"The Golden Serpent (Parts 1 & 2): Mission Impossible '88 Review

So what the heck is Mission: Impossible '88? It's an odd historical remnant of Paramount, and a sequel to the original series of the 60s and 70s. It came about when there was a threatened writers' strike in '88. Somebody had the bright idea at Paramount that "Hey, we have all of these scripts from twenty years ago. The writers won't work for us, so let's just recycle the old scripts that we legally own."

Some kind of sequel to the highly-popular 60s series had been trying to get up steam for quite a while anyway. Originally, Paramount wanted to bring back the original cast, including Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, and Peter Lupus. They got Peter Graves, but it was a no-go on most of the others. They did get Phil Morris, a relative unknown at the time and the son of the ailing Greg Morris, to play Grant Collier, the son of Greg Morris' character from the original series.

They even managed to get Greg Morris as Barney Collier to appear as a Special Guest Star three times, of which two are parts 1 and 2 of "The Golden Serpent".

Landau, Bain, and Lupus were too old by '88 to play the main characters in a show. There was some consideration of the idea the original characters would be recast. But (thankfully) the producers realized no one would accept that. So they had Peter Graves as Jim Phelps lead up a new team, consisting of the aforementioned technical genius Grant Collier; actor and disguise artist Nicholas Black (Thaao Penghlis); soldier Max Harte (Antony "Tony" Hamilton); and femme fatale Casey Randall (Terry Markwell).

Markwell didn't prove that good an actress, and they soon killed her off and replaced her with Jane Badler as Shannon Reed, a former TV journalist and a similar femme fatale. However, to confuse matters, they got Lynda Day George to guest star, she had played "Casey" in the original series. To avoid confusion with Casey Randall, they retconned George's character name to Lisa Casey. Even though no one called her "Lisa" in the original series.

The creative team moved the show's production to Australia. Besides giving the Down under film industry a boost pre-Lord of the Rings, the change in locale gave the show more of an international flavor. With the aid of some screen mattes, the creative team could set missions in Tibet, Africa, Germany, Hawaii, Africa, and Greece among other locales. Including Australia itself.

Four of the first five episodes were remakes of original series episodes: "The Killer", "The System", "The Condemned", and "The Legacy". Some of them were better than the originals, some were worse. But then the writers' strike got resolved and Paramount decided to keep the series going but with new scripts. They had Lalo Schifrin do an updated version of his iconic theme, and intentionally or otherwise, used elements from the original series. The IM, or IM Force, got a lot more name checks and the organization logo tended to appear on everything. They got Bob Johnson, who had done the voice of the tape guy, to do the voice of the (updated) laser disc guy for Jim's briefings for the mission.

Unfortunately, they dumbed down the show a bit from the 60s. The plots weren't as intricate, and the writers spent a larger chunk of onscreen time having the team explain to each other what they were doing, or going to do, or had already done. They also decided to end many of the episodes with Jim making some kind of "witty" comment that rarely was. Gone were the days when the IM team would hop in a van and drive off.

There were also at least two episodes that dealt with previous missions and IM internal issues: "Spy" and "Reprisal". The former featured a Russian spy that had gone up against Jim before in an adventure we never saw. "Reprisal" featured an IMF scientist/consultant who got a concussion and turned into a serial killer. Besides doing a Hannibal Lector impression, the guy set out to frame Jim for the murder of his former female agents (including the aforementioned Lynda Day George as "Lisa Casey") by donning a Jim Phelps mask. There was also a bigger emphasis on fighting and explosions and shootouts.

If that sounds a bit like the later Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible movies, that's because it does. In many ways the '88 series paved the way for the movies. And that brings us to "The Golden Serpent", the new series' only two-parter. It was the season premiere for the revival's second and last season, running from '89 through '90.

First we get a teaser of an IM agent infiltrating a submarine base belonging to Prince Selimun of some fictional country. The agent screws up and Selimun's henchman Baal kills him with some impressive looking super-shuriken. After the opening credits we go to Jim getting his briefing. He's informed the dead guy was the leader of another IM team, and another team member has infiltrated Selimun's operation. What happened to the rest of the team, we never find out. Jim's mission, if he decides to accept it, is to find out the boss of the Golden Serpent, the heroin-distributing criminal organization Selimun works for.

Selimun is operating out of the vicinity of Australia, and the mission proper starts with the IM team already there using a boat as their base of operations. Jim conveniently explains the game plan: Selimun murdered his older twin brother at the age of 9 so that Selimun would inherit the throne. The IMF is going to use that, and turn Selimun against the Golden Serpent and vice versa.

We find out Barney is the undercover operative. Greg Morris had already appeared in season 1 in "The Condemned". Here we find out he came out of retirement to become an IM agent again, and is working undercover as Selimun's lackey, or the Serpent's lackey, or something. It isn't clear. The team infiltrates Selimun's party and Grant slips Barney a 3-D scanner. Selimun's security captures this on camera, and Selimun has his man torture Barney for information using a rather cheesy laser device that shoots laser beams through Barney's eyes and into his brain. Yes, it's just as stupid looking as it sounds.

Grant and Max have to sneak into Selimun's grotto and swap out the heroin, which is being shipped in fake vitamin C bottles Barney made a 3-D photo of using the scanner. Barney manages to escape and let them in, but he's in too bad a shape for Grant to take with them and son is forced to leave his father to die.

Meanwhile, Shannon claims she has information for Selimun about his twin brother who is still alive and plans to kill him. Jim and Nicholas pose as members of the Serpent and stage a scene with Shannon where it looks like she's turning against the Serpent and they're not too thrilled with it. This ends up with Selimun being called in to give a speech at Sydney Opera House since he's a humanitarian. The IMF set up squibs on the stage and Jim triggers them from the crowd while Max sits on a nearby bridge and fakes shooting at Selimun.

Unfortunately, the plan goes awry when it turns out Baal has a helicopter and cuts off Max's escape. They run through the bridge girders and Baal throws a lot of shuriken at Max. Eventually they fight and Max pulls a shuriken out of his leg and kills Baal with it. But then the helicopter knocks Max off the bridge to a long fall into the water below that will surely kill him. Oh no! And this is part of what I mean about how the new M:I is a different concept than the original. You would never gotten Peter Lupus (or anyone else) running around ducking a pseudo-ninja and then having a fistfight.

That's the end of part 1. In part 2, it turns out Max had a parachute beneath his coat. He drops into the waiting speedboat piloted by Grant, and a speedboat chase ensues. Which is another of those things they pretty much never did in the original series. Grant does some nifty piloting and the bad guys hit some sort of floating derrick and blow up absurdly real good.

In part 2, the team goes after the head of the Golden Serpent, Conrad Drago. Who seems to be no relation to Drago in Rocky IV. We saw Drago briefly in part 1, along with his sidekicks "Big Blonde" who has a penchant for a crossbow pistol, and a Colm Meaney-ish looking guy named Burrows.

Nicholas puts on a Selimun mask and poses as Selimun's twin brother Jahani, and tells Selimun he's working for the Golden Serpent and the organization wants Selimun dead and Jahani in his place. Selimun takes Shannon with him and she plants a bug in his phone. Drago and Selimun then have an encrypted conversation but Grant manages to hack it via the bug and by decrypting it using what they have of Selimun's voice on tape. Which makes sense, but seems more hacker-ish than M:I super-techish.

Selimun and Drago have one of those conversations where neither understands why the other is betraying him. Drago ends up having Big Blonde sneak on Selimun's yacht posing as one of his bikini girls, and she kills him and takes command.

Shannon breaks into a cabin and discovers Barney is still alive and Selimun took him along to interrogate him at his leisure. However, earlier she dropped her communicator into the ocean so she can't tell Grant his father is alive.

Jim and Nicholas run a scam on Drago, giving him back the heroin Grant and Max swapped out in part 1. They have Grant hack Drago's bank account (again more computer hackery rather than IMF tech wizardry) and transfer out all of his money, making it look like Selimun did it. J&N then go to Drago and offer to buy out his entire organization in return for all of the money Selimun stole from Drago. In what seems more like an M:I high –tech scheme, Grant has made a hologram of a gold vault and puts it at the bottom of the grotto along with a real gold ingot. When J&N bring Drago and Big Blonde down, they trigger the hologram and Max (posing as a guard, having knocked out the real guards) dives down and brings up the ingot. This convinces Drago J&N's deal is real and he shows them all of the Golden Serpent files, which Nicholas captures on a camera hidden in his lapel pin. But then Drago has Big Blonde shoot at Jim. Barney, who came along with Max and Shannon and has been hiding in the shadows, leaps out and takes the bolt meant for Jim.

Shannon fights Big Blonde and they fall into the grotto, and have a big ole soaking-wet catfight. Max initially has trouble fighting Drago, who appears to be at least 10 years his senior. But Max finally wins. Shannon wins as well but Big Blonde comes out of the water like Jason Voorhees and shoots at her. She hits the security laser switch instead, and for some reason it causes first Big Blonde, then the grotto, and then the whole house to blow up, killing Drago when the grotto collapses. The team escapes when Grant picks them up, Barney survives the bolt, Grant and Barney have a tearful reunion (and we never see Barney/Greg Morris again on the show), and Jim makes some supposedly witty remark about the serpent having lost its sting. Because... serpents sting people?

Phil Morris is probably the best part of the regular team, since Grant has a whole subplot of how his father was too busy on IMF missions to be with his family. The fact he's actually related to Greg Morris helps. Actor Antony Hamilton, who at one time was considered for the role of James Bond, always seems to be having a blast on the show. He gets to do James Bond type stuff on the bridge at the end of part 1, and even when he's doing something as bland as diving in for the gold ingot, he overacts like crazy.

Peter Graves gets a little bit of banter with Greg Morris, and he always manages to come across as mildly ominous. Thaao Penghlis and Jane Badler don't have much to do even in the two-part episode. Penghlis spends a fair amount of time either providing backup, playing the cabbage head so that someone can explain what the team is doing, or is "played" by Patrick Bishop, the actor who also plays Selimun. Since Nicholas is disguised as Selimun, they just do one of those cutaway mask-donning scenes and then Bishop steps in.

The episode isn't dissimilar to the James Bond movie The Living Daylights. The team takes on a drug organization and although there's a mention that it uses its profits to fund third-world country takeovers, it's not a world-threatening mission and the Golden Serpent is represented by Selimun and his band of low-rent thugs, and Drago and two of his henchmen. Selimun is the prince of a country (shouldn't he be king?), but all he does is cruise around on a yacht near Australia and spend all of his time dealing with his drug operation.

Technology doesn't age very well on TV. But the original M:I back in the 60s seems to have higher-tech gadgetry relevant to the 60s and the present day, than the new show does. Grant does some pretty standard computer hacking and voice decryption. His use of what is essentially a 3D printer is fairly cool.

There's also sloppy writing. For instance, Shannon drops the communicator. This serves no purpose other than to prevent her from telling Grant Barney is alive. A plot point that at the end of the day, makes no difference. Also, after Selimun's guards toss Barney in a room after his torture, they don't lock the door. Barney uses some kind of wristwatch transmitter to summon a nearby elevator. But then he just walks out of the room and hits the distracted guard over the head with a bowl. If they had invested in door locks, Barney would never have escaped.

"The Golden Serpent" plays like a cross between James Bond, the later M:I movies, and the later original M:I episodes where the team took on American gangsters rather than traveling to exotic locales and dealing with Communists and evil dictators. The stakes don't seem too high, and the Golden Serpent is never that threatening because they seem to be such a small organization. Drago sells the entire organization to J&N all on his own (doesn't he have partners?), and for what seems to be a relatively measly $5 million. Without Phil and Greg Morris bringing the whole father-and-son relationship, it'd be a pretty bland episode, even though it looks like they spent a bit more money on it as the season premiere and to try to ramp up the James Bond-ish elements.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

FYI, the series is officially available on DVD, if you want to watch "The Golden Serpent" or any other episode.