The BEST episodes written by Gene L. Coon
#1 - Hills Are For Heroes (1)
Combat! - Season 4 - Episode 25
This two part Combat! episode is the story of the futility of war as viewed through the eyes of surviving infantrymen. An American division of troops is making an assault all along their lines. Lt. Hanley's platoon is ordered to take a strategic hill that overlooks a needed road, but it is protected by two concrete bunkers with machine guns. Saunders gets hit in the first assault while several other GIs are killed. Hanley finds it almost hopeless with Saunders wounded.
Watch Now:Amazon
#2 - Hills Are for Heroes (2)
Combat! - Season 4 - Episode 26
In part 2, things look bleak for the men of King Company, but Lt. Hanley's platoon gets the support of a tank to help take the hill. The tank is destroyed by a German bazooka. Now Hanley plans to use the tank as cover to attack the last German bunker.
Watch Now:Amazon
#3 - The Hollister John Garrison Story
Wagon Train - Season 6 - Episode 20
Bitter alcoholic Stevenson Drake develops a dislike for the even tempered John Hollister, a fellow Southerner, when he learns he didn't fight for the Confederacy. He also is bothered by the friendliness between his wife and Hollister.
Watch Now:Amazon#4 - Incident of the Dogfaces
Rawhide - Season 5 - Episode 7
Rowdy,Quince and Clay help out three soldiers being attacked by Indians. They were sent to break the treaty with Broken Bow.
#5 - The Hunter Malloy Story
Wagon Train - Season 2 - Episode 16
Hunter Malloy and partner get jobs as drivers on the wagon train to rob their boss. Striking gold instead while stopping to repair their wagons, the fever is high as some stop to strike it rich and uncover more than just a few nuggets.
Watch Now:Amazon
#6 - The Mary Ellen Thomas Story
Wagon Train - Season 2 - Episode 12
Mary Ellen is an orphan traveling west to join family, but members of the train reject her due to her surly disposition. Her only friend is Sally Mayhew, another girl traveling west with her family dying of consumption.
Watch Now:Amazon
#7 - The John Turnbull Story
Wagon Train - Season 5 - Episode 35
Bill and Charlie looking for horses help out an old friend John Turnbull (an Ute lawyer) defend his reservation against local land sharks who look to initiate a range war so the army will push the local residents off their land.
Watch Now:Amazon
#8 - The Joe Muharich Story
Wagon Train - Season 4 - Episode 29
Polish immigrant Joe Muharich tries to befriend and hopefully straighten out Johnny Kamen, a brash young man who doesn't take well to anyone giving orders to him. Joe has lost his wife and son to thugs, and now he reacts violently to any attempt to harass or intimidate him. When Johnny accidentally shoots a woman while reacting against drunken thugs, Joe tries to defend him. But the thugs who harassed Johnny then harass Joe and start fire to his wagon, causing Joe to react by shooting the men and killing one of them.
Watch Now:Amazon
#9 - The Albert Farnsworth Story
Wagon Train - Season 4 - Episode 3
Arrogant British Colonel Albert Farnsworth causes an uproar in camp and puts the wagon train in danger of Indian attack, resulting in the capture of a young girl by the Cheyenne and the mortal wounding of his long time aide.
Watch Now:Amazon
#10 - Death and the Favored Few
The Streets of San Francisco - Season 2 - Episode 23
Stone and Keller investigate the murder of a society publisher whose method was to coerce subscriptions from wealthy clients by blackmailing them. The investigation leads the detective to a wealthy woman and her daughter, who were among the ones being blackmailed and who still have secrets to hide.
#11 - The Sakae Ito Story
Wagon Train - Season 2 - Episode 9
The major comes upon two Japanese men, attacked by Indians and heading towards California. He learns one of the men plans on committing hara kiri while others on the train have designs on a black box they suspect may contain precious gems.
Watch Now:Amazon
#14 - The Joshua Gilliam Story
Wagon Train - Season 3 - Episode 25
Bill and the Major find a man lying hurt, a meal for the buzzards. When he meets an innocent woman on the wagon train who has an inheritance waiting for her, he shows other skills besides being just a schoolteacher and her mother is wary.
#15 - The Benjamin Burns Story
Wagon Train - Season 3 - Episode 19
One dry water hole is normal but when the wagon train has two, Flint and Ben Burns lead a party to find a legend that only the Indians speak of, Shining Water. Troubles await them but the worst may be a too green city boy.
#17 - The Charley Shutup Story
Wagon Train - Season 5 - Episode 23
The wagon master encounters opposition when he calls a halt to the train due to weather. One group needs to push on due to an inheritance in California. Chris and Duke take them but Duke injures his foot forcing him to stay in a cabin.
#18 - The Fifth Man
Have Gun, Will Travel - Season 2 - Episode 36
Ben Talman, who has murdered 12 men, escaped from jail. He kills four men in Yucca Bend within one week. Paladin is hired to bring him in.
#19 - Who Do the Voodoo?
McHale's Navy - Season 1 - Episode 7
Chief Urulu demands monetary compensation from the Navy, for destroying the coconut trees on his island, and puts a curse on Binghamton, when he refuses to pay.
Watch Now:Amazon
#20 - The Tiburcio Mendez Story
Wagon Train - Season 4 - Episode 26
Bill Hawks is leading four wagons through to California when they are stopped by Tiburcio Mendez and his band of renegades, who demand they turn back. Mendez and his group claim that California is their land and that it was stolen by the later settlers. A judge traveling with Hawks' group believes that Mendez has a legitimate grievance which could be addressed by the legislature in Sacramento, and against Hawks' warning goes in to Mendez' camp to talk with him. When Hawks follows, both he and the judge are taken prisoner.
#22 - The Ben Courtney Story
Wagon Train - Season 2 - Episode 17
The sheriff of Bitter Springs feels he has lots of reasons to hate. When settlers from the south want to live there, he tries to take a black child he says they are just using for free labor but his reasons go much deeper than that.
#24 - The Robert Harrison Clarke Story
Wagon Train - Season 7 - Episode 5
Chris and Cooper along with a British journalist accompany civilians surveying for the Army when they come across an Army troop that has been massacred except for two survivors. This opens the journalist's eyes to the real America.
#25 - The Amos Gibbon Story
Wagon Train - Season 3 - Episode 28
After an argument with Major Adams, Flint leaves the wagon train and cozies up to a bar at a nearby town. What he doesn't know is the locals are shanghaiing strangers for slave labor in the mine and no one on the train knows where he went.
#26 - The Emmett Lawton Story
Wagon Train - Season 6 - Episode 24
Duke Shannon stops in the town High Times and almost right away gets into a fight with, and accidentally kills, one of the gunmen who are essentially holding the town hostage. Then he finds his horse missing and ignores advise to leave.
#27 - The Colonel Harris Story
Wagon Train - Season 3 - Episode 15
Flint goes to Fort Young to see the Harris family and Bowman Lewis who were friends from his youth. He finds Mrs. Harris dead and her husband swearing to wipe out all Indians including Lewis who leads the Comanche and his mother, Princess.
#30 - The Eleanor Culhane Story
Wagon Train - Season 4 - Episode 33
Flint goes to visit Eleanor Culhane, an old flame of his who had been married to a notorious gunman. He finds everyone in the town she lives in shunning her, and unwilling to discuss her, because they blame her for her husband's misdeeds and the shame he caused the town. When Flint finds her they begin to rekindle their romance. But then her husband, thought dead for the last five years, shows up in town. And Flint realizes there is another side to Eleanor that he was unaware of as well.
#31 - An Ensign for McHale
McHale's Navy - Season 1 - Episode 1
Ensign Charles Parker reports for duty as the new Executive Officer of the PT 73, to a not-so-warm welcome from McHale and The Crew. But McHale is soon impressed by the Ensign, and persuades the boys to shape up, so that Parker can stay on as XO.
Watch Now:Amazon
#33 - The Thunderhead Swindle
Bonanza - Season 2 - Episode 30
With Virginia City on the verge of economic ruin, out of work miners put their hopes in word of a strike at a mine everbody believed was played out. Ben suspects the new owners have been stealing silver from an adjoining mine also thought dry, and resolves to prove it.
#34 - The Molly Kincaid Story
Wagon Train - Season 7 - Episode 1
Having just left St. Joseph Hale tells everyone there are no Indians when in fact two escaped Comanche captives steal two horses and show up at the wagon trains first stop. The female wants to kill a man there - her cowardly husband.
#35 - The Earl Packer Story
Wagon Train - Season 4 - Episode 15
Wounded Bill Strode arrives in camp looking for Flint. Strode, who saved Flint's life in Abilene, asks Flint to help him get to Fort Kearny. Flint learns the itchy Strode is being hunted by bounty hunter Earl Packer and Strode has changed.
#38 - Clyde
Wagon Train - Season 5 - Episode 13
Charlie's life undergoes an epiphany when he finds an injured buffalo and the animal befriends him. He takes the buffalo, who he calls Clyde, into the wagon train as a pet. Others, however, don't appreciate the trouble the creature causes.
#39 - The Showdown
The Virginian - Season 3 - Episode 29
The Virginian arrives in Monolith, Arizona to buy cattle from the Landers family but finds himself in the middle of a feud between them and the city Marshall Frome and his brother. The Fromes seem overbearing but maybe with a reason
#40 - The Captain Dan Brady Story
Wagon Train - Season 5 - Episode 1
Captain Dan Brady, a colorful, boisterous and well known veteran frontier scout who is famous throughout the East, is demanding to be taken on as trail scout. Hale faces a dilemma as he will lose a Government mail contract that is necessary to finance the wagon train if he doesn't hire Brady. But he will lose Flint, angered by Brady's bad advice to members of the wagon train, who threatens to quit if Brady stays on.
#41 - Spectre of the Gun
Star Trek - Season 3 - Episode 6
When coming to an exaphobic isolationist planet, Captain Kirk and his landing party are punished for trepassing. They are sentenced to death in a surreal recreation of the Gunfight at the OK Corral with the landing on the losing side.
Watch Now:AmazonApple TV
#42 - The Night of the Freebooters
The Wild Wild West - Season 1 - Episode 25
Jim and Arte go undercover to infiltrate a renegade Army led by Thorwald Wolfe, who intends to conquer part of Mexico.
Watch Now:Amazon
#43 - Death on Sun Mountain
Bonanza - Season 1 - Episode 2
Greedy opportunist Mark Burdette and his accomplice Early Thorne stir up trouble between the Paiute tribe and the citizens of Virginia City. Ben discovers Burdette and Thorne are selling antelope beef to the miners and finds the price too high. He offers the miners beef at a more reasonable price. Burdette and Thorne retaliate by framing the Paiute's for attacks, by dressing as them and killing ranchers. Based on a factual accounting. Lorne Greene's first voice-over narration, and no landing constructed yet for the Ponderosa stairway.
#45 - The Jose Morales Story
Wagon Train - Season 4 - Episode 5
Bill Hawkes is leading 3 wagons through Indian territory. They run into trouble with Mexician bandits lead by Lee Marvin. When the 2 groups must band together to fight off an Indian attack, certain biases & assumptions are thrown away.
#46 - Zorro Rides Alone
Zorro (1957) - Season 2 - Episode 2
Diego continues his investigation into Señor Verdugo's business by riding to his house, where Verdugo greets him and Bernardo with his arm in a sling. Although Verdugo claims an old injury is bothering him, Diego suspects he may be the leader of the robbers, so he sets a trap. He tells Verdugo the money is being sent via the Guadalupe Trail and should be arriving shortly, but a servant overhears him. Unfortunately, Sergeant Garcia and Corporal Reyes, who have been sent with the money along the Camino Real, decide to take a shortcut and use the Guadalupe Trail. When Zorro and Bernardo arrive at the trail, hoping to catch the robbers, they're amazed to spot the soldiers riding into a trap they have inadvertently helped set. Zorro is unable to reach them in time, for Tornado had to be left home to avoid suspicion. The robbers take the money and order the soldiers to dig their own graves, but Zorro overpowers the guards and frees Garcia and Reyes. Just then, Verdugo arrives, apparently confirming Diego's theory that he is the mastermind. In reality, Verdugo has been lured there by his servant, who plans to kill him. Zorro saves the merchant, who explains that he sent his men there to help Garcia and didn't know that his servants were the robbers.
Watch Now:Amazon
#47 - The Paiute War
Bonanza - Season 1 - Episode 4
Trader Mike Wilson attempts to escape punishment by the Paiute Indians after mistreating two of their women, by placing the blame on Adam. A fierce war between the Paiutes and the California militia follows, and the Paiutes seize Adam as hostage. Very impressive battle scenes in the this first mini-epic of the series. This episode did all it could to stage the real thing; 50 Indians were used and 50 cavalry actors and extras were used, and the production involved three days of shooting on location. This episode encompassed both the biggest cast and most costly stunts. This episode is based on the factual accounting that occured in May and June of 1860.
#49 - The Regimental Line
The Virginian - Season 9 - Episode 21
When an Army troop arrives looking for a group of marauding Indians who have gone on the warpath, both Colonel MacKenzie and Parker recognize one of the sergeants as a lancer from the British Army whom they believed to have been killed in India ten years ago - and who was supposed to have been leading MacKenzie's brother when he was captured and killed. The man deserts when he recognizes Parker, and MacKenzie goes out after him, with the Indians following behind.
