# Mission Impossible



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

I just stumbled upon the original Mission Impossible tv series while channel surfing. I've been trying to catch reruns of this show forever. If anybody in the Philadelphia area is interested, it's on channel 69 or whatever that translates to your cable or satellite channel lineup. It looks like it runs one episode per day and it's early in season one. There's some guy named Dan Briggs in the Jim Phelps role. I don't remember him at all. My guide data doesn't give the episode names.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

cheesesteak said:


> I just stumbled upon the original Mission Impossible tv series while channel surfing. I've been trying to catch reruns of this show forever. If anybody in the Philadelphia area is interested, it's on channel 69 or whatever that translates to your cable or satellite channel lineup. It looks like it runs one episode per day and it's early in season one. There's some guy named Dan Briggs in the Jim Phelps role. I don't remember him at all. My guide data doesn't give the episode names.


Dan Briggs gets replaced by Jim Phelps (with no explanation) at the beginning of the second season.


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## terpfan1980 (Jan 28, 2002)

The guy that played Dan Briggs later went on to a very long role in Law & Order :up:


Nice to see another fan of the series though. It was always a favorite of mine, and one that I saw many episodes (repeated) of when I was younger. A few years ago one of the Retro TV network type digital sub-channels aired the series from start to finish and I caught most of the episodes. A cable channel that FiOS offers me had the series later, and still another Retro TV network got them after that. Over time I think I caught all of the episodes and whet my appetite enough that I didn't feel the need to buy the series on DVD, though I was glad it was eventually released on DVD.

The other show from that era that I really wanted to catch as much as possible was The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I caught an Amazon Goldbox special on that boxed set (complete series) a few months back and have watched some of the episodes of it. Incredibly cheesey, but still a lot of fun to watch with some cross overs between both series (lots of studio actors that had to work in whatever the studios sent them to that day...)


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## caslu (Jun 24, 2003)

I probably shouldn't admit this but I'm the (proud?) owner of the entire original series, all the movies and even a burned copy (from VHS) of the 80's sequel series. I guess you could call me a M:I fan


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## retrodog (Feb 7, 2002)

caslu said:


> I probably shouldn't admit this but I'm the (proud?) owner of the entire original series, all the movies and even a burned copy (from VHS) of the 80's sequel series. I guess you could call me a M:I fan


Or we could say that you had a problem with IMF UMF.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

kaszeta said:


> Dan Briggs gets replaced by Jim Phelps (with no explanation) at the beginning of the second season.





terpfan1980 said:


> The guy that played Dan Briggs later went on to a very long role in Law & Order :up:
> ...


He quit Mission: Impossible because he's a devout Jew and refused to work on the Sabbath. It took a long time for him to get work gain.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

A local channel here also ran all the Mission Impossible episodes a while back. They are not being show currently, but I don't care because I recorded ALL of them to DVD. I was really surprised that the local channel ran them without the cuts that had appeared in so many other venues that used to run them. This channel also showed all of The Wild Wild West, which I liked at least as much as M:I. I could not find a source for UNCLE, so I broke down and bought the whole set. Season 1 was very good, and season 3 was also pretty good. What they did to the show in season 2 was just shy or criminal!

Mission was defeinitely one of my favorites. I loved how they used to destroy small tape recorders and stuff. One of the Briggs episodes had him pull a record out of a sleeve, and it was between two sheets of "sticky paper" that he had to peel off the record surface. One time Cinnamon got the opening message.

It never was explicitly stated in the show, but the "...secretary (of state?) will disavow any knowledge of your actions," is in today's language, "plausable denyability."

Wally Cox was in the pilot! The comedian, Wally Cox, of Hollywood Squares and Mr. Peepers fame.


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## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

I don't know if they still do, but there's a rather obscure cable channel called American Life Network that carried this. (Edit: looks like as of the fall television season, they've dropped the show)

I still wish that someone would re-run the 1980's revival of the show.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

I wound up getting burned dvd copies of the 88 revival off some online auction site...probably not legal, but about the only way you can get them.

One of the Chicago stations we used to get would broadcast the originals, one a week. I kept a large number of them. One thing that I found interesting was that, during the first season (the Dan Briggs year), the entire team seemed to focus on acting and stage production. That disappeared later.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Wikipedia helped me determine that the episode I watched yesterday was S01E20. 170 more episodes to go! At least they're only showing one episode per day. When I watched Maverick, it was on twice per day. Actually it was three times per day but the third hour was out of sequence with the earlier two hour block.


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## RonDawg (Jan 12, 2006)

netringer said:


> He quit Mission: Impossible because he's a devout Jew and refused to work on the Sabbath.


According to Wikipedia (quoting from a book about the series), while he did refuse to work on the Sabbath, and even walked out in the middle of filming that had gotten dangerously close to sundown Friday, the straw that broke the camel's back was his refusal to do a scene that AFAIK wouldn't have interfered with his religious beliefs.

It was supposedly where he was to walk across some rafters (my guess is he was in the midst of chasing a bad guy) and perhaps he thought it was too dangerous.

For the remainder of the season his roles were cut way back and he wasn't invited back for Season 2.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

RonDawg said:


> According to Wikipedia (quoting from a book about the series), while he did refuse to work on the Sabbath, and even walked out in the middle of filming that had gotten dangerously close to sundown Friday, the straw that broke the camel's back was his refusal to do a scene that AFAIK wouldn't have interfered with his religious beliefs.
> 
> It was supposedly where he was to walk across some rafters (my guess is he was in the midst of chasing a bad guy) and perhaps he thought it was too dangerous.
> 
> For the remainder of the season his roles were cut way back and he wasn't invited back for Season 2.


His refusal to work the Sabbath conflicted with production days and this explains why his participation dropped as the First season progressed.

In fact, he was suspended for one episode (Action! which is why Cinnamon listened to the tape and Rollin ran the mission). (Although one source claims that he was suspended for not climbing into the rafters for that episode which you mention.)

He then left MI (or was not asked to return) and basically didn't work as an actor for 10 years. Most of his scenes post suspension were filmed in advance and he was long gone by the end of the production of Season 1.

Watching the early episodes (say seasons 1-4) though, I think the show still holds up.
The technology is dated in places but the writing was fairly clever.

I think the show starts going downhill with the focus taken off of foreign adversaries and redirected to drug dealers and mobsters or syndicates as they were referred to then.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

JYoung said:


> I think the show starts going downhill with the focus taken off of foreign adversaries and redirected to drug dealers and mobsters or syndicates as they were referred to then.


There was one episode, I think in season 5, where they were trying to convince a bad guy that he had been either asleep or frozen for 30 years. When the guy woke up in the "Future" hospital room, there was a giant flat panel TV in the room.

Sometimes the tech was way off, but they nailed that one pretty well.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

doom1701 said:


> There was one episode, I think in season 5, where they were trying to convince a bad guy that he had been either asleep or frozen for 30 years. When the guy woke up in the "Future" hospital room, there was a giant flat panel TV in the room.
> 
> Sometimes the tech was way off, but they nailed that one pretty well.


To quote one pundit on a Consumer Electronics Show keynote panel circa 1988, "The flat TV you can hang on a wall has been ten years away for thirty years." I think I saw an enormous, even now, 16x9 HDTV in the Panasonic - No! Japan! - technology pavilion around 1990.


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## TIVOSciolist (Oct 13, 2003)

One of the best episodes was when the IMF team melted the gold bars inside the bad guy's vault.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

JYoung said:


> ...I think the show starts going downhill with the focus taken off of foreign adversaries and redirected to drug dealers and mobsters or syndicates as they were referred to then.


:up:
Even when I was watching the show when it was originally broadcast, I thought that change of direction was a bad move. I never really cared for it as much after that. Even I was not impressed with episodes like the Shatner one where they convinced him he had gone back in time, and the one where they convinced some guy that space aliens had come to help him in. How stupid were these bad guys anyway?


TIVOSciolist said:


> One of the best episodes was when the IMF team melted the gold bars inside the bad guy's vault.


:up: I LOVED that episode!

I also really liked the one where they spring a guy from prison and made him give them the classified info he had, by putting him on a fake submarine and convincing him that it was going down and they all were going to die.

The Mind of Stefan Miklos is a classic. It was so complex most people never did get it, or how/why it worked. That one in particular suffers when part of it is cut for more commercial time.


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## caslu (Jun 24, 2003)

Church AV Guy said:


> :up:
> 
> I also really liked the one where they spring a guy from prison and made him give them the classified info he had, by putting him on a fake submarine and convincing him that it was going down and they all were going to die.
> 
> The Mind of Stefan Miklos is a classic. It was so complex most people never did get it, or how/why it worked. That one in particular suffers when part of it is cut for more commercial time.


Excellent episodes! The submarine one was even remade from the 80's version.


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## Doggie Bear (Jan 16, 2008)

doom1701 said:


> There was one episode, I think in season 5, where they were trying to convince a bad guy that he had been either asleep or frozen for 30 years. When the guy woke up in the "Future" hospital room, there was a giant flat panel TV in the room.
> 
> Sometimes the tech was way off, but they nailed that one pretty well.


That wasn't just any ordinary "bad guy"! He was played by *William Shatner*. That alone made that episode awesome.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

doom1701 said:


> There was one episode, I think in season 5, where they were trying to convince a bad guy that he had been either asleep or frozen for 30 years. When the guy woke up in the "Future" hospital room, there was a giant flat panel TV in the room.
> 
> Sometimes the tech was way off, but they nailed that one pretty well.


Season 3, The Freeze.

Rollin played one of the doctors.



Doggie Bear said:


> That wasn't just any ordinary "bad guy"! He was played by *William Shatner*. That alone made that episode awesome.


Except it was Donnelly Rhodes, who later played Doc Cottle on the Moore Battlestar Galactica.


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## Doggie Bear (Jan 16, 2008)

JYoung said:


> Season 3, The Freeze.
> 
> Rollin played one of the doctors.
> 
> Except it was Donnelly Rhodes, who later played Doc Cottle on the Moore Battlestar Galactica.


Hmm, they must have repeated the basic plot, because this is the episode I was thinking of.

EDIT: Never mind. . . . The Shatner episode was actually the opposite plot, of making the sting target think that it was 30 years earlier, not 30 years in the future. Oh well, it's all fake time travel, eh?


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## RonDawg (Jan 12, 2006)

JYoung said:


> His refusal to work the Sabbath conflicted with production days and this explains why his participation dropped as the First season progressed.


Again while it didn't help score points with the producers, the Sabbath issue was not the final straw, it was his refusal to do a scene as per the script that put him on that suspension. His roles were then cut back after that.

Steven Hill also made it quite clear to the producers at the very beginning that he would NOT work on the Sabbath. It's not like he suddenly walked out with absolutely no warning beforehand.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

RonDawg said:


> Again while it didn't help score points with the producers, the Sabbath issue was not the final straw, it was his refusal to do a scene as per the script that put him on that suspension. His roles were then cut back after that.


I don't totally agree that his role wasn't cut before. If you watch the First season in order, you can see that Briggs' participation in the missions gets smaller until the Action! suspension.
I'm guessing that the producers were working around Hill's Sabbath absences but yeah, it was pissing them off.



RonDawg said:


> Steven Hill also made it quite clear to the producers at the very beginning that he would NOT work on the Sabbath. It's not like he suddenly walked out with absolutely no warning beforehand.


Never said or implied that he did.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Hey! What's with all the spoilers? Just kidding.  

I watched the show when I was a kid. I remember the characters but none of the episodes. Maybe the episodes will come back to me as I watch them.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

LoadStar said:


> I don't know if they still do, but there's a rather obscure cable channel called American Life Network that carried this. (Edit: looks like as of the fall television season, they've dropped the show)
> 
> I still wish that someone would re-run the 1980's revival of the show.


Load, I think you and I are TV Siamese twins separated at birth, so I know this will most likely excite you:

Mission:Impossible 1988 TV Season


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## DougF (Mar 18, 2003)

doom1701 said:


> Load, I think you and I are TV Siamese twins separated at birth, so I know this will most likely excite you:
> 
> Mission:Impossible 1988 TV Season


That's cool. I don't know if I'd buy it, but I'd certainly take another look if it showed up on Netflix. I used to watch TNG and this back-to-back on Saturday nights during that time.

Speaking of Netflix, the original M:I is available for Watch Instantly.

http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Mission_Impossible/70157337?trkid=2361637


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

DougF said:


> That's cool. I don't know if I'd buy it, but I'd certainly take another look if it showed up on Netflix. I used to watch TNG and this back-to-back on Saturday nights during that time.
> 
> Speaking of Netflix, the original M:I is available for Watch Instantly.
> 
> http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Mission_Impossible/70157337?trkid=2361637


Yet again, Netflix convinces me to keep my account for a couple more months...


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## LoadStar (Jul 24, 2001)

doom1701 said:


> Load, I think you and I are TV Siamese twins separated at birth, so I know this will most likely excite you:
> 
> Mission:Impossible 1988 TV Season





DougF said:


> That's cool. I don't know if I'd buy it, but I'd certainly take another look if it showed up on Netflix.


I think I'm with Doug... maybe if I can catch it at a cheap enough price, I might buy it.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

I have fond memories of the 1988 version. As I recall, it was during the writer's strike and they could produce new episodes of M:I from old scripts with minimal rewrites due to contractual obligations.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

I'll be buying it, probably as a late birthday present to myself. I remember the 88-89 series very fondly. It was my first real taste of that type of TV show--I love stories that have plans within plans, and good Mission:Impossible was always great at that.

Right now I've got some really crappy VHS to DVD copies of the series that I just haven't been able to bring myself to watch. The translation was so bad that the video is almost unbearable and the sound is so quiet you have to crank the volume. I'm looking forward to seeing these in a cleaner format.


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## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

We recently got a station called "MeTV" that is showing a lot of old 60's and 70's shows, including the original MI. One of my fav's as a kid, I've been watching quite a few of them lately. They're a lot of fun in a nostalgic way.

Currently watching the seasons with Lesley Ann Warren. What a beauty! Also a very good actress, even back then. She does some really subtle character-acting as she plays her various roles in each mission.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

How old was Lesley Ann Warren when those were made? What I really want to see are the first season episodes, before Graves when Hill was Biggs, or Briggs. Those were never in the rerun cycles where I was. They only showed the ones with Graves.

I just got MeTV also, and am enjoying, along with Mission Impossible, The Wild Wild West, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and The Twilight Zone. Nostalgia!


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## scandia101 (Oct 20, 2007)

Church AV Guy said:


> How old was Lesley Ann Warren when those were made?


She was 24


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## scooterboy (Mar 27, 2001)

My mother tells me that I was sooo in love with Lesley Ann Warren when I watched her play Cinderella on TV. It was 1965 - I was 3 years old.


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## oscarfish (Mar 2, 2009)

I think the MeTV MIs in my area just started paying the last season. So, maybe in 3 or 4 weeks they will start back at the beginning. When they started the MIs several months ago, they did start with the pre-Phelps season 1.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

Church AV Guy said:


> How old was Lesley Ann Warren when those were made? What I really want to see are the first season episodes, before Graves when Hill was Biggs, or Briggs. Those were never in the rerun cycles where I was. They only showed the ones with Graves.


The original series is still on Netflix, if you have that.

I remember that I first started watching it on MeTV with the Briggs year--on the first episode that I saw ("The Psychic", which was apparently the last ep of Season 1), I kept thinking "When is Jim Phelps going to show up?"


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Church AV Guy said:


> I just got MeTV also, and am enjoying, along with Mission Impossible, The Wild Wild West, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and The Twilight Zone. Nostalgia!


Ooh! The Wild Wild West is on? I was looking for another old western to watch now that I'm close to having watched all of the Have Gun Will Travel eps.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

cheesesteak said:


> Ooh! The Wild Wild West is on? I was looking for another old western to watch now that I'm close to having watched all of the Have Gun Will Travel eps.


Yes, it's on. I have been recording it for a while now. I LOVE Gordon's disguises! James can beat any three or four guys, UNLESS the plot demands it.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

BTW, you guys realize the syndicated shows are hacked to bits, right? Those shows are old enough that you're probably missing close to 10 minutes of show, if they're still running in 1 hour timeslots. (I know ST:TOS episodes are about 50 minutes long, and nowadays, 42-43 minutes is about normal -- and I'm actually basing that on 'er' from close to a decade ago.... and cable stations usually have even more commercials than OTA networks.)

I was watching WWW for a while on netflix. I forget, I think I got DVDs for a while, and was streaming for a while (back before they broke off streaming separately, so I went to DVD only). At first I couldn't really "get into" the show, but it didn't bore me, so I kept watching.. Then I got into it. Darn, looks like I didn't keep track of which ones I've seen.


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## Hcour (Dec 24, 2007)

terpfan1980 said:


> but still a lot of fun to watch with some cross overs between both series (lots of studio actors that had to work in whatever the studios sent them to that day...)


It seems like every old MI I've watched so far I recognize at least one or two of the guest actors. They indeed must have been bouncing around from show to show in the 60's and 70's because a lot of them are _very_ familiar and I wouldn't have remembered this many from just MI alone. Man from Uncle, Mannix, Charlie's Angels, Ironside, Cannon, Barnaby Jones - these actors must have made a pretty good living playing the "guest villain" on all those old detective shows.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

mattack said:


> BTW, you guys realize the syndicated shows are hacked to bits, right?...


I suppose so, but CURRENT shows on PBS like Mystery! (think Downton Abbey) are cut from the original BBC versions by somethng like ten minutes, so it's the way of things.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

mattack said:


> BTW, you guys realize the syndicated shows are hacked to bits, right? Those shows are old enough that you're probably missing close to 10 minutes of show, if they're still running in 1 hour timeslots. (I know ST:TOS episodes are about 50 minutes long, and nowadays, 42-43 minutes is about normal -- and I'm actually basing that on 'er' from close to a decade ago.... and cable stations usually have even more commercials than OTA networks.)


Not necessarily.
These networks are usually run on the digital subchannels of OTA stations for the most part and don't seem to be selling as much commercial time.

I've watched a few things on ThisTV like the original Outer Limits and there seem to be a lot less commercials.


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## Wil (Sep 27, 2002)

JYoung said:


> Not necessarily.
> These networks are usually run on the digital subchannels of OTA stations for the most part and don't seem to be selling as much commercial time.
> 
> I've watched a few things on ThisTV like the original Outer Limits and there seem to be a lot less commercials.


Unless you have a really good ear for pitch, and/or are very sensitive to the audio artifacts, it's really hard to tell by length how much they've mangled the original 51-53 minutes of material. There have been reported instances where original has had stuff cut out, was additionally compressed (with audio pitch compensation) to fit into a particular shorter time slot, and subsequently expanded (with audio pitch compensation) to fill a particular longer time slot.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

It was funny when they visited the Eastern European countries Barney had to always stay hidden in the truck or be hidden in some kind of a secret compartment.


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## JYoung (Jan 16, 2002)

Wil said:


> Unless you have a really good ear for pitch, and/or are very sensitive to the audio artifacts, it's really hard to tell by length how much they've mangled the original 51-53 minutes of material. There have been reported instances where original has had stuff cut out, was additionally compressed (with audio pitch compensation) to fit into a particular shorter time slot, and subsequently expanded (with audio pitch compensation) to fill a particular longer time slot.


I can usually tell the difference between PAL and NTSC sourced material if I'm familiar with it (or the actors) by the 4% speed difference in the audio.

But the Ellison penned "Demon with a Glass Hand" episode of the Outer Limits is on late tonight (or early in the morning) so I may record that and see how much actual material is there.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Church AV Guy said:


> I suppose so, but CURRENT shows on PBS like Mystery! (think Downton Abbey) are cut from the original BBC versions by somethng like ten minutes, so it's the way of things.


That's a shame. I hope it's not true of all British shows that end up on PBS.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Yeah, I'd be curious if someone chopped out commercials and timed it compared to DVDs (which also sometimes accidentally have the syndicated [chopped] versions too -- e.g. S1 of Roseanne, which I saw her mention on a Larry King or some other interview).


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## oscarfish (Mar 2, 2009)

To the OP, the Mission Impossible pilot was on last night. If you missed it, and really want to watch it, don't worry, it should be on again in about seven months.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

oscarfish said:


> To the OP, the Mission Impossible pilot was on last night. If you missed it, and really want to watch it, don't worry, it should be on again in about seven months.


I was very curious to see the pilot. The bit with the record sealed in plastic disintegrating when exposed to the air was nice, but BOY, did they have a ways to go.

Wally Cox--really--the comedian?!?


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Church AV Guy said:


> Wally Cox--really--the comedian?!?


No, Wally Cox, Underdog.

(just kidding -- same person)


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

Absolutely! He was the voice of the cartoon character Underdog, and a comedian. He also played a safe-cracker in the pilot episode of Mission Impossible.


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## reddice (Mar 6, 2004)

Been watching it on Netflix since last year. I am halfway done with season 6. I did enjoy the earlier seasons better. The problem with the later seasons is first they keep changing the cast except for maybe Barney. Then it shifts from doing missions in foreign countries to mobsters and the syndicate. Season 6 just about every episode is about mobsters and the syndicate. I am still enjoying it but the show did lose focus in the later seasons.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

That is correct. They made a conscious decision to cease the foreign operations and concentrate on domestic problems instead. The ratings steadily declined after that decision. They went from being spies, to being unconventional law enforcement team. This change started to happen during season 5, and pretty quickly, there were no more foreign operations.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

Hcour said:


> We recently got a station called "MeTV" that is showing a lot of old 60's and 70's shows, including the original MI. One of my fav's as a kid, I've been watching quite a few of them lately. They're a lot of fun in a nostalgic way.
> 
> Currently watching the seasons with Lesley Ann Warren. What a beauty! Also a very good actress, even back then. She does some really subtle character-acting as she plays her various roles in each mission.





mattack said:


> BTW, you guys realize the syndicated shows are hacked to bits, right? Those shows are old enough that you're probably missing close to 10 minutes of show, if they're still running in 1 hour timeslots. (I know ST:TOS episodes are about 50 minutes long, and nowadays, 42-43 minutes is about normal -- and I'm actually basing that on 'er' from close to a decade ago.... and cable stations usually have even more commercials than OTA networks.)
> 
> I was watching WWW for a while on netflix. I forget, I think I got DVDs for a while, and was streaming for a while (back before they broke off streaming separately, so I went to DVD only). At first I couldn't really "get into" the show, but it didn't bore me, so I kept watching.. Then I got into it. Darn, looks like I didn't keep track of which ones I've seen.





Wil said:


> Unless you have a really good ear for pitch, and/or are very sensitive to the audio artifacts, it's really hard to tell by length how much they've mangled the original 51-53 minutes of material. There have been reported instances where original has had stuff cut out, was additionally compressed (with audio pitch compensation) to fit into a particular shorter time slot, and subsequently expanded (with audio pitch compensation) to fill a particular longer time slot.


Well, the first five episodes of season one have been broadcast on METV in the LA area. I have reorded them, and removed the commercials. To my surprise, the program lengths I have are very consistent. I have not been able to find out the exact length of the shows as broadcast (any help here?), but my times for the first five episodes after the commercials have been removed are as follows:

1.01 -- 46:07
1.02 -- 46:07
1.03 -- 46:02
1.04 -- 46:07
1.05 -- 46:08

Still, they are pretty enjoyable after all these years, and all this time. Episodes 1.04 and 1.05 are a two part story.


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## spidershowl11 (Jul 25, 2012)

Church AV Guy said:


> Well, the first five episodes of season one have been broadcast on METV in the LA area. I have reorded them, and removed the commercials. To my surprise, the program lengths I have are very consistent. I have not been able to find out the exact length of the shows as broadcast (any help here?), but my times for the first five episodes after the commercials have been removed are as follows:
> 
> 1.01 -- 46:07
> 1.02 -- 46:07
> ...


I am surprised to know that MI was actually a TV series before being made into a movie. I never heard of it until now. My first job now is to watch it on Netflix. I enjoyed the movies and hope this series gives me the same kind of enjoyment.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Church AV Guy said:


> Well, the first five episodes of season one have been broadcast on METV in the LA area. I have reorded them, and removed the commercials. To my surprise, the program lengths I have are very consistent. I have not been able to find out the exact length of the shows as broadcast (any help here?), but my times for the first five episodes after the commercials have been removed are as follows:
> 
> 1.01 -- 46:07
> 1.02 -- 46:07
> ...


Wow, that's pretty amazing.

As a single data point, the Trek TOS episode City on the Edge of Forever is 50 minutes long, according to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708455/

So, I still think these are probably cut.. But NOWHERE NEAR as much as I expected.

Are these running in longer-than-an-hour timeslots? If so, maybe there is a possibility that they are uncut (or time compressed instead of directly cut).


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

> Are these running in longer-than-an-hour timeslots?


Nope. just an hour time slot. I for one, would prefer an uncut version of the show, even if it had to fit in a 1:15 slot. They could show two uncut episodes in a 2:30 slot which would work fine.

I don't know if they are time compressed. It does not appear to be, but time compression can be very subtle if it's only a minute or two over an hour-long show.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

Church AV Guy said:


> Well, the first five episodes of season one have been broadcast on METV in the LA area... my times for the first five episodes after the commercials have been removed are as follows:
> 
> 1.01 -- 46:07
> 1.02 -- 46:07
> ...


Unfortunately, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I have finished the next five episodes of Mission Impossible: and five episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, AND on AntennaTV, It Tales a Thief.

I think I should point out that I always put ten seconds of the DirecTV title card in front of every recording. With that in mind, the Mission Impossible: epsiodes, and VTTBOTS episodes are all coming in at almost exactly 46:00. If I remember, Thief is coming in at something like 51 minutes!


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Church AV Guy said:


> I for one, would prefer an uncut version of the show, even if it had to fit in a 1:15 slot.


So then why not rent them on e.g. netflix? Apparently the entire series is available there. Oh, and from instantwatcher.com, they're all apparently available streaming too.. (stupid netflix doesn't even TRY to get me to use streaming, by hiding ALL streaming info if I'm a DVD only customer.)

And as a VERY VERY unlikely-to-be-absolutely correct guesstimate, instantwatcher says the first season is 1404 minutes. So divide that by 28 episodes, and it's ~50.14 minutes/episode. So if that's correct, there's 4 minutes/episode missing on the reruns. Still, as I said, that's FAR less missing than I thought.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

Well, episodes one to five of Mission: Impossible have been broadcast. After the commercials have been removed times are as follows:

1.01 -- 46:07
1.02 -- 46:07
1.03 -- 46:02
1.04 -- 46:07
1.05 -- 46:08

And episodes six to ten:

1.06 -- 46:06
1.07 -- 46:07
1.08 -- 46:06
1.09 -- 46:07
1.10 -- 46:06

Voyage to the Bottom of the sea times after commercials have been removed:

1-- 46:07
2-- 46:06
3-- 46:06
4-- 46:06

ThisTV (I think I mistakenly called it AntannaTV somewhere) has It Takes a Thief:

1.13 -- 50:51
1.14 -- 50:54
1.15 -- 50:54
1.16 -- 50:52

I think METV has a standard time of about 46 minutes per episode of a show.


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## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

Here is an intersting bit of data. Mission Impossible from METV, episodes 11 to 15 are about the same length. Many years ago, when I owned my very first DVD recorder, a LA local station was showing Mission Impossible: and they said it was uncut. I recorded the shows then, but because of my location, they weren't the best quality which is why I am recording them again, now. I have now made a comparison of the older recordings with the current ones.



mattack said:


> And as a VERY VERY unlikely-to-be-absolutely correct guesstimate, instantwatcher says the first season is 1404 minutes. So divide that by 28 episodes, and it's ~50.14 minutes/episode.


How right you are.

Ep# -- METV -- Older recording
1.11 -- 46:07 -- 49:55
1.12 -- 46:06 -- 49:25
1.13 -- 46:06 -- 49:55
1.14 -- 46:06 -- 49:54
1.15 -- 46:05 -- 49:50


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