About this season
Strike Force is an American action-adventure/police procedural television series that aired on ABC during the 1981–1982 television season, and was produced by Aaron Spelling Productions. The program stars Robert Stack as Capt. Frank Murphy, the leader of a special unit of specialized detectives and police officers whose job is to stop violent criminals at any cost. Mixing elements of Stack's classic TV series The Untouchables from 20 years earlier with doses of Mission: Impossible and Dirty Harry, the series immediately provoked controversy over its violence – at one point the series was labeled the most violent in American TV history – though the series attempted to interject liberal amounts of humor into its regular characters and balanced the violence by focusing on the detectives' personal lives.
Episodes (20)
1. Strike Force: Pilot
Aired 13 November 1981 • 60 min
Five bizarre and brutal decapitations bring together the Sheriff's Department, Los Angeles Police Department, and the Highway Patrol as a special strike force. Headed by Captain Frank Murphy, the force begins their investigation -- their only clue is that each victim served on the jury of an embezzlement case.
2. Kidnap
Aired 20 November 1981 • 60 min
The team is tipped off about a kidnapping by Frank's ex-partner, a souse who claims he also witnessed a murder.
3. The Victims
Aired 27 November 1981 • 60 min
The Force gambles that money will motivate a woman to set up her colleagues in crime.
4. The Predator
Aired 4 December 1981 • 60 min
Murphy plays on the emotional insecurity of a sadistic rapist who stalks his victims in supermarkets.
5. Magic Man
Aired 11 December 1981 • 60 min
A dealer uses pot and pills to lure teenagers into pushing harder drugs to their friends.
6. Night Nurse
Aired 18 December 1981 • 60 min
Patients have been dying inexplicably at four hospitals -- including the one where Klein is taken following a heart attack.
7. The Hollow Man
Aired 25 December 1981 • 60 min
A bomber sends Klein a photograpic clue to his next target -- and then pays him a visit.
8. The Outcast
Aired 8 January 1982 • 60 min
Strobber shoots a teen-age robber whose racist partners swear revenge in a taped message -- left on the body of a slain black cop.
9. Ice
Aired 15 January 1982 • 60 min
An international hit man plays cat and mouse with Frank, who has 48 hours to determine his target.
10. Internal Affairs
Aired 22 January 1982 • 60 min
Clues in a string of jewelry-store robberis point to on-duty policemen -- and the captain of Internal Affairs, who try to pin the crimes on Gunzer.
11. Lonely Ladies
Aired 5 February 1982 • 60 min
The common element in a series of rape-murders is that the victims were last seen in singles bars.
12. Fallen Angel
Aired 12 February 1982 • 60 min
A murderous cult is alerted to a police investigation by the mayor's premature press conference.
13. Shark
Aired 19 February 1982 • 60 min
Muggings of the elderly go unchecked until a councilwoman is murdered trying to stop an attack.
14. Turnabout
Aired 26 February 1982 • 60 min
A mobsters right-hand man uses Murphy's ex-wive to contact him about becoming a government-protected witness.
15. The John Killer
Aired 5 March 1982 • 60 min
Conventioneers are being murdered by someone masquerading as a call girl.
16. Humiliation
Aired 19 March 1982 • 60 min
Young muggers out on bail terrorize witnesses scheduled to testify against them.
17. Deadly Chemicals
Aired 26 March 1982 • 60 min
Prison escapees hijack a military van, unaware of the contents -- refrigerated germ-warfare cultures.
18. Revenge
Aired 2 April 1982 • 60 min
A high-school girl left for dead by kidnappers provides the break in a series of abductions.
19. Chinatown
Aired 9 April 1982 • 60 min
Gunzer and his girlfriend are wounded by hit men and the street talk is the girl was the target.
20. Death Fire
Aired 16 April 1982 • 60 min
A policeman's widow is terrorized by phone calls from a man who claims to be her husband trying to avenge his ""death"".