Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: Season 01  (1993)

Theatrical Release Information:
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: Season 01

The two-hour debut episode of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman stars Jane Seymour as Michaela "Mike" Quinn, one of the few women doctors practicing in the year 1868. Following the death of her father and medical partner, Dr. Mike leaves her hometown of Boston to set up a practice in the wild-and-wooly town of Colorado Springs, CO. Though most of the townsfolk resist the notion of a "medicine woman," Mike finds a close friend in boarding-house owner Charlotte Cooper (Diane Ladd) -- and, after Charlotte's death from a snake bite, our heroine "inherits" the woman's three children: Matthew (Chad Allen), Colleen (Erika Flores), and Brian (Shawn Toovey). Other characters introduced during the remaining season-one episodes include taciturn mountain man Byron Sully (Joe Lando), who feels more at home with the local Cheyenne Indians than with his fellow whites, and who somewhat grudgingly allows Dr. Mike to live in his house (when he's not around, of course); curmudgeonly general-store owner Loren Bray (Guy Boyd in the pilot, Alan Young in the series), whose hatred for Sully temporarily carries over to an intense dislike for Mike; Cloud Dancing (Larry Sellers), a mystical Cheyenne medicine man whom Dr. Mike tries to protect from the vicious attacks of local Cavalry leader General Custer (the same!); Grace (Jonelle Allen), who in the course of the season opens her own café; Ingrid (first played by Ashley Jones, then from episode three on by Jennifer Youngs), an immigrant girl with whom Matthew falls in love; Horace Bing (Frank Collison), the town's telegraph operator; and Myra (Helene Udy), the reformed saloon gal to whom Horace proposes by season's end. Several critical events occur during the series' inaugural season, including a flu epidemic which convinces the townsfolk that Dr. Mike knows what she's doing; a case of mercury poisoning, which in a roundabout fashion draws Mike closer to the secretive Sully; and an uncomfortable "reunion" between Mike's foster children and their ne'er-do-well father. The principal characters undergo a variety of additional crises, among them Sully's recuperation after suffering a beating at the hands of goons hired by the local railroad, Brian's delicate brain operation, and Colleen's bout with frostbite. On a more positive note, the influence of Dr. Mike and her friends occasionally spurs the townsfolk to perform acts of unprecedented goodwill, notably the construction of Colorado Springs' first schoolhouse. ~ All Movie Guide