Release Date:
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
We've been anticipating this DVD set like drug fiends. It originally aired in the 60's and has, mostly likely because of the Tom Cruise films, been MIA from syndication or DVD release for many years. Cruise's movies are pretty good but they have very little to do with the show. It's not about one guy doing improbable stunts on motorcycles to catch the bad guys. It's about a team of smart agents working together to infiltrate and stop highly complex plots. To put it in TV-nerd terms: If you mixed The A-Team with MacGyver, threw in some old-time technology and gadgets, you'd have Mission: Impossible. The actors, who are all either dead or close to it at this point, are almost unrecognizable because they're so much younger, including season one's IMF leader Steven Hill, who we know as the old and craggy original Law & Order DA always telling his prosecutors to make a deal (the pilot from Airplane!, Peter Graves, didn't head up IMF as Mr. Phelps until season 2). There are no extras, which is disappointing, and the show gets better in the later seasons, but these 28 episodes across seven discs feature some of the coolest TV ever. And it's your mission to buy it.