The love story between Doctor Michaela Quinn and Byron Sully has fascinated fans of “Doctor Quinn, Doctor Woman” for 6 seasons. But did you know that the character played by Joe Lando almost died at the end of season 5?
In 1993, the American channel CBS made the risky bet of launching the broadcast of Doctor Quinn, a doctor’s wife, a picturesque series often compared to Little House on the Prairie.
For more than 6 seasons, viewers fell in love with Michaela Quinn (Jane Seymour), daughter of a renowned Boston doctor, who decided to leave everything behind to become a doctor in the small town of Colorado Springs. She then had to fight against sexism, prejudice and intolerance in order to do her job as well as possible.
If the series very quickly became a real phenomenon, it is mainly thanks to the epic love story between Michaela Quinn and Byron Sully (Joe Lando), a friend of the Cheyenne Indians who will very quickly capsize the heart of the newcomer.
And if the two characters pass the ring on their finger in the finale of season 3, their love story has not always been a long calm river. In the first episode of season 6, Sully disappears. Accompanied by Daniel (John Schneider), Michaela sets off in search of her husband and, on the way, she keeps seeing white flowers that her traveling companion does not notice.
It’s only later, when she comes across a large concentration of these plants that she finds Sully lying in the bushes next to a huge boulder. Luckily, the young man manages to survive his injuries. But did you know that the writers almost killed the character played by Joe Lando?
Sully almost died!
At the end of season 5, Joe Lando had asked the production to leave the series. The writers therefore planned to kill Sully by knocking him off a cliff. For his part, the character of Daniel, who had been introduced in season 5, was to become the new lover of Dr. Mike.
But faced with the strong reaction of the fans, this decision had to be reconsidered. Joe Lando decided to compromise. Sully ultimately survived, but the comedian only appeared in half the episodes of season 6, which also happened to be the last of Doctor Quinn, Medicine Lady.
A return of Doctor Quinn, female doctor?
In June 2021, on the occasion of the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, Jane Seymour confided to the microphone of Allociné that a sequel to Doctor Quinn, female doctor could soon see the light of day.
“A sequel is written. Beth Sullivanwho created Doctor Quinn, wrote a superb script about the next generation of characters“, she explained. “We don’t give up, we hope that we will succeed in convincing a channel or a streaming platform, and that the series will come back.”
Unfortunately, more than two years after this interview, the project still does not seem to have materialized…