Episode
Mission: Impossible: Butterfly (aka Poor Butterfly)
Overview
Toshio Masaki, a powerful anti-American industrialist, kills his sister and frames her husband, an American businessman named Harry Kellem, so as to discredit America and discredit the Economic Council. Paris and Willy enter as a Kabuki artist and a fighter (along with Jim) while Barney and Dana sneak into the grounds and restage the murder as they believe it occurred but with no way of knowing how it ended well enough to convince Musaki. To create a distraction, Willy must engage in a fight with Osaki, Moshio's supposedly-unbeatable champion. Once the film is made Dana tries to blackmail Masaki and then Kellem's daughter Nobu. Paris tips the police to Dana's negotiations with Musaki and they show up as Musaki screens the film as Dana escapes (with Willy's help). Musaki panics and rips the film from the projector before it ends at the spot where the team couldn't recreate him performing the murder, thus confessing his guilt.
Details
- Series
- Mission: Impossible
- Season
- Season 5
- Episode
- Episode 7
- Air date
- 1970-10-31
Episode context
Butterfly (aka Poor Butterfly) is Episode 7 in Season 5 of Mission: Impossible. It aired on 1970-10-31.
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Episode 6: My Friend, My Enemy
A Communist agent, Karl Maur, spots Paris on vacation, knocks him out and turns him over to Dr. Tabor, who is a brain specialist and mind control expert. Unable to break Paris, Tabor blanks out Paris' memories and uses an implanted electrode to program him to attack Jim by convincing the disguise expert Jim represents an authority figure, similar to the ones he has lost two women to in the past. Doug and Jim find nothing wrong with him, but Barney finds fingerprints pointing to Maur and Jim delays reporting to the Secretary and tries to find out what's going on with Paris. Paris is befriended by a Communist agent working with Tabor - Tabor murders her and makes it set up as if Jim did it. Paris attacks Jim but snaps out of it when Jim's life is threatened and turns against Tabor.
Episode 8: Decoy
Anna Kerkoska plans to defect with a list of American agents given to her by her father, the late Premier. Her brother Alexi also plans to defect, but it's actually a plan to grab the list, turn it over to Police Chief Petrovitch, and sell out his sister. Jim and Dana pretend to be a publisher brother-and-sister team and Paris kidnaps Dana to fake-force Jim to kidnap Anna for the Americans. Petrovitch and Alexi let the plan go ahead, while Jim becomes romantically involved with Anna. The bad guys overhear Jim "confess" how he is going to smuggle Anna out of the country, unaware its a ploy to draw them away from the real means of escape via a mini-race car in the back of the hearse - Jim and Anna use it to bypass the mined security gate and exit the country.
More episodes from this season
Episode 5: Flight
Presidente Rojas plans to give a speech to the U.S. Congress while his Chief of Internal Security Ferrar plans a takeover and sends an assassin known only as Plato (and known only to Ferrar) to kill the Presidente before he gives his speech. The IMF must find out who Plato is and thwart the assassination. Ferrar follows Rojas to the U.S. where the IMF fake a plane crash - when Ferrar wakes up he is on an uncharted island colony inhabited by the prisoners from a missing penal ship. Paris pretends to be a double-agent working for Ferrar that the Chief knows of but never met. Paris reveals his plan to escape and convinces Ferrar that Plato plans a double-cross. When the other ""prisoners"" come after them, Ferrar is forced to hold them off so Paris can go off to thwart Plato, whose identity Ferrar reveals. Paris gets the information to the team in Washington just in time to stop the assassination.
Episode 9: The Amateur
The team must steal a rocket laser and smuggle out Father Bernard and his list of Western operatives. Bernard puts the IMF in contact with Wittstock, who gets them the laser. Wittstock is killed after delivering the weapon and Police Colonel Eckert seals up the country to capture the IMF. Bernard dies of a stroke but gets the list, but nightclub owner Eric Schilling saw Dana with Wittstock and tries to take advantage of the situation to profit. When Barney splits the laser into five parts for the team to smuggle out of the country, Schilling gets hold of Dana's part and the team has to get the part from Schilling while escaping through the heavily-guarded airport. Paris in disguise buys the part from Schilling, leaving him to be captured by Eckert while Paris drops the disguise to escape, leaving the part to be recovered by the rest of the team. Then the IMF secretly blend in with an arriving broadcast crew from England just as the crew are told their visas have been revoked - the IMF
Episode 4: Homecoming
When Jim returns to his hometown of Norville to donate family property to the community, he finds it plagued by a serial killer. Jim secretly brings in Barney to help investigate. A disturbed Vietnam vet is the suspected killer but Jim and Barney figure out he's innocent and get him out of jail one step ahead of a mob, then call in the rest of the IMF team to find the real killer.
Episode 10: Hunted
A mission to rescue a South African dissident goes awry when Doug and his white assistant get the man out of the hospital, but the assistant is shot in the leg. Separated from the rest of the IMF team, the assistant staggers into a shop where a deaf girl discovers the man is Barney in a mask. The rest of the team gets the dissident out of the country and then goes back for Barney. To draw off the police, Paris pretends to be a limping white man, but is injured for real by two men trying to capture him. Meanwhile, the wounded Barney discovers the girl, Maryana, was rendered psychosomatically deaf when her father, one of the dissident's co-workers, was shot by the government. Pretending to be policeman, Doug and Jim manage to track down Barney, and with the girl make a run for a helicopter to escape over the border. Before they can do so, they need to rendezvous with the wounded Paris and rescue him too.
Episode 3: The Innocent
In the Middle East Willy and Barney infiltrate a chemical plant to gain access to Dehominant-B, a quick-acting lethal gas. Barney is exposed to Dehominant-A while trying to get to the computer and crippled - Willy escapes and Barney is captured. Barney is interrogated and only has four hours to live. The team find out that Dr. Jerry Carlin, a dropout, is the only other person with the skills to access the computer. When Carlin rejects the team's appeal for help, Jim and Paris frame Carlin's girlfriend and threaten to keep her in jail unless he helps them. Dana provides a distract and Paris takes the head scientist Vazan's place and have Barney first fake a confession implicating the technicians and then his own death - they get Barney to the autopsy room where Doug revives him in the nick of time. Jim and Carlin take the incriminated technicians' place and Carlin manages to ruin the Dehominant and erase the computer, then everyone escapes with Vazan.
Episode 11: The Rebel
The IMF must rescue three scientists in a dictatorial country and destroy their notes. They rescue two but the third one, Khora refuses to leave and is executed. Jim and Dana meet with his son Alex (a rebel leader) to get his notes and Dana is captured by the militia along with Alex's girlfriend, who has memorized the doctor's notes. Barney and Doiug parachute in with a giant hollow religious statue that Jim uses to get close enough to dig into the prison while Paris, pretending to be an Intelligence officer, plays the militia leader, Bakram, against the people. When Bakram discovers that the prisoners have escaped he destroys the statue, further enraging the country's people against him while the team make his escape.
Episode 2: Flip Side
The IMF must break up a drug-smuggling ring - Bracken gets his drugs from Mexico compliments of Diego Maximillian, who gets his drugs legally from C.W. Cameron. The IMF must connect Cameron to Bracken. Jim plays a Syndicate man who orders the pills from Bracken, and Barney tracks the shipment and switches out the drugs. The team has Maximillian picked up in Mexico so that Bracken has to go directly to Cameron to buy the drugs - the IMF get everything on camera and turn them both over to the authorities.
Episode 12: Squeeze Play (aka Sicily)
Albert Zembra, head of the Mediterranean branch of the Syndicate, is dying of cancer and plans on passing his list of opium farms to his chosen successor. He plans on turning power over to Carlos Empori, engaged to his granddaughter. Paris poses as a mobster and old friend of Eve's and "renews" his friendship with her, while Phelps, as Zembra's rival, warns Carlos that Paris plans to take over. Barney stages a fake assassination on Zembra, thwarting Carlos' security and making him look incompetent, then Paris and Paris-as-Zembra stage a conversation to make Carlos believe Zembra will give power to Paris. Carlos helps Jim kidnap Eve, but the plan goes awry when Eve reveals she knows Paris is a fake. Paris puts his life on the line by counting on her silence to complete the plot. Eve stays silent, Carlos is set up as a traitor to Zembra, and the dying mobster turns the information over to Paris.
Episode 1: The Killer
Hired killer Eddie Lorca does everything randomly, making him impossible to anticipate. The IMF must find out who his boss, Scorpio, is and all they know is Lorca is arriving in town for an assignment - they don't know who he's going up against. The team creates a ""blank"" hotel and Paris as a cabdriver intercepts Lorca at the airport. Paris and Willy have to stall when it takes more time to set up the hotel then it takes according to the phone book to get to ""their"" hotel. They then put the room number Lorca randomly chooses on the bugged room they have set up. They intercept Lorca's call to his contact, and Paris-as-Lorca meets her instead to find out the target. Dana then delivers the contract to Lorca using the information Paris obtained. The target is a black union leader, and Barney must take the man's place. Lorca eludes surveillance and almost kills Barney with a planted explosive, but Jim figures things out just in time. The team then fake Dana's death, and she gives a dying-b
Episode 13: The Hostage
After completing a mission Paris is undercover as an American businessman and still in disguise when he is kidnapped by Latin American revolutionaries led by terrorist Robert Siomney - they ask for the release of three prisoners in return for Paris' life. Paris fakes a disease forcing the government to drop medication, which the IMF has planted a tracking device in. Once they know where the revolutionaries' compound is, Jim fakes the exceution of two of the prisoners, putting pressure on the revolutionary leader Jorge Cabal since his son Luis is the third prisoner. Dana poses as Luis' girlfriend to get close to Jorge so Siomney orders her covert death to keep Jorge on track - Barney takes the killer's place and rescues Dana. Then Jim fakes Luis' death as well - Barney fake-kills Paris and then they reveal that Luis got a last-minute reprieve. With nothing else to bargain with, Jorge turns over Siomney, Barney in disguise, and the ""dead"" Paris in return for the government commuting his