiguation) page -- 70.51.200.162 (talk) 05:11, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Too bad Peter Graves turned down his original role in the first Tom Cruise movie version, which would have more or less cancelled out the point of the television series from the second season forward in retrospect, since his character became a rogue villain in the movie. Racing Forward (talk) 13:20, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Franchise?

message: The paragraph in the article noting Geller's edict against character development in the series finally solves the mystery of why I could never really get into the show, something I'd wondered about for over half a century, albeit from a distance. Racing Forward (talk) 13:12, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Geller's Anti-Character Development Edict

message: The article does not mention why the series was cancelled, and after only 4 seasons.  Strange for such a successful TV show.  Bad ratings??? (I didn't think it had bad ratings).  Too expensive?  Disagreements between studio, producer, directors, actors, etc????  Thanks in advance to anybody who knows.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Betathetapi454 (talk • contribs) 18:15, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: According to an article in the Pittsburgh Press (18 Apr 1973: p 66), Paramount could make more money selling it in syndication than making new episodes. (BTW, there were 7 seasons in its original run, not 4.) Plummer (talk) 19:18, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why was the Mission Impossible series cancelled?