Years before Tom Cruise began running faster than Olympic sprinters, there was the Mission: Impossible TV series. The show aired from 1966 to 1973 on CBS, before being revived in the late ’80s by ABC.

They are four notes that changed the action game: “Dum dum da da.” That is the musical motif that instantly set the suspenseful stage for many a thrilling spy adventure as the theme song of “Mission: ...