Richard Kimble

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Dr. Richard Kimble is the fictional character featured in the television series The Fugitive, portrayed by actor David Janssen. Kimble is a pediatrician falsely convicted for the murder of his wife, Helen Kimble, but freed in a train wreck en route to execution. He spends the series searching for the one-armed man, Fred Johnson, who is the real killer; while pursued by the relentless police detective, Lt. Philip Gerard, from whom he escaped. This style of show (traveling from town-to-town and the constant changing of identities/names) is similar to that of Dr. David Banner in the late 1970's/early 1980's successful television series The Incredible Hulk.

The character was also featured in the 1993 film The Fugitive, based loosely on the original series, starring Harrison Ford as the doctor and Tommy Lee Jones as a U.S. marshall in pursuit of him. In the film version, Kimble was a prominent Chicago vascular surgeon rather than a small-town pediatrician.

This change was necessary to support the plot change in which the killing of Kimble's wife was not a senseless murder by a transient during a botched robbery attempt (as in the original series) but rather the result of a fiendish plot by an evil drug company executive.

Yet a third incarnation of Richard Kimble surfaced in an updated remake of the original Fugitive series which aired during the 2000-2001 television season. Kimble in this version was portrayed by actor Timothy Daly, whose father James had guest starred in two segments of the original series.

It is sometimes reported that Kimble was based on the real character of Dr. Sam Sheppard, a medical doctor falsely convicted by a US court of killing his wife in 1956. He spent 9 years in prison before being declared innocent. However, Roy Huggins, who created the Kimble character and the original Fugitive TV series, always steadfastly denied any connection between Sheppard and Kimble.