Episode
Mission: Impossible: The Contender (1)
Overview
Charles Buckman is attempting to gain a stranglehold on all professional and amateur sports. If successful, the U.S. will be discredited in the world athletic community. Buckman is working with Syndicate man Dan Whelan. The IMF must eliminate them. Barney takes a crash course in boxing and impersonates Richy Lamoine. Barney-as-Richy announces a comeback, and Buckman forces manager-Rollin to sign with him. Meanwhile, Jim gets a job with Whelan. But as he sneaks through an access tunnel to get to Whelan's office, Whelan and his men come down the tunnel...
Details
- Series
- Mission: Impossible
- Season
- Season 3
- Episode
- Episode 2
- Air date
- 1968-10-06
Episode context
The Contender (1) is Episode 2 in Season 3 of Mission: Impossible. It aired on 1968-10-06.
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Episode 1: The Heir Apparent
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.
Episode 3: The Contender (2)
Jim manages to avoid Whelan by hiding in the tunnel pipes overhead. He gets access to a list of Whelan's bookies. Meanwhile, Barney-as-Richy fights his way through a series of matches, helped by a concealed gas emitter in the ring beneath his opponents' corner. Finally Barney faces Buckman's champ Staczek, with orders to take a dive. He knocks out Staczek against Buckman's orders, leaving Buckman to be bankrupted covering the bets.
More episodes from this season
Episode 4: The Mercenaries
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.
Episode 5: The Execution
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.
Episode 6: The Cardinal
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...
Episode 7: The Elixir
Riva Santel is the recent widow of the President of San Cordova. Deputy Premier Avilla plans to announce free elections but Riva will declare herself dictator in a coup. The IMF must stop her. Pretending to be a film crew, the IMF team gets in. Hostess Cinnamon fakes a collapse and the guys comment on her age. Rollin as a plastic surgeon comes in and Riva finds out Cinnamon is actually seventy years old. She insists on surgery for herself. Since the surgery can only be done on the night of the speech, she has herself taped by her own camera crew. Barney and Willy get hold of the tape footage, reedit it, and switch the IMF tape for Riva's. Riva is sedated during the speech and so her men use the tape. When she awakens, her face in bandages, she is shocked to hear ""herself"" announcing her retirement. While Cinnamon disguised as old-Riva conspicuously leaves the country, Riva takes off the bandages to find she has her wish: she is now a younger woman...with a totally different face.
Episode 8: The Diplomat
Information on U.S. missile control centers has been stolen and turned over to Valentin Yetkoff, military attache and agent of an enemy power. The IMF must keep Yetkoff from confirming the information and in fact lead him to believe it is false. They go after Yetkoff's main man, The IMF recruit a Presidential aid and his wife Susan, and Susan woos Toland and lets him see she and her husband have top-secret papers relating to the missile centers. Toland kills Susan with an overdose and photographs the papers, but the IMF revives her just in time. Phelps presents himself to Yetkoff as one of the agents' underlings and gives Yetkoff proof that the stolen information is correct. Yetkoff finds out Jim is isn't who he pretends to be and believes therefore the information must be incorrect. When Toland presents his own proof that the stolen information is correct, Yetkoff believes he is an enemy U.S. agent and has him killed, then informs his superiors the information they stole is false.
Episode 9: The Play
Milos Kuro, minister of culture has been using propaganda to discredit his premier, Leon Vados. Vados is a progressive trying to negotiate a nonagression pact with the U.S. When in the U.S. Kuro witnesses a play written by Cinnamon that undermines Vados and the U.S. He arranges to have it staged in his country. But Cinnamon and Rollin leak the play's existence to Vados. Vados attends a rehersal and is seated beneath a special radar disk that creates a sound envelope so that Vados hears only the special dialogue the IMF has created that makes Vados out to look like a fool. Vados has Kuro arrested.
Episode 10: The Bargain
An exiled general, Neyron, is living in his private estate in Florida. He's cut a deal with Frank Layton, a Syndicate man. In return for a big payoff of several million dollars to finance his coup, Neyron will let Layton have all gambling rights in his country when he returns to power in Surananka. Rollin and Jim (as a billionaire financier and his aide) try to buy out Layton's hotel, but Layton finds out it's a ploy to distract Rollin from cutting a deal with Neyron over the Surananka gambling rights. Meanwhile, Barney, Willy, and Cinnamon are on Neyron's kitchen staff and use IMF wizardry to convince him he has a disease that lets him predict the future. Neyron then foresees his murder thanks to a projection of Rollin-as-Layton and shoots Layton as he arrives to confront the general.
Episode 11: The Freeze
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
Episode 12: The Exchange
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.
Episode 13: The Mind of Stefan Miklos
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