Gunsmoke
Island in the Desert (1)
TV Flash files “Island in the Desert (1)” as hour 622 of 635 in the TV Flash guide — Gunsmoke (1955–1975) on CBS, season 20, episode 11, aired 1974-12-02, 60 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S20E11: listed hour 622 of 635 in the Gunsmoke guide, hour 11 of 24 in season 20. It aired 1974-12-02 (60 min). The listed hour before it is “In Performance of Duty” (S20E10). Next is “Island in the Desert (2)” (S20E12). Broadcast log — titles and dates, not a plot bible.
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
Festus is shot by the killer he is pursuing in the blazing desert, only to be helped by a crazed hermit and forced to tote water to try and get him to a town 80 miles away.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Island in the Desert (1) sit in the Gunsmoke guide?
S20E11 is listed hour 622 of 635 — hour 11 of 24 in season 20, season 20 episode 11.
When did Gunsmoke S20E11 air?
Island in the Desert (1) aired 1974-12-02 and is listed at 60 minutes.
Where should I start?
Start with the 1955 opener, where the marshal is not invincible. Then sample a later guest-star hour rather than marching through hundreds of titles in order.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Twenty seasons of Dodge as a civic appointment: a marshal who can lose, a chorus instead of gadgets, and adult-western hours that treat a gunfight as a verdict. Longevity here was weather, not catalog padding — weekly public work with dust still on the boots.
September 1955, CBS: a marshal takes a bullet in the first hour and the adult western stops being a kid’s hat commercial. Gunsmoke had already lived on radio, with a different voice in the badge. Television wanted a face the lens could trust. The lore still pours like bar whiskey — John Wayne pointing at James Arness, William Conrad left on the airwaves, a casting fight that was really a medium fight. Radio-to-TV is never a reprint. It is a negotiation about whose body gets to mean the law.
Filed against
- James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon
James Arness towered over Dodge City as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, the long-running western that turned weekly moral court into a twenty-year empire. Quiet steel defined adult TV drama’s early prime-time map. Radio-to-TV casting…
- Amanda Blake as Miss Kitty Russell
Amanda Blake’s Miss Kitty Russell ran Dodge City’s Long Branch with red-haired steel on Gunsmoke — saloon diplomacy as weekly moral court. Longevity made her western TV’s most reliable soft power. TV Flash files her as the original…
- Milburn Stone as Doc Adams
Milburn Stone’s Doc Adams is Gunsmoke’s civic medicine — twenty seasons of Dodge City as a weekly moral court, a doctor who treated violence as a bill the town had to pay. CBS moved radio muscle to Saturday, then Monday; Stone made the…
- Dennis Weaver as Chester Goode
Dennis Weaver’s Chester Goode was Gunsmoke’s limp and loyalty — chorus, not gadget, in Dodge City’s weekly moral court. Twenty seasons of adult western that treated a gunfight as a verdict, James Arness as a marshal the camera could…
- Ken Curtis as Festus Haggen
Ken Curtis’s Festus Haggen is Gunsmoke’s later chorus — Dodge City as a weekly moral court, a marshal who can lose, adult-western hours that treat a gunfight as a verdict. Twenty seasons of civic work with dust on the boots. On TV Flash…