Ah yes, the hoverdisc, from one of my favorite episodes, “The Bunker.” Barney flies a remote controlled hoverdisc down an elevator shaft to deliver a syringe that will give the captive scientist a fake heart attack.
Wasn’t there an episode in which Phelps gets his message in candy shop and has to eat the record?
The other thing you have to remember is that this show was on when the whole espionage/spy thing was a strong genre in not only TV but movies and books as well. James Bond, The Man From UNCLE, I Spy, etc. not to mention spoofs like Get Smart. Even shows like Batman and The Monkees played off of it in some episodes. And that’s why you got an Austin Powers movie 20 years later. So, MI wasn’t just floating out there by itself.
And all the stop signs said “Alt!”
One of the many reasons why the first season was the best because it was almost exclusively international spying. It was only later that organized crime became the target.
My point there was only about the contrast between his older and younger selves. I have never seen Hill in anything else, between those two roles. Something that maybe would have prepared me.
So it was a bit of a surprise when I first started watching MI, for the first time, a few months ago. “Hmmm, this guy’s familiar. Who is that? Holy sh—, it’s the boss man from Law & Order!” Then I had to go look him up on the IMDB to confirm it. A totally jaw-dropping moment.
I hadn’t noticed that. Does it have some cryptic significance?
Somewhere I read that the theme song was originally just going to be a bit of incidental music during a car chase scene. Then someone (Geller?) heard it and decided it was too good to be wasted on that. So it was flushed out to become the show’s theme, and went on to become the catchy earworm that infects all of our brains today.
That’s a good theory. What other dramas were there at the time with a strong female character? I can’t think of any. (But then again, in those years, many prime-time dramas would have been past my bedtime.)
Haven’t seen that one yet, if it’s real. I have seen one episode where the message is on a record instead of a tape, but the record merely sizzles and smokes as usual.
Looking at the other nominees, she beat out Peggy Lipton in THE MOD SQUAD, Diana Rigg in THE AVENGERS, Barbara Stanwyck in THE BIG VALLEY, and Joan Blondell in HERE COME THE BRIDES.
Steven Hill also butted heads because the stories were getting morally questionable. Michael Moriarty had similar qualms when he left Law and Order.
I post before I read the whole thread, but: Hear, hear!
Did Cruise actually have anything to do with that? I figured it was Brian De Palma to blame.
Well…Well, Somebody did it, and they should be set on fire while we all listen to the MI theme and laugh in glee…
This plot was stolen from 36 Hours (1965), a taut little thriller starring James Garner and Eva Marie Saint (available on disc and recommended). The first time “M:I” used it was in the first season, episode 3, “Operation Rogosh” (1966). The scheme is even foiled by almost the same device.
My favorite things about “M:I” were the fact that you could always tell who Martin Landau was gonna have to impersonate, because who’s that over there? In a mustache and funny nose? Why, that’s Martin Landau too! He never impersonated anyone except guys who already looked exactly like him . . . cuz they already *were *him.
And the design: the efficiency of the studio and backlot shooting was such that all the interiors were set against the same flat drywall–with walls that always managed to be higher than the upper frame of the camera–and lit by the same banks and banks and banks of bright white lights; a room never looked like a room, it always looked like a television soundstage. And all the exterior looked like the dry scrub of the Hollywood Hills. Not that I’d expect them to shoot in Istanbul or a third world root cellar, but that homogeneous look added, I think, to the “let’s pretend!” element of the outlandishly fantastical plotlines.
In all fairness, the marks in those cons were usually pumped full of high-powered drugs when the team was setting things up.
Not always, but quite often, yeah.
If there was really a makeup technology to make one person look like another, they’d choose someone with a small head, small chin, small nose, etc. Landau has a rather “bulging” face between his eyebrow ridges, nose, and chin. He’d be the last guy to try and build up a disguise from.
The ideal person would in fact probably be someone who had been operated upon to have no nose and sanded down chin and cheek bones.
[music hijack]
Props for one of the all-time great theme songs.
Man there used to be some great themes…
Hawaii Five-O: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AepyGm9Me6w
Rockford Files: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px_nrsFNgtI
MTM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiW3pyMdp3w&feature=related
But the best theme song of all time…
[/music hijack]
Probably right, but such a character would have creeped out the audience, big time. Even more than Martin Landau does. And besides, how many nose-less actors are there around?
Well maybe bunches of them, I don’t know. But then I bet the nose-less actors get tired of being typecast as “the disguise guy” or “the mask guy” all the time. *Always with the disguises! And the glue just gets everywhere. Even a hot shower doesn’t take it off. I scrub and I scrub, and for days still I’m stuck with it. Can’t they give me Cyrano de Bergerac for once? Ah, heaven. That one’s just a prosthetic!
*