April 29, 2008

Dr. Quinn on the rez

Actress Jane Seymour films drought project on Navajo NationThe Navajo Nation is a long way from the set of "Dancing with the Stars."

That didn't stop actress Jane Seymour, who danced on the reality show's fifth season last year, from donning her jeans and boots Monday and trekking across the desert near the Shiprock pinnacle.

Seymour is the narrator for a documentary on the water crisis in the Southwest set to air on public television this fall.

"The water problem in the American Southwest is real, and it needs to be told," Seymour said on camera, with the famous rock in the background. "In today's modern world, water has been taken for granted, and we've lost respect for it."

4 comments:

dmarks said...

I think Dr. Quinn was groundbreaking in ways (even taking an unflinching look at a Native village being wiped out by the U.S. Army) for something that was probably intended to be a cross between "Little House on the Prairie" and a romance novel.

Rob said...

Could be. I didn't watch it. I thought it was intended to be a cross between Little House on the Prairie and a romance novel. ;-)

dmarks said...

I didn't intend to watch it either. It was not a show I eagerly anticipated like I did "Smallville" and "Battlestar Galactica". However, I happened upon the middle of an episode during the first or second season, and was hooked.

One thing it had that I doubt any Western/frontier show had was the aspect of change. The "Wild West" era was a fleeting period after the Civil War. Typically TV shows have it as an unchanging setting. But in Dr. Quinn, the setting changed a lot as the town grew and the railroad and competing doctors came in.... and (relevant to this blog) the Native village that Dr. Quinn would frequently visit to provide care was wiped out by the U.S. Army.

There was more of a sense of actual history in this show.

Rob said...

I also didn't watch Northern Exposure with its strong Native context. But perhaps I'll check out Dr. Quinn on Netflix.