My theory is that Dan got too burned out to continue to work for The Impossible Mission Force and left the agency.

Hi lima-2! How are you doing?

Or it could've been a mission gone wrong costing him his life. Not to be all doom and gloom but it's a dangerous job

Hi Lima! Hi Maria! Hi Jayhn! I can envision all of your scenarios wrapped up in a two or three part story arc. Dan Briggs burns out and quits. He goes back to his home town to take over his family's hardware business. Appealing to his sense of humanity, the IMF calls him back to service to rescue all the POW pilots that were shot down over Vietnam. He tracks several POWs who were sent to Russia. He gets killed along with Harmon Rabb, Sr. (from JAG) trying to escape from Russia. Sorry, just finished binge-watching all 227 episodes of JAG.

That story would make for a great full length motion picture

Yes, but would the owners of each show cooperated to film such a tv movie? In the trivia section at IMBd, the producers made a decision not to show the season one episodes in syndication because the fans were so used to Peter Graves as the star that they would get confused (go figure), But, luckily, they changed their minds, which I'm glad about, because season one had some great episodes.

Welcome Klondike! Looks like some of the old gang found their way back. We can be "the old timers" on this board. CrazyIvanova posted once or twice here. Can we coax her back? The more the merrier!!

Season one did indeed have some great episodes, Maria. I think they were closest to Geller's original concept. They were not the "smooth-as-silk" episodes that became seasons two and three. Unexpected glitches popped up all the time, and the team had to improvise, adapt, and overcome.

Yes, Dan was quick on his feet. At the end of the episode The Short Tailed Spy, the professor who the team was protecting shook Dan's hand and told him, "There were times, Mr.Briggs, when I didn't think you knew what you were doing". Dan's answer: "Neither did I".

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night.

@lima-2 : I've been watching seasons five and six lately, and I've noticed that they seemed a bit like season one where things didn't always go as planned and it was improv time. What do you think about this?

-----Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night-----

It has been a while since I have seen any of those episodes from seasons five and six. I don't recall them very well. The DECADES network recently showed all three episodes of The Falcon during one of their binge weekends, but that was from season four. Paris as Zastro was unmasked, and the team had to improvise. Very similar to a Briggs episode.

I know a lot of the old timers don't like it, but I always did. I always get a kick out of watching Noel Harrison, who has got to be the silliest ruler of a country that the IM helped in the show's history.

--------Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night--------

Another comparison between Dan Briggs and Jim Phelps is that Jim might shoot a bad guy, but Dan WOULD shoot the bad guy.

@LansingFan said:

Another comparison between Dan Briggs and Jim Phelps is that Jim might shoot a bad guy, but Dan would shoot the bad guy.

True Dan is more hard nosed

Most definitely! Remember The Pilot episode? He was locked in the safe with Dominguez and "the bomb?" Dan was willing to blow himself up ( and the general, and his team, and the whole island) if he dialed in the wrong combination? Rather than risk it being used against the U.S. THAT ... is hard nosed!!!

@mechajutaro said:

@lima-2 said:

Most hardcore fans of the series know why Steven Hill was fired from the series. My question is: what happened to Dan Briggs, the character? The Geller formula was never to explain very much, and to leave it to the viewers' imagination to fill in the blanks.

My imagination is this: in the Spring of 1967 the big build-up in Vietnam was taking place. Briggs was moved there, where his skills were put into action to help the war effort. Other thoughts and scenarios?

Sounds plausible, if not altogether probable. Chances are high that he may have even found himself working alongside Fred Rogers in The Phoenix Program, during the latter's stint with The SEALs

I was thinking more along the lines of Colonel Hackworth's Tiger Force LRRP's.

He dropped out of the IMF, changed his name and decided enroll in Columbia Law School. After graduating, he became an Assistant District Attorney for New York County. Using the connections he forged as an IMF agent, he gained lots of powerful contacts and used them to get elected as a District Attorney.

Sadly, many of his powerful friends were either corrupt or had dark secrets and Adam Schiff (as he was now called) faced a great many moral dilemmas when some of these friends tried to get him to use his powerful position to help them out with illicit favors. He stood his ground. In 2000, he resigned his position and worked for the Holocaust project.

Much of his story is told in a famous Dick Wolf produced documentary.