From The TV IV

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The Dakotas was the last western series produced by Warner Brothers in early 1963.A few years earlier the gaint film studio had produced a stable of western series for ABC network including Cheyenne,Maverick and Lawman.By the early 60's WB had changed gears abandoning the western genre for private eye and police series like 77 Sunset Strip and Bourbon Street Beat.The Dakotas had its premier under the Cheyenne title and time slot with the episode 'A Man Called Ragan' which dealt with U.S. Marshal Frank Ragan,an alcoholic despondent Marshal who has retired and is grieving over the murder of his wife.By the end of the episode Ragan had returned to his job a redeemed man and the series sold to the network for weekly airings.Ironically in the pilot Frank Ragan played by Larry Ward wears and eyepatch and is incurably blind but for the rest of the series the eyepatch is missing and Ragan seems to see just fine.Ragan's charachter went from weak and despondent to tough and disciplined and hard around the edges but his three deputies provided the charachter and much of the mood of the show.J.D. Smith (Jack Elam) is a reformed utlaw with a quick trigger finger and a tendency to cross over the line to outlawry.Vance Porter (Michael Greene) is tall tough and possesed with a bad temper and a tendency to act first and think later.Young Del Stark (Chad Everett) is barely past his teen years and is impulsive,tender hearted and very vulnerable and sometimes has too much heart. The series was an immediate hit and quickly distinguished itself from other t.v. westerns like Bonanza with its gritty warts and all stories and a cutting edge sense of not turning away from violence,in fact some of the stories are brutal even by today's television standards.It was this unusual honesty that got the series cancelled.Episode 18 'Sanctuary at Crystal Springs'features a gunfight inside of a church with an outlaw dying on the alter,a wounded preacher and further goes on to make references about atheism throughout the episode.This was hard to handle for viewers in 1963 and irate watchers all over the country sent letters of protest to ABC,some of them threatening.ABC responded by cancelling the show immediately.After all these years vaulted and not being rerun however with the advent of DVD the Dakotas has found a home among fans of both westerns and lovers of classic television and is remembered for being the ground breaking show it was instead of its untimely and controversial end.