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The Best Episodes of Mission: Impossible Season 1

Every episode of Mission: Impossible Season 1 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of Mission: Impossible Season 1!

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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 government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force. In the

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Episode Rankings

  1. #1 Fan Favorite
    Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 1 - Pilot
    7.7/10(829 votes)

    #1 - Pilot

    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.

    Director:Bernard L. Kowalski
    Writer:Bruce Geller

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  2. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 2 - Memory
    7.3/10(588 votes)

    #2 - Memory

    S1:E2

    The IMF must undermine "the Butcher of the Balkans", Janos Karq, by having his head of security capture an agent, Sparrow, who will then incriminate Karq.

    Director:Charles R. Rondeau
    Writer:Robert Lewin

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  3. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 3 - Operation Rogosh
    8.2/10(635 votes)

    #3 - Operation Rogosh

    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.

    Director:Leonard Horn
    Writer:Jerome Ross

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  4. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 4 - Old Man Out (1)
    7.3/10(544 votes)

    #4 - Old Man Out (1)

    S1:E4

    The IMF team goes in as a circus team to rescue Anton Cardinal Vossek, who is being held in the impregnable Seravno Prison. Vossek is the leader of the country's freedom movement, in rebellion against Colonel Scutari, and is awaiting a fake trial before execution.

    Director:Charles R. Rondeau
    Writer:Ellis Marcus

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  5. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 5 - Old Man Out (2)
    7.3/10(507 votes)

    #5 - Old Man Out (2)

    S1:E5

    Rollin manages to avoid the guards and escape, but Vossek is moved to a new cell in solitary confinement. Briggs comes up with a new plan and manages to relay it to the imprisoned Rollin.

    Director:Charles R. Rondeau
    Writer:Ellis Marcus

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  6. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 6 - Odds on Evil
    7.7/10(517 votes)

    #6 - Odds on Evil

    S1:E6

    Prince Iben Kostas plans to use his money to finance a war. Infiltrating his casino, the IMF team goes to work.

    Director:Charles R. Rondeau
    Writers:Allan Balter, William Read Woodfield

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  7. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 7 - Wheels
    6.8/10(467 votes)

    #7 - Wheels

    S1:E7

    In the country of Valeria, the IMF must assure that the corrupt Nationalist party's rigged voting machine doesn't give them the election.

    Director:Tom Gries
    Writer:Laurence Heath

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  8. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 8 - The Ransom
    7.6/10(488 votes)

    #8 - The Ransom

    S1:E8

    Mobster Frank Egan kidnaps the daughter of Dan's friend and uses her as a hostage to force Dan and the team to break out a key witness, Augie Gorman, against him.

    Director:Harry Harris
    Writer:Allan Balter

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  9. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 9 - A Spool There Was
    7.2/10(467 votes)

    #9 - A Spool There Was

    S1:E9

    Rollin and Cinnamon go it alone to recover a reel of recording wire containing information on a chemical warfare project aimed at the U.S.

    Director:Bernard L. Kowalski
    Writer:Ellis Marcus

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  10. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 10 - The Carriers
    8.0/10(511 votes)

    #10 - The Carriers

    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.

    Director:Sherman Marks
    Writers:Allan Balter, William Read Woodfield

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  11. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 11 - Zubrovnik's Ghost
    6.1/10(467 votes)

    #11 - Zubrovnik's Ghost

    S1:E11

    The wife of a deceased scientist, Kurt Zubrovnik, is being pressured by Eastern forces to work for them. They are using a phony psychic to convince the wife her dead husband wants to defect!

    Director:Leonard Horn
    Writer:Robert Lewin

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  12. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 12 - Fakeout
    7.0/10(417 votes)

    #12 - Fakeout

    S1:E12

    Anastas Poltroni is the head of an international narcotics syndicate, and has taken refuge in a country with no extradition treaty. The IM Force is assigned to lure him out without kidnapping him (to avoid the publicity).

    Director:Bernard L. Kowalski
    Writer:Leigh Chapman

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  13. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 13 - Elena
    6.4/10(437 votes)

    #13 - Elena

    S1:E13

    Double-agent Elena Del Barra is acting bizarrely, sending a microfilm of defense secrets from her own country. Rollin is sent in to investigate, and return the microfilm without its theft ever being detected. Complicating matters is that an assassin, Callao, has been sent to kill her if Rollin can't figure things out in two days.

    Director:Marc Daniels
    Writer:Ellis Marcus

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  14. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 14 - The Short Tail Spy
    7.2/10(421 votes)

    #14 - The Short Tail Spy

    S1:E14

    A defector has been targeted by two rival groups from the same foreign country. The team is to discredit the younger group, so that the U.S. can more easily handle the old-line group.

    Director:Leonard Horn
    Writer:Julian Barry

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  15. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 15 - The Legacy
    7.9/10(448 votes)

    #15 - The Legacy

    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.

    Director:Michael O'Herlihy
    Writers:Allan Balter, William Read Woodfield

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  16. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 16 - The Reluctant Dragon
    7.2/10(377 votes)

    #16 - The Reluctant Dragon

    S1:E16

    Dr. Cherlotov, a scientist of an enemy power, failed to defect to the West when his wife did. Now that he has developed a cheap, effective anti-ballistic system, the IMF are ordered to get him out. Unfortunately, they find out that Cherlotov doesn't wasn't to defect: he merely wants to convince his superiors he is loyal and live out his life.

    Director:Leonard Horn
    Writer:Chester Krumholz

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  17. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 17 - The Frame
    7.7/10(424 votes)

    #17 - The Frame

    S1:E17

    Gangster Jack Wellman is moving syndicated crime into politics, killing off certain politicians and replacing them with men more sympathetic to the Syndicate.

    Director:Allen H. Miner
    Writer:Unknown

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  18. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 18 - The Trial
    7.6/10(400 votes)

    #18 - The Trial

    S1:E18

    Josef Varsh plans to put an American on trial on false charges, discredit the West, and gain power.

    Director:Lewis Allen
    Writer:Laurence Heath

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  19. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 19 - The Diamond
    7.4/10(389 votes)

    #19 - The Diamond

    S1:E19

    Henrik Durvard has taken over the country of Lombounda by military coup, and holds the natives in terror. He has obtained a diamond from the native miners, and the IMF are assigned to take it away from him.

    Director:Robert Douglas
    Writers:Allan Balter, William Read Woodfield

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  20. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 20 - The Legend
    7.4/10(430 votes)

    #20 - The Legend

    S1:E20

    An imprisoned member of the Nazi party, Herbert Raynor, is released from prison and is being flown (along with his daughter) to Puerto Huberra in South America, along with other Nazis. All of them are being flown there by an unknown benefactor.

    Director:Richard Benedict
    Writer:Mann Rubin

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  21. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 21 - Snowball in Hell
    7.5/10(386 votes)

    #21 - Snowball in Hell

    S1:E21

    A former prison guard, Sefra, has got hold of a supply of cesium 138, which explodes at temperatures above 70 degrees. Sefra plans to sell the sample and the formula from the closed-down prison base where he once worked.

    Director:Lee H. Katzin
    Writers:Robert Guy Barrows, Judith Barrows

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  22. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 22 - The Confession
    7.4/10(379 votes)

    #22 - The Confession

    S1:E22

    Andreas Solowiechek, a member of a Communist trade delegation, is arrested after assassinating a U.S. Senator, Townsend. Townsend's backer, McMillan, is rallying his supporters for the U.S. to break off all trade talks with the Russians.

    Director:Herschel Daugherty
    Writers:Allan Balter, William Read Woodfield

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  23. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 23 - Action!
    7.3/10(385 votes)

    #23 - Action!

    S1:E23

    Miklos Klaar, an Iron Curtain filmmaker, has film of American soldiers and plans to edit it into an atrocity movie to discredit the U.S.

    Director:Leonard Horn
    Writer:Robert Lewin

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  24. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 24 - The Train
    8.1/10(441 votes)

    #24 - The Train

    S1:E24

    Prime Minister Larya of Svardia is working to establish democracy, but is unaware that his personal protégé, Deputy Premier Pavel, plans to set up a dictatorship. The team must persuade Larya of Pavel's plans.

    Director:Ralph Senensky
    Writers:Allan Balter, William Read Woodfield

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  25. Mission: Impossible Season 1 Episode 25 - Shock
    7.5/10(369 votes)

    #25 - Shock

    S1:E25

    Enemy operative Kiri has kidnapped U.S. envoy Carl Wilson and has an imposter, Gort, who is impersonating him to discredit a U.S. trade agreement. The team have to rescue Wilson and foil the impersonation before Kiri kills Wilson.

    Director:Lee H. Katzin
    Writer:Laurence Heath

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Season 1 Ratings Summary

"Pilot" is the best rated episode of "Mission: Impossible" season 1. It scored 7.7/10 based on 829 votes. Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski and written by Bruce Geller, it aired on 9/17/1966. This episode is rated 0.4 points higher than the second-best, "Memory".