Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman is an American Western drama television series created and executive produced by Beth Sullivan and starring Jane Seymour, who plays Dr. Michaela Quinn, a physician who leaves Boston in search of adventure in the Old West and settles in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The most prominent player of the large supporting cast was Joe Lando, who portrayed Byron Sully, Dr. Quinn's most frequently featured love interest.

The series begins in the year 1867 and centers on a proper and wealthy female physician from Boston, Massachusetts, Michaela Quinn (Jane Seymour), familiarly known as "Dr. Mike".

She makes the difficult adjustment to life in Colorado, with the aid of rugged outdoorsman and friend to the Cheyenne, Byron Sully (Joe Lando) and a midwife named Charlotte Cooper (played by Diane Ladd).

After Charlotte is bitten by a rattlesnake, she asks Michaela on her deathbed to look after her three children: Matthew (Chad Allen), Colleen (Erika Flores, later Jessica Bowman), and Brian (Shawn Toovey).

Dr. Mike settles in Colorado Springs and adapts to her new life as a mother, with the children, while finding true love with Sully.

Henry Sanders was recast as Robert E. in place of Ivory Ocean as a less folksy hard-nosed working man; Orson Bean replaced Guy Boyd as a more fatherly, cynically-comical Loren Bray; and Colm Meaney was replaced by Jim Knobeloch, a contemptuously stoic Jake Slicker.

Likewise, Larry Sellers's character, a Cheyenne brave called Black Hawk (listed under the closing credits as such) who played an auxiliary role as one of Chief Black Kettle's aides and spoke only their language, was quietly retooled into Cloud Dancing, Sully's blood brother and a major recurring character, who, in addition to aiding Black Kettle, plays a large role in quelling the tribulations of the Cheyenne and other neighboring tribes.

Numerous buildings, including the church, Sully's homestead, the school house, and the Spring Chateau Resort, were leveled soon after the series was canceled.

[citation needed] Veteran actress Jane Seymour, labeled a mini-series "queen", was a last-minute casting choice for Michaela Quinn, having read the script only a day before production was set to begin on the pilot.

She was instructed beforehand to review the script and make a decision of whether or not she felt the role was right for her, and, if so, that she truly wanted to commit to the strict contract Sullivan had demanded for the title character.

In a 2015 feature on National Public Radio, Seymour said that she signed her contract for the show (including both the TV-movie/pilot and a five-year series commitment) because she had just discovered that her then husband/business manager had lost all her money and gotten her $9 million in debt.

She had told her agent that to avoid losing her house and to protect her two young children, she would do any TV project available, no matter what it was, and Dr. Quinn was the first one offered to her.

Rumors circulated that Flores's father gave her an ultimatum to end the contract unless they offered her more money, or he would cut her off financially.

Some of Erika Flores's fans were quite vocal in their anger over the change and wrote to CBS demanding to know why the actress had been replaced.

When PAX TV launched in August 1998, it acquired reruns of current family-friendly series from CBS, including Dr. Quinn.

It has also been shown continuously in Denmark since 2001, with plans on to keep it at its daily broadcast time of 1:00, Monday to Friday, on Danish TV station, tv2.

Jane Seymour, Joe Lando, Chad Allen, and other cast members have stated they would all like to work together again and would reprise their Dr. Quinn roles if the opportunity arises.

Joe Lando did several teasers and promotions for the weekend marathons, and says he finds GMC's ad campaign "funny", saying: "Truthfully, I haven't had that many opportunities to make fun of Sully.

[citation needed] The show was a major hit in the United States for CBS and drew large ratings even though it aired on Saturday nights.

During its final season, the majority of Dr. Quinn's viewers were women 40 years of age and older, and not the male and female 18-to-49 demographic that networks try to reach.

Many fans did not like the changes, while others felt that the tensions and high drama benefited the show after the overall pleasant past seasons.

[10] Despite this, the series concluded on a bookend by seeing Colleen marry Andrew and prepare to embark as a doctor in her own right, following her adoptive mother's footsteps.

The movie was very different in tone from the rest of the series, incorporating more guns and violence in an effort to please the twenty-something male audience demographics.

Furthermore, both Jessica Bowman and Chad Allen declined appearances in that episode, due to its content, and William Olvis' entire score was scrapped in favor of more cost-effective music that was completely unlike that of the original series.

Following this backlash from having excessive creative say over the film, CBS profoundly softened its involvement with the next attempt to produce a TV movie.

The plot revolved around Michaela and the Sully family returning to Boston to attend Colleen's graduation from Harvard Medical School.

Having transferred from The Women's Medical College to a male-dominated university since the series finale, Colleen has met harsh criticism from the board as well as from Andrew's father, who resents the fact that she continues to pursue medicine despite his misgivings.

Some of the other regular Dr. Quinn characters, including the ones of Jane Seymour, Joe Lando, Jim Knobeloch, Frank Collison and Orson Bean, were in as well.

In 2014, Jane Seymour, Joe Lando, Orson Bean and numerous other members of the series cast played their original roles in a brief parody of the series for the Funny or Die comedy website titled Dr. Quinn Morphine Woman in which Dr. Quinn has the whole town hopelessly addicted to morphine.