Daniel is asked to rescue a captive settler woman (Mary Fickett) and her son by a tribesman (Ted Eccles) from years of captivity from the Chickasaw. Though he is successful, the pair encounters problems adjusting to life in Boonesborough.
A soapy around-the-fort hour, though that plays to "All My Children" veteran Fickett's strength. Ford Rainey is the husband to which she returns, and its to the writers' credit that they make his character a complex and conflicted one, rather than a simple Old Testament-spouting bigot. Insensitivity duties are relegated to schoolmaster William O'Connell, in the first of two DB appearances. Mingo would have been useful as an interlocutor here, but he is long gone. After the opening Daniel goes through the requisite motions and does little else.
One senses we have passed the peak of Season 6's production budget, and NBC has put out the directive to land the series at minimal cost. We have seen the "return from native captivity" story before, on "Cheyenne" and "Bonanza," and the formula remains the same; mother is tired of Indian life, and the kid wants to stay with the tribe. A more true to life depiction would reflect the Cynthia Parker story of pre-Civil War Texas, in which she sired a future Comanche chief but never readjusted to settler life, but too heavy a lift outside of the occasionally noirish "Gunsmoke" format.
Also a point for the writers that they have involved another mid-South tribe other than the Cherokee; here its the Chickasaw, regionally correct in their northern Mississippi-western Tennessee setting. Some slight improvement in portraying regionally correct tribal accoutrements as well.
Little action here, and another hour that might have been better suited to a spinoff anthology series.
A soapy around-the-fort hour, though that plays to "All My Children" veteran Fickett's strength. Ford Rainey is the husband to which she returns, and its to the writers' credit that they make his character a complex and conflicted one, rather than a simple Old Testament-spouting bigot. Insensitivity duties are relegated to schoolmaster William O'Connell, in the first of two DB appearances. Mingo would have been useful as an interlocutor here, but he is long gone. After the opening Daniel goes through the requisite motions and does little else.
One senses we have passed the peak of Season 6's production budget, and NBC has put out the directive to land the series at minimal cost. We have seen the "return from native captivity" story before, on "Cheyenne" and "Bonanza," and the formula remains the same; mother is tired of Indian life, and the kid wants to stay with the tribe. A more true to life depiction would reflect the Cynthia Parker story of pre-Civil War Texas, in which she sired a future Comanche chief but never readjusted to settler life, but too heavy a lift outside of the occasionally noirish "Gunsmoke" format.
Also a point for the writers that they have involved another mid-South tribe other than the Cherokee; here its the Chickasaw, regionally correct in their northern Mississippi-western Tennessee setting. Some slight improvement in portraying regionally correct tribal accoutrements as well.
Little action here, and another hour that might have been better suited to a spinoff anthology series.
