Saturday 5 January 2013

Mission: Impossible S4E07 - The Submarine

Mission: Impossible, Season 4, Episode 7: The Submarine - This has to be one of the hottest MI episodes that there are, with both Peter Graves and Leonard Nimoy looking quite ravishing - and with a devious and cunning plot to boot, involving a fake submarine and a lot of play-acting, all to get the number of a Swiss bank account out of ex-SS officer Kruger Stelman. The Communists who are holding him haven't been able to get the information out of in in twenty years or so. Will Jim and his team manage? (Of course they will!)


You know it’s going to be good from this point in...



Jim, I can see right up your nose...



For some reason I feel like he looks like a little schoolboy as he delves in the box and takes out the envelope and tape player.



You can see as he listens to the brief that he’s already plotting some kind of devilish plan to find the Nazi gold...



He strokes Lee Meriwether’s (playing Tracey) picture a little as he pulls it out of his file, and tosses onto the desk with the pleased look of a man who’s looking forward to post-mission celebrations... But then again, he strokes the picture for the Hartford Repertory Company, too...



Don’t they all look lovely in their grey and black toned clothing through that see through map?



More to the point, doesn’t Jim look lovely?



Not to overlook Paris in his silk neckerchief (cravat?) and Lee Meriwether looking rather lovely. She may be thinking of saying ‘I am for you, Spock,’ as she walks towards him with outstretched arms. (You need to be a Star Trek fan for that one...)



Look at that. It’s a reflection of Willy in a puddle, atop some kind of castellations. Now isn’t that lovely?



The enemy get to drive through the back-lots of Paramount (otherwise known as the ‘warehouse district.’)



Tracey’s made up to look worse for wear, but she still looks amazing.



And then an extra gets to utter the immortal words, ‘Get ready for trouble. There’s a monk here. He’s run a truck full of cheese across the road.’
We have Paris-Monk.



But we also have Jim-Monk! Two guys, two truck loads of cheese, a whole lot of trouble. Unbeknownst to the enemy, it’s a cheesey, monkish ruse, and Herr Stelman, their target, is being spirited away between the two trucks...



Jim looks hot as a cheese-wielding monk.



Paris looks pretty hot too.



What a strange job it must be as an actor, to be a spy dressed in a cheese-loving monk’s habit over the top of SS or Navy uniform, as you pelt down the streets of the Paramount lot on your way to a fake submarine. They disappear into a warehouse and the enemy can’t find them anywhere – but we don’t care about screencaps of the enemy because they’re not pretty like our heroes are.



Tracey doesn’t look so pretty now, but she does a cracking job as a dying woman.



This is where the hotness gets ramped up, with Jim as a submarine commander, all in black with a nice hat and a German accent which sounds rather Norwegian. Yum.



Willy doesn’t look bad, either, even if he does have ribbons on the back of his hat.  He’s being a strong and silent seaman type this episode, and doesn’t take kindly to Stelman touching him.



Let’s have a little more of that hotness. There’s a lot of him ducking through small hatches and stooping for the periscope in this one.


Paris really is looking good in this episode. Brown suits him, and so does that flop of hair over his forehead.


Jim just looks... Oh my god... *melts* Not only does he look lovely, but he’s doing such a lovely accent and being generally stern and terse with everyone on board. Mmm, domineering Jim :-)



They’re looking at each other, deciding who looks the hottest.



Just because it seems unfair to blank them completely, here’s a shot of the Communist guys on their hunt for Stelman. They think he must have been taken out of the city – to somewhere just outside of Los Angeles, it seems.



I think they got their map of the city from the same place Jim got his, except theirs is lying down whereas Jim’s was vertical. I love the tiny Monopoly style vehicles, though.



Paris is being an intense and cruel SS officer here who doesn’t care that Tracey’s character is dying – just that she needs to tell them what information she might have passed on. He’s looking rather Spockish here.



He even raises his eyebrow...



Gratuitous picture of Jim looking pretty again.



He’s a hard bastard who is prepared to put a still-living woman in the torpedo tube and flush her out into the sea – but by God he looks good doing it.



I like a man who can carry a full-grown woman and make it look easy. And he looks beautifully young here, too, even if he isn’t.



Finally we get a bit of Barney-action again, and see the submarine for what it really is. I love Mission: Impossible for this. We get to see all the tricks that the studios use to convince us of the reality of their constructions.



Tracey may be in the middle of a mission, but she’s damned if she’s going to look bad doing it. The first thing she did on getting out of the torpedo tube was to pull off her wig, and now she’s putting on some make up. I suppose there’s some logic to this. She might be making herself look presentable for the escape, perhaps.



We get to see Paris flashing a little flesh to ‘prove’ he’s SS.



Unfortunately Jim doesn’t do the same (he’d have to take his whole jumper off too, I think) because he’s supposed to be regular navy.



Jim is fake-worried about fake-depth charges.



Paris is fake-worried too.



Das Boot is tilting! Everyone is fake-worried, except Stelman, who is presumably real-worried. You can see Willy’s ribbons down the back of his neck, now.



Oh, Jim, those eyes... Even with no sky to reflect in them, how blue they are...



Barney and Tracey are doing an exemplary job at controlling the fake-submarine. You have to wonder just how they managed to get all that equipment in there without anyone suspecting anything. Plywood, hydraulics, paint, the interior parts for almost an entire submarine. (I know, we don’t ask these sorts of questions of the MI team.)



Yes, almost all of this screencapping involves an admiration of how beautiful Jim’s eyes are.



The same could be said for Paris, but I like them better on Spock.



Jim has sexy boots. He’s just kicked Willy down the hatch into the pump room and locked it behind him, because he’s a hard-ass bastard. One by one, they’re getting everyone out of the sub. Now it’s just him, Paris, and Stelman. It’s probably good, because Willy’s German accent was a little painful to listen to.



His next hard-ass manoeuvre (ironically his character’s name is Hartman) is to shove Paris into the airlock with a load of floatable debris to convince the ‘destroyer’ that’s supposedly attacking them they they’ve been destroyed.



Soggy Paris. It rained the last (and only) time I was in Paris, too.



What fun it must be being an actor.



Tracey and Barney look concerned at Paris’s yells. Either it’s to remind us that they’re not really hard-asses, or else they really are worried that he might come to harm in the airlock.



A final glimpse of waterlogged Paris.



But he’s out safely, and flashes them a grin to show he’s all right.



Suddenly I’m caught by how blonde Jim’s eyebrows look.



The Monopoly noose is closing in. They’ve bought Park Lane and Mayfair and built hotels on both of them. Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200.



Jim determines that the sub will never get off the bottom and takes his cap off preparatory to donning a buoyancy jacket. Somehow he looks naked without that hat. I’m not complaining.



He doesn’t look so naked with the buoyancy jacket on, but I’m still not complaining.



Jim’s a seaman, not a politician. And McCoy is a doctor, not a bricklayer. What Jim is, is a genius. He has Stelman begging him to take the number of the back account to prove he never cracked under interrogation. Jim, I bow to you.



Look at the stoical face. Stelman is repeating the number at him, desperate for him to take it. Jim gets into the airlock without a flicker. He’s in a bit of a hurry – presumably to get out before the Communist lot find them, now he’s got the number, but Stelman never suspects a thing.



Barney has a piece of equipment we should all envy. A really well-sharpened pencil.


Jim. In his escape gear. Getting wet. Mmmm.


There’s bits of what looks like toilet paper in that water. Disturbing.



Jim has wet, shiny ass-ness. :-)



Yes, Jim is very wet.



Still wet, and rather tenderly hugging his towel with his cheek.



Now dry, Jim is bending over in a rather sexy uniform. Good lord.



Oh yes. It’s all a ruse, of course. Paris pretends to have been shot so that the team can pretend to rush him to a hospital, and escape. Good team.



Willy’s not looking bad in his uniform, either.



They slip into the van, and we have a brief glimpse of Nimoy-rump. This is a rich, rich episode.



Everyone’s in, and off they go. Slick job, boys.



Stelman’s face when he realises he’s been had, and has given up the information he’s kept for 25 years.



Sardner, the Communist interrogation expert’s face when he realises he’s been had too.


The end. I wish we could have finished on a nice shot of Jim, but we didn’t do badly, what with cheesy monks and hot submarine attire and wetness and ass.

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