The Fugitive (TV Series) Joshua's Kingdom (1966) User Reviews

Joshua gets a second chance...will he take it?

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 11 May 2017]

This episode revolves around Joshua Simmons (Harry Townes), a self- styled religious zealot who has determined that God hates medicine. In fact, his wife died because Joshua refused to get her medical treatment. Now, his daughter Ruth (Kim Darby) has an illegitimate child and it's sick...and it appears as if Joshua would be just as happy if the child died! Naturally, Richard Kimble is horrified and does everything he can to save the child...even if the gun-toting Joshua doesn't approve. Add to this mix a disgraced ex-deputy (Tom Skerritt) and you've got a couple of guys hankering to see Kimble punished!

This is a very good episode...very compelling and worth seeing. While Harry Townes is no household name, he did a lot of TV in the 60s and was very good at his craft. Here, in a bit of a change of pace, he plays a villain...and quite well.

Plot summary

[ynot-16 · 7/10 · 6 January 2007]

Kimble gets a job working as assistant to a rural veterinarian. While there, he meets Joshua Simmons (actor Harry Townes) and his daughter Ruth (actress Kim Darby). Joshua is a religious man devoted to old fashioned principles. He is ashamed that Ruth had a baby out of wedlock. Kimble gets involved because the baby is sick. Joshua feels that calling in doctors is morally wrong, fighting against the will of God.

Kimble faces danger from the obstinancy and anger of Joshua, as well as the interference of Pete (actor Tom Skeritt), a former deputy anxious to regain his job by capturing Kimble.

Didn't feel like a rehashed story to me

[hmoika · 9/10 · 23 July 2021]

While it's true that this plot has similarities to an earlier episode with Kim Darby.......the fact that Darby and Harry Townes starred made it a great episode to watch.

Especially since that can't be said for several 4th series episodes.

I've read that Kim Darby--in her appearance on Star Trek ("Miri")--was quite a bit to deal with when the cameras stopped rolling. That was about the same time period as this episode.

Nevertheless, she sure knows how to act when the film is rolling. Together with Townes, it was a joy to watch!

Kimble Shames A Grandfather Into Love

[stp43 · 9/10 · 6 October 2018]

Joshua's Kingdom came early in The Fugitive's fourth season and as new producers Wilton Schiller and John Meredyth Lucas were beginning to better understand the show's subtleties; they'd wanted to play up the chase element of the series but here they better grasp the emotional interaction between Kimble and those he meets, resulting in a strikingly touching story.

Joshua Simmons is a farmer in the west who hires Kimble to help treat his horses, but Simmons has a daughter, Ruth, who has given him a grandchild. Simmons, however, is devout to a religious doctrine that forbids the use of medicines to cure illness, and he also harbors hatred of his grandchild for he believes Ruth bore him illegitimately, unaware that the man she loved gave her their child and vowed to marry her as soon as he returned from military duty, only to be killed.

Kimble must navigate this emotional minefield while also dodging Pete Edwards, a boorish young deputy prospect who has harassed Ruth, and when Ruth's child falls ill, Kimble must save its life despite the resistance of Joshua, who holds Kimble at gunpoint while calling the sheriff. Kimble, however, saves the child while appealing to Joshua's devout beliefs. It is one of the series' strongest moments and also one of the most powerful for Harry Townes, a real-life preacher off-screen.

The scene at the very end, with a powerful music cue from Jerry Goldsmith, almost by itself is worth the price of admission.

10/18/66 "Joshua's Kingdom"

[schappe1 · 27 January 2016]

Kimble's still out in the country, assisting an aging veterinarian who travels around caring for farm animals. They encounter Harry Townes, who has nothing against veterinarians but people doctors are somehow against his religion. His daughter, (Kim Darby) is concerned about her sick baby and so is Kimble. He goes to the point of signing the vet's name to a prescription for antibiotics. Meanwhile a deputy, (Tom Skerritt) is after Kimble with a couple of bloodhounds.

Townes, who had played a cop who harassed Kimble in the premiere, plays a religious fanatic who seems, as some do, to have made up his own religion. He seems to be converted away from it rather easily, although his role in Kimble's escape is a clever one. Townes retied from acting in the 1970', (but occasionally returned) to become an Episcopal priest in his hometown of Huntsville, Alabama. I assume he liked doctors better than the guy he played here.

Joshua's Kingdom

[Christopher370 · 9/10 · 1 April 2023]

This was the first episode of season 4 that I really enjoyed and I thought had the feel of the first 3 seasons where emotional drama takes center stage over the action.

I do enjoy the action/chase episodes, but I believe it's during the dramatic episodes like this one is where the series shines best. There were elements of previous episodes found here, but there was also enough of new storytelling that I was able to overlook it.

The final scenes where Kimble is held at gunpoint by religious crackpot Joshua who apparently wants to see his innocent grandson dead because he was born in sin is both dramatic and full of suspense even though you know it's all going to end well.

After an uneven and sometimes weird start to this fourth season, this episode has given me renewed faith that the show isn't out of gas just yet and can still be as great as previous seasons.

The more I watch season 4 though, the more I miss the black and white. I can't put my finger on it, but something just feels missing with the color. If I ever re watch this season again, I think i'll play them without color.

Its a bad kingdom.

[kennyp-44177 · 7/10 · 8 November 2021]

But good episode, good cast, Harry Townes ( excellent as ever) Kim Darby and a young Tom Skerritt ( famous for being the Captain of the ill fated Nostromo, Alien). Agree with other commentators that Townes sudden change of character at the end seems unrealistic, but overall its worth watching.

Cheesy tear-jerker, but powerful cheese

[ColonelPuntridge · 7/10 · 1 November 2021]

This installment of "The Fugitive" is a cheesy tear-jerker with a plot which depends heavily on (spoiler-alert!) a deus-ex-machina moment. But it's a surprisingly effective tear-jerker. I cried like a baby, more than the one in the story. What makes it convincing is really good acting by magisterial Harry Townes, and by understated Tom Skeeritt, and by overstated Kim Darby, (who provides some ham to go with the cheesiness of it all. This episode aired just ten days before her "Star Trek" episode in which she played a less grown-up variant of the same character she plays here.)

This episode made of 97% recycled material.

[scowl · 5/10 · 7 April 2011]

Sure, making thirty episodes a season isn't easy but this is the one episode in four seasons that really stands out for having borrowed plot elements from previous episodes to cobble together another episode.

Let's start with the wonderful Kim Darby who plays the daughter of a devout Christian who believes only God can heal people. In a strange bit of type casting, Darby had also played the blissfully naive niece of a faith healer in "An Apple a Day" from last season. As you would guess, a medical emergency becomes the major plot point in both episodes.

Kimble's occupation in this episode is an assistant to a veterinarian. If you go back to season one's episode "Bloodline", Dr. Kimble used his medical abilities at a kennel (yes, the Fugitive had an episode about the practice of fraudulent dog breeding). I guess they had to get Kimble to the farm to discover Darby's plight and they remembered how well his medical training worked in that episode so they quickly fitted those two pieces together.

In the end, a person sympathetic to the convicted murder purposely leads the police off Kimble's trail. Well, that same trick happened at the end of the first episode of the season, "The Last Oasis" so it was hardly a surprise this time around. The dismissed deputy tracking Kimble is also far too similar to the deputy with a chip on his shoulder who hunted Kimble in that earlier episode since their failure to catch him resulted in the same professional humiliation.

This is part of the fun of watching a hundred episodes of a television series over a few weeks. Naturally the writers would have to retread previous territory but this is the only episode where I saw everything coming because I remembered seeing it in earlier episodes days or weeks ago.