When their own computer expert Barney Collier (Greg Morris), is exposed to a deadly chemical and falls into enemy hands, the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) is compelled to enlist the help of a computer hacker who has dropped out of society in order to prevent an unnamed, Soviet-supplied Middle Eastern regime from developing chemical weapons.

Jerome Carlin (Christopher Connelly) is portrayed as a stereotypical computer genius who has turned his back on the corruption of big government and industry in order to travel with his girlfriend ("sunning, loving and loafing") around the Middle East. The IMF agent (Leslie Ann Warren) who tries to recruit him attempts to mobilize his anti-Vietnam War sentiment by comparing the chemical agent that is being manufactured to those used in Southeast Asia. When this fails, she shifts tactics to demonstrate the team's mastery of data, showing him a computerized personnel dossier that includes so much personal detail it could only have been compiled by "that monster under the Pentagon." When Carlin again refuses to cooperate, the IMF offers a large payoff (which he also rejects), then ultimately resorts to coercion, planting drugs on his girlfriend and giving him no choice but to believe he is acting as a double agent on behalf of the Soviet-backed regime.

This episode may therefore be understood as posing a pro-establishment critique of the libertarian critique of computation. Although he is initially resistant to working for a quasi-governmental organization such as the IMF, the hacker eventually capitulates, discarding his countercultural attire, lifestyle and long hair to impersonate a clean-cut, security-cleared computer technician. The hacker's disaffected, apolitical rejectionism is ultimately revealed to be shallow and self-serving compared to the professional dedication of the IMF team, who succeed in rescuing Barney and destroying both the chemical weapons and the computer formula used to create them. In the end, Carlin renounces his cynicism and affirms the mission and tactics of the IMF before being reunited with his girlfriend.

The high-tech fetishism of the 1990s film franchise Mission Impossible was already well established in the TV series that ran from 1966 to 1973. Unlike the nearly concurrent Mannix (1967-75), which was also produced by Desilu, Mission Impossible was unquestioningly devoted to the power and potential of technology to effectively serve the interests of government, industry and the individual. The libertarian critique offered by Mannix is likewise unwavering in its stand against technology. Indeed Mannix's personal messiness and lurid indulgence in the bodily pleasures of a "ladies' man" stands in sharp contrast with the machinelike precision of the IMF team and its righteously justified quasi-governmental missions. The female members of IMF likewise exist primarily as instruments of loveless seduction and sexually charged manipulation in service to a larger system of intricately synchronized parts. The show's creator, Bruce Geller, was famously opposed to character development that would allow for personal relationships or backstories for members of the IMF, preferring to keep the show's focus on mission operations.

A key to virtually all operations of the IMF is surveillance. But except for rare characters such as Carlin who are destined for shame and capitulation, there is no hint of the potentially troubling aspects of the team's spying or documenting of targets using any available technological means. Again, in contrast with the libertarian critique of surveillance repeatedly posed by Mannix, surveillance for the IMF requires neither warrant nor due process. As long as the mission proves not to be as impossible as the show's title might suggest, means come in a distant second to ends. In the last analysis, TV's Mission Impossible demonstrates how easily techno-fetishism can become techno-fascism.

Comment on this page