Mission: Impossible backdrop
Mission: Impossible poster
Action & Adventure
Crime
Drama

The Best Episodes of Mission: Impossible

Every episode of Mission: Impossible ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Mission: Impossible!

The Best Episodes of Mission: Impossible

Mission: Impossible is an American television series that was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicles the missions of a team of secret...

Filter By Season7

  1. 8.5/10(302 votes)

    #1 - The Exchange

    Loading...
    S3:E12

    During a mission in a half Western/half Communist country, Cinnamon is caught and arrested after delivering information to the team. She is tortured and proves immune to everything except effects involving her claustrophobia. As intelligence officer Strom gets close to breaking her, Jim decides that the team must try and trade her for a valuable Eastern spy, Rudolf Kurtz. The IMF have to covertly get Kurtz out of prison, get him past the Western police, and get the information from him. The IMF fakes ""rescuing"" Kurtz and taking him to an office in the Eastern zone, where he gives up his information to superior officer Jim. Strom is forced to trade Cinnamon, but shoots both her and Jim during the exchange. Believing them dead and with Kurtz keeping silent about the information he spilled to protect his own life, Strom departs...as Jim and Cinnamon, wearing bulletproof trenchcoats, make their escape.

    0 Comments
    View all
  2. 8.5/10(374 votes)

    #2 - The Mind of Stefan Miklos

    Loading...
    S3:E13

    Walter Townsend is discovered to be a double-agent: the U.S. government has leaked false information to him to give to the enemy which will cause them embarassment if believed. However, Townsend's contact Simpson has discovered the information is false and reported to his superiors Townsend is a defector. Simpson's superiors know of his jealousy toward Townsend and send their best intelligence officer, Stefan Miklos, to discover the truth of the matter. The IMF must make Miklos believe the information is true and Simpson the liar. Rollin-as-Miklos gets Simpson out and then takes Simpson's place. The IMF sets a series of clues to make Miklos belief that Townsend truly is a traitor and preparing to defect, including tickets and a passport. However, Miklos spots a planted ""clue"" that convinces him the IMF are doing exactly what they are doing: framing Townsend! He identifies them and then receives the information from Rollin-as-Simpson and Jim when he's spotted Jim as one of the IMF opera

    0 Comments
    View all
  3. 8.2/10(558 votes)

    #3 - Operation Rogosh

    Loading...
    S1:E3

    Imry Rogosh is a mass murderer who kills to forment political upheaval. He is targeting Los Angeles, so the IMF knock him out in a car accident. When Rogosh ""wakes up"" he is in a cell in a prison in his own country, three years later, and ready to be executed as an American agent. To "prove" his loyalty to the cause, Rogosh has to spill the information on his secret operation, but during the mock trial a slip-up cues him in on the ruse. Briggs has to act fast to get Rogosh to reveal the plan to kill the citizens of Los Angeles.

    0 Comments
    View all
    Director:Leonard Horn
  4. 8.2/10(282 votes)

    #4 - The Cardinal

    Loading...
    S3:E6

    General Zepke plans to rise to power - the only threat to him is Cardinal Souchek who stands for a free people. Zepke has had Souchek imprisoned and plans to replace him with a double who will endorse him. The IMF use an infected mosquito to make the doiuble, Nagorski, ill. Phelps and Cinnamon are called in as doctor and nurse to tend to him while Rollin impersonates a Cardinal and sees through Nagorski's impersonation. He escapes from an airtight sarcophagus and helps Barney and Willy enter the monastery through a booby-trapped tunnel before their air runs out. When Jim has Nagorski placed in an oxygen tent, the others open up the wall behind him, take out Nagorski and replace him with Souchek whom they've secretly freed. Zepke has Souchek-as-Nagorski-as-Souchek give a speech, but Souchek doesn't say what Zepke was expecting...

    0 Comments
    View all
  5. 8.2/10(263 votes)

    #5 - The Glass Cage

    Loading...
    S3:E16

    Anton Reisner, a reistance leader in a tyrannical country, has been imprisoned in the automated Trast Prison and is being tortured by Major Zelinko in order to get the names of the other resistance leaders. The IMF must get him out of the prison. Reisner is in a video-monitored escape-proof glass cubicle. Barney and Willy get themselves imprisoned when Cinnamon as head of the country's prison system arrives for an inspection. She distracts Zelinko long enough for Barney and Willy to escape, wreck the video system, and get to Reisner. But..they tell him to stay in the cell but act different, then get recaptured. Zelinko notes the discrepancy between the door counter and the written log and puts two and two together (incorrectly) with Reisner's odd behavior and assumes Reisner is an imposter. Zelinko and Gulka plot to keep the switch secret but Cinnamon arranges for Zelinko's underling Vasney to overhear it. She has Zelinko arrested and takes Barney, Willy, and the Reisner-as-the-imposte

    0 Comments
    View all
  6. 8.2/10(232 votes)

    #6 - The Bunker (2)

    Loading...
    S3:E20

    With Cinnamon-as-Anna in place, she is taken to her ""husband"" and tells Dr. Rojak to be near an air vent. Jim as a security officer has placed a small remote-control flying disk in the bunker's air vent system and it holds a hypo. Barney steers it to Rojak's monitored cell and he uses the hypo to induce a heart attack. Jim summons Rollin (as a heart specialist) who advises surgery and instructs that ""Anna"" be at her husband's side. Ventlos the assassin plans to disrupt the operation by taking Rollin's place in disguise and the IMF quickly has to readjust when Ventlos tries to kill Rojak and destroy the installation.

    0 Comments
    View all
  7. Trending NowTRENDING NOW

    The 20 WORST Episodes of Mission: Impossible

    READ
  8. 8.1/10(379 votes)

    #7 - The Train

    Loading...
    S1:E24

    Prime Minister Larya of Svardia is working to establish democracy, but is unaware that his personal protege, Deputy Premier Pavel, plans to set up a dictatorship. The team must persuade Larya of Pavel's plans. The IMF fakes a train ride for Larya, Pavel, and Pavel's aide Androv. They then fake a crash, put Androv and Pavel in a fake hospital, and tell them that Larya is dead. They immediately begin plans to eliminate anymemory of Larya and start arresting dissidents. Then the hospital wall slides away to reveal that Larya has heard the whole thing, and dismisses them both.

    0 Comments
    View all
  9. 8.1/10(247 votes)

    #8 - The System

    Loading...
    S3:E15

    A gangster, Constantine Victor (aka ""Mr. V"") has had the last witness against him on a murder indictment killed. Johnny Costa, Victor's associates and a casino owner, is the only one with enough evidence to get Victor convicted. The IMF must con Costa into talking. Phelps as a syndicate killer warns Costa that someone has put a contract on him. Cinnamon charms Costa and has him endorse minor credit slips which the IMF then forges for bigger ones. Rollin is a bookkeeper who supposedly works for Costa, finds an unlisted $25,000 planted by Barney, and the fake credit slips. Thanks to a prerecorded call from ""Victor"" mimiced by Rollin, Costa is relieved of duties. Costa confronts Cinnamon and gets her to admit she is working for Victor. Fleeing from Willy as another hit man, Costa locks himself in the casino vault to protect himself until he can testify against Victor.

    0 Comments
    View all
    Director:Robert Gist
  10. 8.1/10(238 votes)

    #9 - The Bunker (1)

    Loading...
    S3:E19

    Dr. Erich Rojak and his wife Anna are being held in an underground laboratory/bunker by a totalitarian enemy government. Another unfriendly government has sent an assassin, Ventlos, to kill Rojak. The IMF must rescue Rojak and his wife, destroy the test missile Rojak is working on, and stop Ventlos. The IMF infiltrate the base and Jim introduces a handstamp system, unaware that Ventlos has already replaced the bunker's security chief. Jim uses his system to expose security officer Cinnamon as a phony and she is imprisoned near Anna. Willy breaks in via the furnace and rescues Anna while Cinnamon takes her place...

    0 Comments
    View all
  11. 8.1/10(267 votes)

    #10 - Submarine

    Loading...
    S4:E7

    Upon his release, a prisoner plans to fund neo-Nazis with stolen money. So a submarine voyage is simulated in order to transport him to his contact.

    0 Comments
    View all
    Director:Paul Krasny
  12. 8.0/10(456 votes)

    #11 - The Carriers

    Loading...
    S1:E10

    Enemy agent Janos Passik is preparing to train 200 foreign agents to infiltrate the U.S. and engage in some form of bacteriological warfare. The team figures out that Passik has created a replica of a ""typical American town"" so as to train his agents to learn how to blend into American society. Rollin, Cinnamon, Barney, and bacteriologist Rogr Lee replace the new group of recruits and must then find their way to the research lab. They soon realize that the American-trained agents will be infected with a highly contagious plague and then sent into American to kill millions. The group must not only destroy the plague samples but make sure that Passik and his superiors do not find out that the destruction was deliberate.

    0 Comments
    View all
  13. 8.0/10(285 votes)

    #12 - The Mercenaries

    Loading...
    S3:E4

    The IMF must bring down Colonel Hans Krim, the head of a mercenary army who has a ton of loot in gold bars hidden away in an inaccessible enclave. Rollin enlists while Jim and Cinnamon pose as gunrunners with Willy and Barney hidden in their truck. Rollin fakes finding a cache of gold and is then tortured into revealing it. Krim ""kills"" Rollin and then coerces Jim into moving it without revealing the secret gold to his aides. Krim tells the guards to ignore the truck with what he believes his gold, unaware that Barney has melted the real gold belonging to the army, melted it down to remove it from the vault, and put in the truck. While Krim's suspicious aide Gruner kills him over the betrayal, Jim drives away with the gold and the hidden IMFers, immune to being searched because of Krim's last orders.

    0 Comments
    View all
  14. 8.0/10(295 votes)

    #13 - The Execution

    Loading...
    S3:E5

    The IMF must stop Lewis Parma, a Syndicate man who is close to gaining total control of the food distribution industry in the U.S. To stop him, the IMF must get his hired assassin Vic Duchell to turn state's evidence, but Duchell is resolute. Jim pretends to be a merchant who resists Parma's extortion efforts so as to become a target. Duchell bombs Jim's apartment but is knocked out. He wakes up ""years later"" to find himself on death row: he's been convicted for Jim's murder and is hours away from execution. Duchell believes Parma will get him out as he did one time before, but thanks to the IMF's staging, of course Parma is nowhere in sight. Just as he is is about to be fake-executed, Duchell breaks and turns evidence on Parma, just as Parma arrives at the warehouse where the scam is going on.

    0 Comments
    View all
  15. 8.0/10(207 votes)

    #14 - The Falcon (3)

    Loading...
    S4:E16

    Just as Jim Phelps and the others unwittingly become caught up in a royal power struggle, a bomb goes off, seriously injuring Paris and revealing his disguise.

    0 Comments
    View all
    Director:Reza Badiyi
  16. 7.9/10(396 votes)

    #15 - The Legacy

    Loading...
    S1:E15

    The IMF must get hold of a horde of Nazi gold through four young men, sons of Hitler's top aides, who are sent to Switzerland to meet for the first time and pool their parts of the ""puzzle"" together. One of the men, the only one known to them, is replaced by Rollin. Each has part of an account number, and the team needs to hypnotize and trick the bank manager into giving them the complete account # and then slip it to Rollin. The bank account contains an envelope with a microdot, which when combined with a slide in each man's pocket watch provides the location of the treasure. After seeing the other men's slides, Rollin fakes the loss of his watch, then he and the rest of the team head to the cemetary. Two of the men figure out the puzzle from their pieces and follow. In a gunfight Dan is wounded, but one of the men is killed and the other runs off rather then face Rollin's wrath. The gold turns out to have been made into a crypt, and is recovered.

    0 Comments
    View all
  17. 7.9/10(221 votes)

    #16 - The Double Circle

    Loading...
    S4:E10

    An art lover is made to believe he can own a priceless work of art, but it is really a plot to retrieve a valuable formula from his impenetrable safe.

    0 Comments
    View all
  18. 7.8/10(323 votes)

    #17 - The Traitor

    Loading...
    S1:E27

    An American intelligence officer, Hughes, has defected to the enemy with the only copy of an encoded top-secret message. The IMF must get to him, get him out, discredit him, and recover the message before the enemy can get a cryptographer, Belson, to work on the message. Rollin takes Belson's place, and sets it up so that Ambassador Brazneck, in charge of Hughes, believes that Dan is going to buy the papers from someone in the embassy. Rollin-as-Belson works with Hughes to decode the message, then drugs him. Willy gets special agent Tina Mera, a contortionist and acrobat, into the embassy through a fake air duct. She uses a fake bed covering to make Hughes ""disappear"", then break into the vault and get the real message. With Hughes out, Briggs picks up the fake message from someone pretending to be Hughes, who has ""disappeared"" from the embassy. Tina returns, plants money on Hughes, and removes the fake disappearing bed cover. Brazneck believes Hughes has betrayed him and Hughes flees

    0 Comments
    View all
  19. 7.8/10(254 votes)

    #18 - The Freeze

    Loading...
    S3:E11

    Albert Jenkins, who robbed an armored car five years ago, double-crossed his associates and hid the $10 million. He then managed to get himself arrested as ""Raymond Barret"" on a burglary charge he did not commit. In this way he can outwait the statute of limitations on the armored car robbery from the safety of his cell. The IMF must bring him to justice. To do so, IMF ally Dr. Bowman tells Barret he has a fatal disease and gets him released early. Rollin as a doctor confirms the diagnosis and reveals that Jim, pretending to be a cryogenic doctor, can put him in stasis. Barret/Jenkins ""wakes up"" 12 years later in a futurstic IMF set and a graying Rollin tells him currency is no longer of value and the police want to question him. Barret escapes only to discover that it's a scam...but in the scam-within-a-scam, he thinks it's one day after the statue of limitations expires. He goes to the cemetary where he hid the money, along with his partners thanks to an IMF ploy, and all of them are

    0 Comments
    View all
  20. 7.8/10(238 votes)

    #19 - Doomsday

    Loading...
    S3:E17

    Carl Vandaam, a bankrupt European tycoon, is masterminding the theft of plutonium to make a hydrogen bomb and sell to the highest bidder. To keep such a bomb from falling into the wrong hands the IMF must stop Vandaam. Jim and Cinnamon get close to Kura, one of the bidders, by offering to bankroll him in return for oil rights. Vandaam demonstrates the bomb's plutonium core but afterwards Barney manages to steal the plutonium and replace it with an empty cylinder. Vandaam's aide discovers the theft and seals the building while Vanddam bluffs it out hoping they catch the thief before the bidding is over. Kura wins the bidding unaware that Cinnamon has planted a device in his money. Cinnamon insists they see the plutonium again, Vandaam is forced to reveal the theft, and Kura wants a refund. Cinnamon destroys the money by remote control. Kura has Vandaam shot while the IMF escape and summon the authorities.

    0 Comments
    View all
  21. 7.8/10(213 votes)

    #20 - Robot

    Loading...
    S4:E9

    A country is unaware that its premier is dead and that a double is about to appoint a successor. So Barney Collier concocts a mechanical man to take his place.

    0 Comments
    View all
    Director:Reza Badiyi
  22. 7.8/10(209 votes)

    #21 - The Falcon (2)

    Loading...
    S4:E15

    With the king's sister rescued during the wedding, the team now turns its attention to the true heir, who's locked up in prison.

    0 Comments
    View all
    Director:Reza Badiyi
  23. 7.8/10(212 votes)

    #22 - Death Squad

    Loading...
    S4:E24

    Barney kills a man in self-defense and is marked for execution by the victim's brother, a chief of police who heads a death squad.

    0 Comments
    View all
  24. 7.7/10(699 votes)

    #23 - Pilot

    Loading...
    S1:E1

    IMF team leader Dan Briggs assembles his team for the first time. The mission: to recover two nuclear warheads belonging to General Rio Dominguez from a hotel vault in Santa Costa. Jim and Willy sneak safecracker Terry Targo into the vault, who figures out how to get out. The team then captures Dominguez but Targo's fingers are broken in the attempt. With no other alternative, Briggs has himself and Dominguez put into the vault, and Briggs threatens to enter a random combination if Alicio doesn't tell him the code. Dominguez breaks. With the bombs defused, Willy takes the warheads out of the vault. Briggs remains behind and uses the information Targo gathered earlier to get out during a fireworks distraction set off by Barney. Briggs and the rest of the team make a desperate race for safety and get onto a plane heading to safety seconds before the military can catch up to them.

    0 Comments
    View all
  25. 7.7/10(449 votes)

    #24 - Odds on Evil

    Loading...
    S1:E6

    Prince Iben Kostas plans to use his money to finance a war. Infiltrating his casino, the IMF team goes to work: IMFer Andre (pretending to be Cinammon's husband) breaks the bank at roulette thanks to a not-so-portable computer worn by Willie underneath his tux. Andre then loses the money to Rollin as another gambler. Kostas tries to get the money back by playing against Rollin and cheating by using marked cards and tinted contact lens. However, Rollin has a similar pair of lens and also deals bad hands to Kostas. Finally Kostas antes up the 1.5 million in war funds, thinking he can't lose. Rollins tricks him, and the team must make a desperate escape.

    0 Comments
    View all
  26. 7.7/10(293 votes)

    #25 - The Heir Apparent

    Loading...
    S3:E1

    The Archbishop of Povia must designate a heir to succeed the departed king as regent, as the king left no heir. General Qaisette plans to seize the throne in a coup if he isn't named. The IMF spread rumors that Princess Celine, who disappeared as a child, is returning. Cinnamon studies Celine's life. Barney and Willey lead Qaisette to Phelps who has an elderly blind Celine/Cinnamon. Thanks to Rollin who claims to be a doctor who knows about the ""real"" Celine's crippled arm, Qaisette believes he can use the ""fake"" Celine to discredit the Archbishop. But Cinnamon manages to pass every test (with some help from Barney) and Rollin ingeniously sneaks out before Qaisette can call him as a witness. Cinnamon-as-Celine has Qaisette arrested and then abdicates the throne, disappearing once more.

    0 Comments
    View all

Best Episodes Summary

"The Exchange" is the best rated episode of "Mission: Impossible". It scored 8.5/10 based on 302 votes. Directed by Alexander Singer and written by Laurence Heath, it aired on 1/4/1969. This episode scored 0.0 points higher than the second highest rated, "The Mind of Stefan Miklos".