Writing

Because of the 1960 Writers Guild of America strike as well as an ongoing Warner Bros. policy to save money on writers, The Alaskans inherited a certain amount of scripted material from Maverick. Moore bristled at the lack of originality in scripts: "An old Bronco script would interchange with an Alaskans or Maverick. In some cases, even the dialogue stayed unchanged."^[7] In 2007, Moore noted, "Quite often I realized that we were filming Maverick scripts, with the names changed."^[8] This made it simple for Jack L. Warner to envision Moore as Maverick, since Moore had literally delivered Garner's dialogue while reshooting the same scripts with different names and locales.

Since the show has not been available to home audiences for more than forty years,^{[when?][citation needed]} independent verification of either claim is difficult.^{[original research?]} However, The Alaskans may have drawn from other series as well. One viewer has detailed which specific Maverick, Sugarfoot and Cheyenne episodes spawned clones on The Alaskans. Cannibalizing scripts was standard operating procedure at Warner Bros. television. Their first big hit in the detective genre, 77 Sunset Strip, was copied in analogous series such as Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside 6, and Hawaiian Eye, with only the locations changed – Los Angeles to New Orleans, Miami Beach, and Hawaii. The basic characters were identical with only the character parts which spoke in jargon being re-written e.g. horse racing tout to jazz slang. This pre-dated the troubles with the Writers Guild.^[9]

Cancellation

The same year that The Alaskans was canceled, James Garner left Maverick. Moore became, under protest,^[7] Garner's replacement, playing Bret Maverick's cousin Beau Maverick in the fourth season of Maverick.