This was the first of four Wild Wild West episodes directed by Richard Donner, who would go on to direct the 1992 big-screen version of Maverick. The writer of this episode, Robert Wright Vincent, also wrote the final episode of the Maverick TV series, "One of Our Trains Is Missing."
In conceiving their escape, Arte makes a play on the oft-quoted passage from Richard Lovelace's 1642 poem, "To Althea, from Prison": "Stone walls do not a prison make / Nor iron bars a cage."
The hotel clerk tries to kill James by filling his room with gas from the gas lamps. Up until the 1950s all residential gas was coal-gas. Coal-gas was up to 6% carbon monoxide, meaning that in its unburned state it was deadly. Today's gas is methane based natural gas and much safer than coal-gas.