User Reviews

I thought the episode was great with a strong ending.. not sure what the other two reviews are upset about..

A man riding a horse arrives in an old, abandoned town. As he looks around, he replays some event in his imagination that took place in the town at some time in the past. There is a voice sentencing someone to hang. A separate voice is heard begging people not to carry out the hanging.

An old prospector named Nebs soon arrives in the town and is met by the stranger with gun in hand. Nebs says he is the only person still living in "Dodge Town," which was a settlement that preceded what is now known as Dodge City. The citizens of the old town moved closer to the river and settled Dodge City. Nebs still lives alone in the ramshackle settlement and travels to Dodge City whenever he needs supplies or wants to buy a bottle of whiskey from the Long Branch Saloon. Nebs confirms that Matt Dillon is still the Marshal in Dodge City.

(Side note: There are no historical facts to support the idea of a Dodge Town that I can find. The existence of the old town appears to be an invention for this story.)

The stranger orders Nebs to leave Dodge Town and head west toward Colorado. When Nebs is hesitant to agree to the stranger's demands, the stranger shoots Nebs in the ear, hastening the prospector's departure.

The stranger rides on to Dodge City where he learns Marshal Dillon is away on business. He visits the Long Branch and has a conversation with Kitty Russell. Kitty asks the stranger if they have met before, but he tells her he has never been in Dodge City.

After buying some supplies from Woody Lathrop and arranging for Hank Miller to provide a horse and buggy behind the Long Branch, the stranger returns to the saloon, which is now closing for the evening. After Sam Noonan leaves, the stranger abducts Kitty and forces her to accompany him to Dodge Town where he locks her in the old jail there.

When Sam informs Festus Haggen that Kitty is missing, and that Hank provided a buggy for the stranger the previous evening -- a fact that may or may not be related -- Festus sets out to find Kitty. It is easy enough to follow the buggy tracks to the old town, but the stranger is waiting and locks Festus in the jail with Kitty.

The mystery man then leaves again for Dodge City where he tells Doc Adams that Festus was thrown from his mule and has a broken leg. He agrees to take Doc to Dodge Town where Festus is waiting, and he tells Newly O'Brien at the Marshal's office that he and Doc are going to the old town. Once they are in Dodge Town, the stranger orders Doc into the cell with Kitty and Festus.

When Matt arrives back in Dodge City, Newly brings him up to speed on all of the recent developments and the stranger and Doc going to Dodge Town to help Festus. Of course, Marshal Dillon decides to join the "party" at the old settlement.

The stranger is waiting for the Marshal to arrive, of course. He forces Matt to give up his gun by threatening to shoot Kitty. He then shoots Dillon in the leg and chains him to a post.

At this point, the stranger reveals his identity as Fred Garth, and he announces his plans to re-enact his father's hanging fifteen years earlier in Dodge Town by hanging Doc while Matt watches. (He cannot hang a woman, and Festus was not around fifteen years earlier.)

Tom Skerritt portrays the stranger/Fred Garth in this story. Skerritt is no stranger to anyone that has watched many television shows or movies. This is one of his five different Gunsmoke guest starring roles. Although Skerritt has tended to play more benevolent characters as his career has advanced, he often played villains during the time this episode was produced.

Skerritt's character is the primary focus of this episode, and the only other guest star is William Fawcett as Nebs. This is Fawcett's final appearance in a Gunsmoke story. He had previous appeared in eight other episodes. He had an affinity for playing eccentric characters and excelled at playing old prospectors and hermits.

Several of the familiar Dodge faces make appearances in this story. Nathan Burke (Ted Jordan), Sam Noonan (Glenn Strange), Woody Lathrop (Woody Chambliss), and Hank Miller (Hank Patterson) are all seen at various points in this episode.

While it is clear the stranger is intent on carrying out revenge, and the opening scenes hint at the reason, the way the suspense is built throughout the story is extremely effective. The ending is not what is expected.

(There is a surprisingly cruel revelation regarding Matt Dillon in this story that does not ring true to what we know about the noble Marshal. Matt was forced to shoot the younger Garth in the leg all those years earlier when Garth rode into Dodge Town intending to free his father. Matt then chained Garth to a post while the hanging was conducted. It is difficult to imagine the Marshal doing something so cruel as to chain an injured person to a post while his father is hanged within eyesight.)

Unlike other reviews here, I am not going to speak to the plot. I am going to review the "sound mixing" or whatever it is officially called in the film industry. The music was loud and it was difficult to hear the dialogue. It is like they turned down the sound on the voices and cranked up the music. If you watch this episode see if you feel the same or is it just me?

This plot is more from something out of the 'Twilight Zone' rather than an 'Gunsmoke' episode. I can honestly say that after sixteen season of episodes the writers was dipping into any story that would play for any type of audience. And here we have a dilly of a tale.

Some fifteen years ago in Dodge Town (which is the old town before Dodge moved to near the river and renamed Dodge City), Fred Garth's father was found guilty by a jury and was sentenced to hang. Fred was also found guilty and was sentenced to prison.

While Fred was chained to a post the townsfolk carried out the sentence on Fred's father all in the sight of poor young Fred. And Fred has been brewing in prison for the last 15 years.

He comes back to Dodge Town and is going to carry out the exact same situation he witnessed while chained to the post. He is going to make Matt Dillon ( Matt helped convict his father) go through exactly what he went through some fifteen years ago. He also wants spectators so he ends up kidnapping Doc, Kitty and Festus as part of the people that was in the town when his father was hung.

By the end of the episode Fred is going to hang someone and make the others watch as he reenacts the events of years ago.

Even though this episode seemed to drag as Fred takes his time in gathering the spectators- it does pick up with interest at the end. But at the end there is a big let-down as if the show was for naught. An odd ending for an odd episode. --- Plus---- I never understood why Newly did not think something was amiss and go check on his friends. Much of this show did not add-up.

This episode was all Tom Skeritt, trying to play a dark anti-hero cowboy like Clint Eastwood, and he can't. Even though Skeritt was born in 1933, and is only 3 years younger than Eastwood, his movie career never got off the ground. Skeritt never had the gravitas to pull off any major movie character. In this episode, he tries hard to be Clint Eastwood, but he fails miserably.

This episode is one of the most bizarre and boring in Gunsmoke history. Skeritt captures Miss Kitty, Doc Adams, Festus, and even Matt Dillon, so he can get revenge on them for the hanging of his father, and for him going to jail for 15 years.

How he captured each one of them by himself is particularly lame and totally ridiculous. By the way, Miss Kitty at this point had been kidnapped at least 25 times because she left either the front door or the back door of The Long Branch open after closing time. You would think she would be smart enough to figure out that closing the doors was a good idea? Maybe a safety check before locking up, while Sam was still there with his shotgun?

As Skeritt captures the people he wants to revenge himself on, he pauses for what seems like hours to sulk and to remember his father getting hanged. This stuff is ponderously boring, and by the time the episode ends you feel like at least three hours passed.

Gunsmoke has been one of my favourite shows for years. This episode is definitely not my favourite. The story was like something from the "Twilight Zone". I could give you a long reason why I thought this, but it's not worth the time. It's the worst episode I ever seen...

Forty-five minutes of drama-building followed by ten minutes of "action" and another five minutes of semi-wrapping up of loose ends, in totality a terribly written episode. Of course the acting was superb as usual and Tom Skerritt made a passably decent villain, but the writing was totally sub-par, as it tended to be in the later seasons of Gunsmoke's run. Whoever wrote this garbage material would have done the series a favor by passing the job on to more talented writers that could have kept the quality out of the basement. Whatever was going on in the late sixties and early seventies with the writing staff of Gunsmoke is truly a crime against television!