Starring: Peter Graves, Barbara Bain, Greg Morris, Peter Lupus
The Traitor - S1-E27
Continuity mistake: Tina demonstrates her contortionist abilities by crawling through the cubicle shelves in Briggs' apartment. A large orange cat figurine on the upper left shelf is brightly lit when she's doing her demo. The moment she finishes, though, the cat is in shadow and its orange tones are muted to brown. (00:05:00)
Character mistake: The 'perfect' German postcard Rollin has written is full of mistakes: 1) The 'sie' must have a capital 'S' because it's a personal pronoun; 2) The only sentence stops in the middle and makes no sense; 3) The word 'Besten' has to be written without a capital because it's not a noun; 4) In Germany the house number stands after the street name, not before; 5) The streetname makes no sense. Too many mistakes for a so-called 'perfect' card. (00:04:40)
Voice on Tape: Good morning Mister Phelps.
Trivia: Apollo rewinds a reel-to-reel tape recorder that has just recorded him admitting to illegal activities. As he does, it makes the expected chipmunk noise. When slowed and reversed, the tape is of a speech given in episode #4 from the 3rd season. You can hear these recordings at: http://www.litb.com/recording1.mp3 and http://www.litb.com/recording2.mp3.
Question: At the start of each episode of Mission Impossible Briggs or Phelps received details of the mission from a tape recording that was 'hidden in plain sight', say a telephone booth displaying a poster saying 'Telephone Out Of Order. Do Not Use'. So, what would happen if somebody went into the kiosk before Briggs or Phelps, picked up the telephone and got the secret message ahead of the Mission Impossible team?
Answer: This is not really a serious question. When I posted this question I was fully aware that Mission Impossible is only a television programme. Like many espionage thrillers (Man From Uncle, The Avengers, James Bond) it is meant to entertain, it is never meant to be taken literally seriously. It was essential to the story that Briggs or Phelps received a secret message, which would give them a mission to accomplish. If they did not receive the message you would not have had the story. When I used to watch Mission Impossible it just used to amuse me to wonder what might have happened had somebody picked up the phone containing the secret message ahead of Briggs or Phelps. I even considered writing to a comedian and suggesting that they devise a comedy sketch in which this happened. My question was only meant to be a joke, that I posted to amuse people.
The Lucy Show or Here's Lucy did an episode of exactly this scenario.
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Answer: We don't know what would happen because the show never addressed this issue. Any answer would be speculation. This is a TV show, and the plot is structured so that only IMF team will retrieve the secret message.
raywest ★