There was also at least one episode where Hill didn’t appear at all and someone else (Cinnamon in one case) picked up The Secretary’s message in the teaser.
“Good morning, Miss Carter. The man you are looking at…”
The Secretary, BTW, was played by a CPA who made some extra money doing voice overs. Can’t remember his name right offhand; Robert something, I think.
Pernell Roberts was the evil South American dictator whom Cinnamon had to, uhm, “distract” while Barney and Willy made off with the gold.
I was always amazed that there was no blast of superheated air or smell of fresh paint when Roberts opened the vault the next morning! Also that Barney was able to position the drill/drain right smack in the middle of the vault from thirty feet underground! :eek:
Lamas’s evil Communist boss was played by Alfred Ryder, aka Dr Crater (Nancy’s husband) on Star Trek.
There was another moment where Paris (Leonard Nimoy) walked into evil Communist headquarters in full uniform and told the drone on duty [FAUX EUROPEAN ACCENT HERE] “I am Major Laszlo of the Secret Police. You will give me access to the vault and leave me alone with the Top Secret documents for the next hour!” (Or words to that effect.)
Of course the poor shlub behind the desk does exactly what he’s told; why wouldn’t he? DUH! :smack:
I’ve always wanted to try the same thing myself, just to see how far I’d get with it! :o
You will be caught immediately because you don’t use the official EVIL EUROPEAN COUNTRY spelling
Zikret = secret
Polizia = police
Aksez = access
Heh. Reminds me of the one where they have to break a political prisoner out, and so three – count 'em, three – of our heroes show up in full uniform, and with one con and another they each get as far as they can. And, well, it’s not enough. I mean, yeah, one of them gets like ten seconds alone with the prisoner’s file, but so what? And, yeah, full marks for popping open his cell door; but that’s not going to get him out of the prison, so he stays put as our heroes lock him back in.
Later, he starts acting like an impostor; upon noting that it looks like someone took a crowbar to the lock on his cell, the guards check his file – and the fingerprints don’t match! Hey, remember what those officers running that inspection had said: if you report this, your dick of a boss will be out of a job, and you’ll get that promotion, and they’ll haul this impostor off to a military base for brutal interrogation! After all, he’s not your prisoner, is he? Your prisoner escaped, on the other guy’s watch!
The one where one of the IMF agents was a dog. His mission was stealing a list of secret agent’s real identities on microfilm or whatever.
The episode was played totally straight - they showed the dog being lowered into air ducts and sneaking around, hiding from bad guys when he can’t get out right away, etc, all while the suspenseful music played. Barney is mic’ed up, talking the dog through it. “Good boy!” Jim Phelps even selected a photo of the dog while he was picking his team.
The “evil country spelling” has a name. It is called “Gellerese”, in honor of Bruce Geller. It came in two “dialects”. Eastern European and Latin American. Google “Gellerese” for some prime examples.
Good one! How did I *ever *miss that?!? 
The microdot was on a postage stamp. I think Fernando Lamas was in that one too! 
How about the one where Barney had to assemble a full-scale helicopter with a piston engine all by himself in the middle of a desert? Meanwhile, Paris was convincing the evil dictator that he was from the Red Chinese government, and he was there to *help *him!
How tall was Leonard Nimoy? At least six feet? :dubious:
The latex eyefolds made him look like … you-know-who!
Believe it or not, it’s been done: Wilhelm Voigt - Wikipedia
Hilarious! And Paul Scofield in the role! The mind boggles!
If that hadn’t worked, he would’ve pulled out a clipboard. Now that’s official!
I watched a number of episodes but my favorite part was the opening music.
He had a briefcase with him. Even better! 
IMO, one of the better later episodes, if not THE best one, was “The Fountain” where they staged a fountain of immortal youth and its effects right down to doing what you could call the first photoshop jobs with ‘historic’ pictures.
Ones that made an impression on me as a kid, that stuck with me for all these years:
The vat of acid used to dissolve executed prisoners, under the gallows (Death Squad, IIRC). The idea of it seemed cool, though I didn’t actually want to dissolve anyone.
Paris being captured and brainwashed to kill Phelps. I liked his sweater so much I had my mom buy me one like it. (My Friend, My Enemy)
Anthony Zerbe’s bomb shelter house, and his periscope which he uses to look at the “devastation” outside. (The Photographer) I loved the way that was done, and the idea of fooling him that way.
The aforementioned gold melting one. That episode in singularly memorable, almost as much as the McMillan & Wife with the fumigation bag over the house.
This may be of interest to some:
It never occurred to me that the mock execution episode was intended as a statement against capital punishment.
Lesley Ann Warren, mmmmmmmmmmmmm! :o
#10/terentii: You scooped me. My favorite episode, or at least my favorite guilty pleasure episode. That train wreck of a bad Dietrich impression was SO bad, that I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Miss Bain was such a wretched actress, but on a par with most of the rest of the cast. She was a trouper, even with all the dreck they assigned to her. Her Princess Celine was indescribably awful. But no one was as bad as Leonard Nimoy.
I truly do enjoy the series, have them on CD, and watch them all every couple of years or so. I wish we could have a MI Dope, and get together to hash out the series face to face.