Dan Briggs Daniel "
Dan"
Briggs’s main role in the team was as a Team Leader; he received the instructions from the 'Voice on Tape', and selected and coordinated the best people for the mission at hand. The team frequently consisted of Cinnamon Carter, Willy Armitage, Barney Collier, and Rollin Hand, although Briggs did not always use all of these team members and often also used other agents. He briefed the team, then if needed, handed out extra disguises or devices. Though Briggs played a significant role in many of the first-season missions, he was not an active participant in seven of the 27 missions he co-ordinated; after the mission briefings for these particular missions, Briggs did not join the team in the actual execution of the plan, evidently confident that his hand-picked team would succeed without his direct involvement. As was the case with most characters in the series, Briggs's background and personal life were never explored in detail. The first mission of the series indicated that he had not worked with the
Impossible Missions Force (IMF) for some time prior to that mission. (The 'Voice on Tape' ended the first mission's instructions with the statement, "I hope it's welcome back, Dan. It's been a while.") Another mission, "Old Man Out", revealed that he had once romanced an IMF agent played by
Mary Ann Mobley. The only other insight into Briggs's personal life was his one off-book mission, "The Ransom", where the daughter of a personal friend of Briggs', a school teacher, is kidnapped to force Briggs to deliver a mob informant from police custody before he can testify before the grand jury. Briggs was depicted at times as a cold, calculating character, quite willing to kill to complete a mission. Notably, he was the only member of the IMF shown personally killing a nontarget in anything other than self-defense, when he ambushed and killed a sentry to get through a checkpoint in "The Carriers". At other times, he exhibited a fatherlike attitude towards his agents, and was frequently seen smiling encouragement and patting shoulders as missions progressed. Several episodes, such as "Shock", revealed that Briggs had acting, voice mimicry, and disguise abilities similar to those of one of his agents, Rollin Hand. At the start of the second season, James Phelps took over as lead of the IMF team, and no on-air explanation was offered for Briggs's disappearance. The real-life reason was that actor
Steven Hill's Orthodox Jewish religious beliefs often conflicted with the shooting schedule, making it difficult for the production crew to meet deadlines. By mutual consent, his contract was not renewed for season two.
Rollin Hand Rollin Hand’s role as an IMF agent was that of an actor and disguise expert. In a theatrical brochure that headed his dossier, he was described as a quick-change artist and billed as "The Man of a Million Faces." As such, he had formidable skills in mimicry and voice imitation (introduced in the second season), as well as a mastery of make-up. He was also an expert at
sleight of hand and pickpocketing, which came into play in several missions where he would pick pockets or hide things on someone else's person without their knowledge. His language and cultural skills were formidable. He regularly passed himself off as a citizen of various Latin American and Eastern European countries, and no one ever questioned his authenticity. He also successfully impersonated well-known public figures, such as the dictator of a fictitious Latin American country, rumored Nazi fugitive
Martin Bormann and
Adolf Hitler. On at least two missions, he even successfully impersonated a left-handed person, doing all gestures and reflexive actions left-handed when Rollin himself was right-handed. He successfully falsified a wide variety of maladies in the course of missions to dupe targets, including seizures and drug addiction. His abilities as a "ladies' man" were instrumental to the success of a number of missions. On one occasion, his role led to him having romantic feelings for a target who was killed at the end of the mission. and the dossier scenes during her three seasons on the show showed at least three different magazine covers on which she was featured. How a famous international cover model failed to be recognized as such during a mission was never explained. Carter was often used to play on the vanities of powerful men to get them to lower their defenses. Frequently, she played the role of a beautiful American woman on the make to draw the subject in. On occasion, she played a woman in distress to distract someone. Carter rarely adopted elaborate disguises, as did practically everyone else on the program, because
Barbara Bain, the actress playing her, suffered from
claustrophobia, and could not abide being hemmed in by heavy makeup. In a nod to Bain's condition, Carter, too, was shown to be claustrophobic. In "The Heir Apparent", she is made up as an aging princess, heir to a nation, while in "The Bunker", she is masked as the objective scientist's wife. In episodes where someone was needed to get into tight spaces, another female agent was brought in, but in "The Slave", Cinnamon, in spite of her claustrophobia, is seen being placed into and later coming out of the false bottom of a food carriage as part of the IMF plan. Cinnamon's claustrophobia was used against her in a devastating way in the third-season mission, "The Exchange", when an enemy intelligence service discovers her phobia after capturing her and uses it in an attempt to break her. While Cinnamon was being interrogated, she demonstrated that she had been trained in counter-interrogation techniques, resisting all attempts to get her to give up the team. While Carter was rarely called upon to defend herself in hand-to-hand combat, she was shown to have at least the basic skills to disable a single adversary as evidenced in missions such as "Odds On Evil" and "The Town", and she was confident handling a gun. Like Rollin Hand, her assignments did, on rare occasions, lead to her falling for her target. She was shown to have feelings for Rollin Hand in a conversation she had with "Crystal", a woman on one mission who had feelings for Dan Briggs, when Cinnamon brought up that Crystal was worried about Dan, who was with Rollin on a risky mission. Crystal replied that Cinnamon was just as worried about Rollin as Crystal was about Dan. Another time, in "The Pilot", where Rollin impersonates a man who has "a real reputation for being a ladies' man", and Cinnamon is supposed to come to his room, he asks her to help him "get in character". Barbara Bain was married to Martin Landau at the time, and a contract dispute Landau had with the program's producers as the third season wound down resulted in both leaving the cast.
Barney Collier Barnard "
Barney"
Collier’s main role as an IMF agent was that of an electronics and mechanical genius, as well as a forgery expert. He also had an extensive knowledge of building infrastructure such as wiring and plumbing standards, including building standards in foreign countries. Generally, Collier (
Greg Morris) was brought in on missions to supply high-tech custom mission support. On occasion, he custom built a computer which was well ahead of its time, such as a computer that could read playing cards face down on a table or could beat the world's greatest chess players. Starting in season five, he was revealed to possess
criminology skills that were key to several missions. He was a veteran of the
US Navy, specifically the
Sixth Fleet. His IMF dossier noted that he owned his own electronics firm. To maintain cover when on personal travel to foreign countries, he once used the alias "Barney Davis", It was a common plot device, throughout the series, for Barney to be smuggled into a building or facility by various means, such as a collapsible
filing cabinet, a specially designed crate, or even a janitor's cart, so he could carry out some task in secret. Due to his being black, his role play in earlier missions which took place in Eastern European countries was often as a supporting character. Those missions which took place in Latin America or the United States gave him the opportunity for more visible roles within the mission. Although Barney Collier is primarily remembered as an electronics expert, he was often called upon for his hand-to-hand combat skills. Notably, he was an accomplished boxer, having been the champion of the Sixth Fleet when he was in the Navy. His boxing skills were the centerpiece of a two-part mission in the third season, "The Contenders". He also had the strength and agility to penetrate denied areas going hand-over-hand using grappling lines without any assistance, shimmying up drainpipes, and
rapelling down elevator shafts. He demonstrated incredible fortitude even when injured, continuing with missions even after being shot in the back, the knee, or the head, temporarily blinded by a concussion, or poisoned. In the course of seven seasons' worth of missions, on rare occasions, he killed men in self-defense both in hand-to-hand combat and with firearms. A recurring subtheme for Collier was, when a mission was at risk, his unwavering faith in his fellow agents in their ability to come through. Barney Collier, along with Willy Armitage, was one of only two IMF agents who were regulars on the team for the entire seven-season run of the original
Mission: Impossible TV series. Like all of the regular IMF agents, he was not used in every mission, but he was the only character in the opening credits of every episode of the original series. On occasion, he did not appear during the course of a mission, but the characters used devices that were noted as being supplied by him. In later years of the series, that stayed in the United States and dealt with organized crime, Barney, although still supplying gadgets and devices, did less of the physical duties, and began to be a character more in line of the mimic and master of disguise roles played by Hand and Paris in earlier seasons. In later seasons, Barney was also a
de facto second-in-command of the IMF team in situations where Jim Phelps was missing or incapacitated. In that episode, Barney's mother was still alive. In the series canon, Barney had a son named Grant, born October 3, 1957, in Georgia. However, by 1970, Barney was single in season four when he met and romanced a woman in a foreign country in an off-book mission and brought her back to the States at the mission's conclusion. (Barney's relationship with an African girl in the season-five episode "Hunted" is interpreted by some as romantic, but the actress in the role was only 17 at the time, and the relationship was most likely meant to be platonic.) In the first three seasons, Willy was brought in on missions to work behind the scenes in mission preparation or in minor role-playing, such as a waiter at a party or a maintenance man. Often, he had fewer than 10 words of dialogue per episode, and in two, he has no lines at all. However, starting in season four, his role play, visibility, and dialogue as part of missions did expand, including roles that required foreign-language skills. While he was not generally used in very complex role play, on at least one occasion, his on-the-fly interpersonal skills did save the mission. Willy's background role meant that he did not get unintentionally captured or trapped as often as other members of the IMF. However, in the season-six episode "Double Dead", Willy was captured in a mission that was almost blown, and the episode had his recovery as the main focus. In the end, Willy's ability to connect personally with one of his captors was instrumental in saving his life. In the season-seven episode "The Deal", Willy was shot after jumping off a boat to avoid capture. While his injuries were serious, he was able to rejoin the team by the end of the episode; however, Willy's disappearance does mark the only time in the entire series that a team member was believed to have been killed in the line of duty. Even when not out front on missions, he still played a critical role as missions unfolded, often at a moment's notice. On a regular basis, his split-second timing taking down a sniper or other gunman saved the mission, as well as the life of the IMF team member in the crosshairs. In Willy's IMF dossier, he was noted to have set a world record in weight lifting. His extreme strength was particularly leveraged in several missions, mostly in season one. However, notably, in season five, Willy demonstrated a strength level that bordered on the super-human in tearing a vault door off its hinges to save Barney Collier from certain death in a fire trap. Willy was often called upon to carry or wear extremely heavy objects without visible signs of exertion to betray their weight, often as a way of smuggling teammates in and out of secure locations. He was experienced in hand-to-hand combat, and was often called on to silently disable sentries and policemen with a single blow. He had other skills which were leveraged, but not prominently featured, such as automobile customization and custom construction. He often custom-built rooms and scenes to make trapped persons believe they were somewhere they were not, such as a rubber room in a mental hospital, a hospital room 12 years in the future, or a holding cell at a slave auction. Also, he was presumably the best marksman on the team, as he generally was the team member to do any needed planned tasks with a firearm, such as shooting out a tire on a moving vehicle or firing an automatic weapon at someone's feet to get him to surrender. In the episode "Memory", he made reference to having lived in
Indiana when he was 10; this is presumably where Willy grew up, as well as the birthplace of actor
Peter Lupus. Over the course of the series, Willy is strongly implied to have been also in part responsible for mission logistics, particularly the procurement and staging of materials, vehicles, etc. in foreign countries. In addition, Willy often acted as support for Barney Collier, particularly when a mission required the use of complicated electronics or required drastic alterations in physical spaces. On many occasions, Willy's construction skills allowed Collier to access the areas required to complete his own tasks. Willy also ably filled the comparatively less glamorous role of driver for the IMF team. Experienced with a myriad of vehicles, including emergency and construction vehicles, Willy, behind the wheel of a car or panel truck, meeting the rest of the team for their extraction was often the indication of the successful completion of a mission right before the final credits rolled. Willy Armitage, along with Barney Collier, was one of only two IMF agents who were regulars on the team for the entire seven-season run of the original series. Like all of the regular IMF agents, he was not used in every mission, but he was a regular character each season, though he was replaced by
Sam Elliott's character in the opening credits of some season-five episodes. Willy was the only nonsmoker of all the regular IMF team members for the first three seasons.
The Voice on Tape The
Voice on Tape was that of a nameless, never-seen man who gave Dan Briggs and Jim Phelps their assignments. Briggs and Phelps, as leaders of the IMF, were the only ones ever to listen to the recordings, with the exception of one first-season mission, "Action!", in which Cinnamon Carter listened to the recording. Other than the mention of "The Secretary", the voice never gave any hint as to the organizational structure behind the assignment or the IMF. In each episode, the recording was planted in a different place, such as a doctor's office, behind an elevator control panel, or a pigeon coop on a roof. Some "mission drops" or methods of delivery, such as an out-of-order pay phone and a photo booth, were used more than once. Briggs or Phelps sometimes had to gain access to the recordings by exchanging passwords or countersigns (generally disguised as casual conversations in such cases) with an agent protecting it, and that agent would never be in the room while the recording was played. Pictures of the "mission targets" were almost always included with the assignment. Often, the pictures were in an envelope along with the recording, although they were occasionally shown on a movie screen or seen in a telescope or film viewer. The format of the instructions used in the recording varied slightly from episode to episode, but they generally contained these phrases: • "Good morning/afternoon/evening, Mr. Briggs/Phelps." • "Your mission, should you decide/choose to accept it..." • "As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions." • "This tape/recording will self-destruct/decompose in five seconds/ten seconds/sixty seconds/immediately.” or (in a few early episodes) “Please dispose of this recording/destroy this tape in the usual manner." • "Good luck, Dan/Jim." Bob Johnson provided the voice on tape each season and in nearly every episode of the original series, as well as every episode of the revival. The only times the voice on tape did not initiate a mission included one mission ("Memory") where Dan Briggs got his instructions on a card from a street photographer, which he then crumpled and presumably burned; off-book missions run by both Briggs and Phelps, such as "The Ransom" and "The Condemned", one off-book mission run by Rollin Hand where Phelps was incapacitated and needed to be rescued, "The Town", and one other, when mob figures recognize Phelps and Collier from surveillance photos taken during an IMF operation against a syndicate casino ("Casino") and kidnapped Jim to force Barney to organize a mission for them ("Kidnap"). The tape scene was also absent in episodes which began during or after a mission (such as "The Hostage"), presumably these missions were assigned through taped messages which Phelps received offscreen. As a result, the voice on tape was that of the only consistent character through the entire
Mission: Impossible television franchise. The recurrence of the voice in opening every episode, its standard delivery, and its consistent use of the same phrases introduced those phrases to the pop culture lexicon, most notably "Your mission, should you choose to accept it" and "This tape will self-destruct in five seconds." Although the phrase "This tape will self-destruct..." has become synonymous with
Mission: Impossible, in several episodes, the IMF leader was responsible for destroying the recordings themselves, either in a nearby incinerator or in a container of acid. In the
1996 film and the
2023 film, the voice on the tape is
Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge, IMF Director in the 1996 film and
CIA Director in the 2023 film and the
2025 film. In the
2000 film, it is
Anthony Hopkins as Mission Commander Swanbeck. In the
2006 film, it is
Billy Crudup as John Musgrave, IMF Director of Operations. In the
2011 film and the
2015 film, it is
Teddy Newton. In the
2018 film, it is
Christopher McQuarrie. In the 2025 film, it is
Angela Bassett as Erika Sloane, CIA director in the 2018 film and
President of the United States in the 2025 film. == Introduced in season two ==