"The System" was one of four episodes of the 1960s "Mission: Impossible" that were remade during the 1988-89 television season. (A strike by the Writer's Guild in Hollywood initially precluded new scripts from being written for the series "reboot," so the producers of the new series initially decided to re-use 13 scripts from the original version.) Ultimately, four scripts were recycled; besides this one, they were "The Killer," "The Condemned," and "The Legacy." This episode, writer Robert Hamner's only contribution to the original series, had originally been broadcast January 26, 1969.
This was the first episode where Nicholas uses 1 of his disguise masks.