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I picked up S4 at Best Buy today and promptly watched "The Code." I'd always remembered Nimoy's Che Guevera impression, but I was put off at how they came up with a weak and insiginifcant Cinnamon replacement for that episode in Alexandra Hay who was given almost nothing to do, and maybe I got distracted a bit, but did they ever make provisions for her to get out??
The episode was a good spotlight for Nimoy but I agree with Patrick White's book that it was not a good episode to open the season with.
Apart from Leonard Nimoy's fun performance and Stuart Hagmann's tricky film-making (tilted, low, high, upside down, hand held camera shots), the drama is limited. First appearance of Paris is fine, except for those of us who missed Rollin. The exotic Central American revolutionary imagery adds a special charm to this episode thanks to Gerald Fried’s outrageous latin score filled with a trumpet and an UNCLEian harpsichord.
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I got through "The Controllers" today and it was interesting that White says that at this point the production team still hadn't considered Landau and Bain gone for good. In a way that explains an interesting bit of staging in the dossier scene where we see Phelps cast aside two pictures that we never see the faces of, like in the past. Subliminally, I found myself thinking he was discarding the pictures of Rollin and Cinnamon for this mission!
Dina Merrill really comes off too much like an emergency stand-in for Barbara Bain in the episode, and not really given a chance to show some distinctiveness in the episode IMO. The producers should have just made the clean break from the beginning and gone with Lee Meriwether outright.
There were potitics during MISSION season 4, two sides:
1. Creator and writer/producer Bruce Geller
2. Paramount executive Douglas Cramer
Geller selected Lee Meriwether as a Cinnamon replacement but Cramer refused cold hence the show over-used guest female IMFers which worked against the show.
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Here come the seventies! I can already see traces of those "Mod" fashions creeping into M:I, I think 1969-72 was the period for those Neo-Edwardian stylings like those of Lord Brett Sinclair on The Persuaders!. On M:I, Nimoy sports longish sideburns and a hair helmet, as well as an ascot, and Jim had on a plaid sportscoat over a white turtleneck.
Wait for the revisionists seasons.
Season 5 introduced the new "hip" and young look and season 6 and 7 were outrageously 1970's: pay attention to Jim's tape scenes in which he carries fancy and funky sunglasses and outré suits. At this stage, MISSION looked like IRONSIDE.
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