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Snake can always count on Mei Ling to save his hide again and again.
A character or group of characters who, rather than accompany the hero into the field, offers assistance with information and technology from the other end of a phone. Alternatively, a sapient computer that travels with him, but is incapable of rendering assistance physically.
In the modern wired era, Mission Control can provide valuable field assistance by hacking into the local technology by remote, or using ROV's and other remote devices.
The opposite of his partner in the field in many respects. Most times, Mission Control is more intellectual than the heroes, being a planner and strategist rather than a doer. They prefer to sit back and plan, while the hero is brash and forward. If the hero is strong and invulnerable, Mission Control is weak and frail. Various other contrasts may also be built up: if the hero is the strong silent type, Mission Control will be cheerful and will crack jokes. This will often lead to some sort of friction between the two and Character Development as time goes on.
The defining characteristic is that the character provides banter, exposition, information and support, while the hero is still physically alone and isolated. Losing contact with Mission Control can be used as a plot element. Often the hero will mock his backup's unwillingness to risk it all in the field, and be punished when he loses their valuable help temporarily. He'll be all too glad when everything's back to normal, he's risking his neck and MC's back in his chair.
In some series, Mission Control makes up one half of a Spy Couple. If the hero is male, this character is often female, attractive, and in love with him. This type of portrayal is reminiscent of a fifties TV housewife. ("Stay here and mind the base, honey! And don't call unless it's important!")
If a series with a Mission Control runs long enough, they will inevitably be forced into a truly threatening situation. The hero could be captured (see All Up To You), baddies could invade their HQ (a Die Hard scenario ensues), or someone could just catch them off duty. Either the hero will coach them, in a role reversal, or they'll be held captive as a hostage and the hero will have to do his own thinking. Once in a while this results in the death of Mission Control, either we see the death but the hero has no idea, or we and they hear/see it but can't stop it. This often sets up a Dead Sidekick, or if it's in Flash Back, a Dead Little Sister revenge arc.
Sometimes, the bad guy will hack the communications and impersonate Mission Control, using voice filters and CGI to fool the hero into doing his bidding.
Mission Control has become increasingly common in video games, to put a face and voice on otherwise boring mission objectives and briefings. In such games, as in long-running series, there is roughly an 80% chance (higher in cynical games, lower in idealistic ones) that the Mission Control character will be killed, kidnapped, threatened, have their frequency hijacked by the Big Bad, or otherwise be rendered useless about halfway through the storyline.
Mission Control often overlaps with other character types by function or nature:
Contrast Sinister Surveillance.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
Comics
Films
- Operators in The Matrix. In particular, Sparks in the video game Enter the Matrix.
- Livingstone Dell in Ocean's Eleven and its sequels.
- Seth Green's character, Lyle/"Napster", in the remake of The Italian Job.
- Crease, Whistler, and Mother, from Sneakers.
- Jarvis, Iron Man's AI, would be this if he didn't have a certain amount of control over the suit himself.
- Mr. Universe in Serenity. He is captured and eventually killed by the Operative.
- Lucius Fox in The Dark Knight. Also the Gadgeteer Genius.
- A good deal of Apollo 13 took place in NASA's Houston mission control, and, as in the real event, the operators there were just as much heroes as the astronauts were.
- Revenge of the Fallen has NEST, a team of humans that coordinate the actions of the Autobots and assist them in combat. Their mission control, in turn, is the Pentagon.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Ocassionally Director Jenny Shephard for Tony during the 'Le Grenouille' arc of NCIS. Gibbs sometimes does this with his team as well.
- Harry Flack from short-lived Fortune Hunter.
- Julian Wilkes, and later Frankie Waters, on Viper.
- Roger Rees, on M.A.N.T.I.S.
- Theora in Max Headroom.
- To a lesser extent, Tina McGee in the live-action version of The Flash, which was also played by Amanda Pays.
- AI vehicle KITT served this role on Knight Rider, except when he'd go into Auto Cruise and drive himself to the rescue.
- AI Selma on Time Trax.
- Al (and, by one remove, Ziggy and the other project staff) on Quantum Leap.
- Walt in Monster Squad. However, in this series, Walt usually leaves mission control to join the monster heroes in the climactic battle.
- Penelope Garcia in Criminal Minds.
- Chloe from Smallville.
- Stargate Command in Stargate SG-1.
- Often but not always, Ash on Hustle.
- Logan on Dark Angel.
- Wash and Kaylee on Firefly both regularly performed this duty while the rest of the crew were out on jobs.
- As well as River at the end of "Objects in Space".
- Marshall Flinkmann, of Alias, usually with any other agents who aren't in the field leaning over his shoulder giving advice.
- Chloe O'Brien on 24.
- Starfleet Command never really had much of presence in Star Trek since the various series focus on the whole idea of a group of people cut off from ready assistance. This changes in Star Trek Enterprise where human deep space travel is just starting, so there are many calls back home; we also get Admiral Forrest as the first Starfleet Command recurring character.
- Also seen in Star Trek Voyager but as a subversion. Project Pathfinder actually does very little to get Voyager home.
- In the new series of Battlestar Galactica, Dualla usually functions as Mission Control for the battlestar's Vipers once they are deployed. The CAG might perform this function if he is in the Combat Information Centre, unless he himself is flying. Indeed, the entire CIC is basically Mission Control, as are the CICs of actual warships.
- Most seasons of Power Rangers have their mentor and a techie who can summon the zords.
- Barbara Gordon/Oracle on Birds of Prey, as well as the original comics mentioned below.
- Birkoff on La Femme Nikita.
- Wiseguy. Daniel Burroughs, AKA "Lifeguard", a legless Organised Crime Bureau agent who communicates mostly via telephone (posing as Vinnie's "Uncle Mike"). Vinnie calls him daily to pass on and receive information; he also has codewords for when he's in trouble.
- Barney Collier on Mission Impossible.
- Tosh in Torchwood
- Nate and often Hardison in Leverage
Video Games
- All games in the Metal Gear series have varying numbers of people at the other end of the Codec/radio giving the player character (and the player) advice, ranging from plot and gameplay relevant to entertaining (if pointless) banter. The nature of the Mission Control members also varies, either directly associated with the character's mission (eg. Campbell, Mei Ling, Zero), civilians or ex-servicemen who just want to help (eg. Kasler, Miller, Nastasha), characters encountered during the game that give their frequency to the player (eg. Hal, Pliskin, EVA), or agents of a sentient AI combined with the character's expectations.
- Parodied in Super Smash Bros Brawl, when Slippy Toad unexpectedly shows up to profer advice on fighting Falco Lombardi.
- Sam Fisher has a similar team working behind him in the Splinter Cell series. Col. Lambert eventually coordinates Fisher in person in Double Agent. Anna Grimsdottir can also be met in person during the training segment of the original game.
- Bentley in many parts of the Sly Cooper series (and often Sly when Bentley is in the field).
- Cortana from the Halo series. Somewhat subverted in that most of the time Cortana is in the thick of things with Chief...In his helmet. When she is absent for the first part of Halo 3, Commander Keyes and Sgt. Johnson often take this role up.
- Alia, from the later Mega Man X games. X4 has Iris doing this for Zero and Double for X.
- X8 adds Layer and Pallette, and lets you play as all three once you meet the right requirements. Nana from the Command Mission RPG deserves a mention, too.
- Ciel takes over this role in Mega Man Zero. 2 more operators are added from Zero 2 onwards.
- Roll Caskett in the Mega Man Legends games. In one Boss Battle, the enemy imitated her to try and confuse the hero. It failed.
- NETRICSA (NEuroTRonically Implanted Combat Situation Analyzer), a computer in Sam's head, in the Serious Sam games.
- Freelancer does that all the time: in every side mission, Trent is always led by a commisionate officer, while NPCs like Junko Zane, President Jacobi and Casper Orillion show him the way on storyline missions.
- Happens in Resident Evil 4, although about 1/3 through the game the Big Bad hijacks your frequency and you don't see your contact again until the very last cutscene.
- General Locke, the computers EVA and CABAL, and Lt. Eva, among others in the Command and Conquer games. Every game in the series had at least one Mission Control character per side. In fact, most of the notable characters are in that role, unless they are special units like Tanya.
- Mona Sax in certain Max Payne 2 missions.
- In The 7th Guest's sequel, The 11th Hour, you have what the manual describes (four times in a row, presumably due to a printing error) "a tele-psychic friend" who directs you and can offer hints for the puzzles.
- In reality, the mysterious ally sending Carl Denning messages is Samantha, a female victim of the Stauf Mansion, one of the only survivors of it, who is watching his progress on a series of video feeds (actually the game The 7th Guest itself) to guide him to the final showdown with Stauf.
- In the Galaxy Angel Gameverse, Tact, the first playable hero, is the Mission Control. It's not until the Galaxy Angel II series, featuring a new PC working under Tact, that the player character actually gets to fight.
- Persona 3 features Mitsuru Kirijo as Mission Control, who passes the baton on to Fuuka Yamagishi when she joins the front lines.
- Similarily, Persona 4 introduces Teddie as Mission Control, a role later taken up by Rise.
- Commissioner Betters of F.E.A.R., who updates the Point Man's objectives and remotely hacks into the various computers encountered during the game in order to advance the plot or shed some light on the backstory. You only see him in person during your initial briefing at the beginning of the game, and lose contact with him during much of the Expansion Pack.
- Ford Cruller in Psychonauts serves this role despite being one of the most powerful psychics due to the fact that he is unable to leave his sanctuary for long periods of time without splitting off into multiple personalities (the result of a massive battle in his past).
- Fiona Taylor from Mercenaries is your Mission Control/Exposition Fairy, giving information through the transceiver and e-mailing mission objectives.
- Colonel Sawyer in World in Conflict, except a few missions (where he is usually absent for one or another reason).
- Some characters in the Advance Wars series occasionally take this role, although they are usually also playable. The prime example would be Nell, who isn't playable in the campaigns (except for Dual Strike Hard Mode which allows you to play every CO you unlocked). In some campaigns just about every CO that isn't currently on the field is on Mission Control duty.
- There was, however, a designated "intel" role that a CO had to fill for their perspective country: Sami for Orange Star, Grit for Blue Moon, Sonja for Yellow Comet, and Jess for Green Earth. Lin falls in for Days of Ruin
- Adam from Metroid Fusion, though mostly in the role of person giving orders, much to Samus' chagrin.
- Elizabeth Conway from Time Crisis 4.
- Various characters contact JC Denton from Deus Ex via his infolink augmentation, most notably Alex Jacobson, Daedalus and Tracer Tong.
- The Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) officer from the Ace Combat series gives out orders as well as reports the status of the player, but the only part seen of him is his plane in some cutscenes. Note that while he's sometimes late in reporting stuff (due to the nature of standardized sound clips), he's usually not annoying.
- Turned on its head in Portal, where the Mission Control (GLaDOS) is also the Big Bad.
- The same is true for kill.switch and Ground Control II.
- Princess Peach in Super Mario Brothers 3, who manages to avoid getting kidnapped until after you finish World 7.
- Parodied in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, where in one mission, Umberto, a guy that loves talking about having "balls" but never actually goes into action personally, tells Vic "I'll coordinate the attack from here," and Vic sarcastically replies, "Sure, big man... We really need a coordinator back here..."
- This troper's brother found that it was much easier to dodge police with me telling him when and were to turn in GT IV. We would eventually do missions where I would serve as mission control while he carried out the tasks. Not having to look at the map to find the nearest subway (the one cop that ever followed us down was dumb enough to stand on the tracks facing the same direction the train behind him was going) and when where the cop signals were if he was in a car or above ground.
- Inverted in the old interactive movie game Critical Path, where the player takes the role of Mission Control (in the form of a faceless AFGNCAAP at a security console) guiding the heroine Kat through a deathtrap-filled base.
- Inverted in Lifeline, where the player takes the role of Mission Control (a faceless male AFGNCAAP), monitoring the heroine via the space station's security cameras, and guiding her via voice commands through the PS 2's microphone.
- Homeworld: ... New sacrifices. The greatest of these was made by the scientist Karen Sjet, who had herself permanently integrated into the colony ship as its living core. She is now Fleet Command.
- Kind of a borderline example, since like with many RTS games, the player is Mission Control. Arguably, Fleet Intelligence and his slightly more helpful Distaff Counterpart in Cataclysm pull double duty in this role and as Mr Exposition from the player's point of view.
- Thief. In the creepiest parts of the first and last games in the series, Garrett seems to always have a friendly ghost to help him... and make the mission longer.
- Gears of War has Anya providing Mission Control to Delta Squad. Marcus will actually address Anya as "Control", and during one chapter in Gears of War 2 he is surprised to hear Colonel Hoffman as Command has taken over from Anya due to the importance of his mission.
- No mention of System Shock 2? Particularly interesting since it's a subversion; the person you thought was helping you has been dead the whole time and the Rogue AI has just been using her voice to manipulate you.
- Deconstructed in its Spiritual Successor, Bioshock. When you arrive in Rapture, your first human contact is a voice over a service radio. Calling himself Atlas, he urges you to help him save his wife and child, who are trapped in a submarine. As you help him to accomplish this, it becomes clear that whoever Atlas is, he has something against Andrew Ryan, the founder of the underwater dystopia. When you finally reach the submarine, it explodes right in front of you, and it becomes personal for both you and Atlas. He then convinces you to track down and kill Andrew Ryan, offering his knowledge of the city to assist you in various tasks along the way. When you finally reach Ryan's office, however, you find out that you've been played. Atlas is actually Frank Fontaine, a New York mobster whom Ryan wanted dead because he cornered the market in ADAM, and was looking to seize control of Rapture for himself. Fontaine assumed the Atlas persona and enlisted the help of Drs. Yi Suchong and Bridgette Tenenbaum to genetically engineer Jack, the player character, then sent him up in a plane that he was to hijack, bringing him down to Rapture to destroy Ryan. After he tries to eliminate all the evidence by having you killed, Tenenbaum becomes your new mission control. It's quite a doozy.
- The Suffering has Torque, a con, trying to survive on an prison-island full of monsters. He has the ghost of his dead wife trying to help from the other side in many varied ways. She wants him to survive the night but help others along the way. Other entities do similar, but with the hopes Torque will go evil. Torque will meet a cowering guard and his wife says "He needs help!" and a demon voice says "It will be easier if you kill him."
- Another inversion in Experience 112. You are the mission control. The entire high tech basement is strangely devoid of speakers, so you must communicate by moving cameras, opening/closing doors and lights — and don't believe you'll get bored, you have so much data to analyze to understand the situation and help the heroine that you'll ofter have to make HR wait for hours. Well... except if you are cheating and using passwords you're not supposed to have found yet. The concept's great, the reviews are not.
- In the Crusader games, while you're off commiting crimes against humanity, your fellow Resistance members occasionally call you via datalink to suggest that you channel that aggression in a particular direction.
- In Knights of the Old Republic II, Atton Rand plays Mission Control for the Jedi Exile for a little while in Peragus, before properly joining the team.
- In Blood Rayne 2, Rayne's Brimstone Society handler Severin fulfills this role thoughout the game.
- Batman Arkham Asylum naturally has Oracle acting as Mission Control for Batman, but it also has the Joker acting as Mission Control for his minions (alerting them to when a goon with a vitals-reading "suicide collar" has been knocked out, and providing darkly-humorous commentary and/or threats).
- The Riddler also hacks your communications to comment on your progress with regard to the various puzzles he's placed throughout Arkham.
- Mad World starts with Jack getting Agent XIII as his mission control, advising him on how best to slaughter enemies with the weaponry he finds and occasionally yelling for him to move on. We later meet Amala, who's Jack's mission control in his other ear, his connection to the Chasers/Bureau of Justice. Jack soon breaks XIII's earpiece (though XIII is able to hijack Amala's communications to keep talking), and in the ending breaks Amala's as well to go against justice.
- Seth Green's character Joker Moreau in Mass Effect serves as this in several missions.
- Call Of Duty 4 and Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 both have Overlord, and MW 2 has General Shepherd for missions involving TF-141 or taking over in commanding Hunter Two-One.
Web Animation
- In Red Vs Blue, Vick who is with mission control, turns out to be mission control for both sides.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Wade Lode from Kim Possible. Only met Kim in person once during the the first three seasons of series, and was otherwise an Internet friend. Also had an impersonator moment. In the Un Canceled fourth season, he started appearing in person with some regularity (to Ron's initial startlement).
- Crystal Kane from The Centurions. Hot Scientist, and was pined after by womanizing Ace McCloud. Also had an impersonator moment, by her own clone.
- In later seasons, J'onn J'onnz takes on this role on Justice League.
- 'Berto on Max Steel. Also a Lab Rat, and had an impersonator moment.
- Jérémie from Code Lyoko; he has only been to Lyoko twice (plus a failed attempt to virtualize) and mostly just aids the others from the Supercomputer's console; he does still encounter danger in the real world from XANA's attacks, though.
- Nicole from "Sat AM" Sonic the Hedgehog.
- Original Batman Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond (also The Obi Wan).
- In Clue Club, Dotty is relegated to the club's mission control on account of being the youngest since she's 13, but at least she makes the most of it since she's a whiz with the base's electronics and forensic equipment.
Real Life
- The Trope Namer is, of course, NASA's Mission Control Center located at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. During the early days of the manned space program, it became evident that even comparatively primitive early spacecraft were too complex for a single astronaut to operate alone. NASA's solution was the then-revolutionary idea of controlling the majority of the spacecraft's systems from the ground. This concept has only grown more prominent as the emphasis of manned space exploration has shifted more towards scientific research (for example, the vast majority of the day-to-day operation of the systems on the International Space Station is conducted from the ground, leaving the crew members with more time to conduct science experiments). Similar mission control centers are prominent features of most space agencies with a manned space program, including the Russian, European, and Japanese space agencies.
- Typifies the image of the Mission Controller as a somewhat nerdy engineer/scientist wearing a headset and surrounded by computer monitors (which it probably at least partially inspired). Something of a hybrid of the "single character" and "group of characters" types seen in fiction: while Mission Control consists of a large-ish room full of experts (backed up by an even larger room of other experts and a roomful of the original hardware designers), only one of them generally interacts with the orbiting crew directly (the Capsule Communicator or CAPCOM, who is traditionally an astronaut himself).
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