Episode 1122: The drama will begin to unfold

A disaster destroyed the great house of Collinwood and everyone in it in 1970. The ghosts of some people who were alive in 1840 were part of this disaster. Vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have traveled back in time in hopes of preventing the disaster.

One of the ghosts was that of governess Daphne Harridge. When Julia and Barnabas first arrived in 1840, they were bewildered to find that no one at Collinwood had heard of Daphne. Now, Barnabas has found Daphne skulking about in the woods on the grounds of the estate. He confronts her, and demands she answer a series of questions. Desmond Collins, a cousin of the Collinses who live in the great house, shows up just in time to hear Barnabas threatening to force Daphne to tell him what he wants to know. Desmond asks why he would do that, and Barnabas has no choice but to back down. Desmond and Daphne walk away together.

Barnabas has a habit of introducing himself to his adversaries by declaring that he has come to fight them. He did that when he met the evil Gerard Stiles, whose ghost he saw as the face of the disaster in 1970. But the living Gerard has no idea who Barnabas is. For all Barnabas knows, it might be possible for him to get close enough to Gerard to pick up a great deal of information from him that he can use to reshape the future. Daphne doesn’t recognize him either, but when in the twentieth century he and Julia interacted with her ghost and with a resurrected version of her, Daphne was often helpful to them. Barnabas’ aggressive manner in this scene blows any chance he may have had to build the same kind of relationship in this period. Even worse, when Desmond walks in on the encounter what he sees confirms the suspicions he has already expressed, costing Barnabas another possible ally.

My frustration with Barnabas’ part in this scene drove me to fanfic a few years ago. In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about the episode at his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, I wrote:

One of my pet peeves is Barnabas’ habit of introducing himself to people as their enemy. He does it with Daphne in this episode, and he did it with Gerard last week. Not only is it irritatingly stupid, but it creates a pacing problem. They establish the enmity right away, then they have nothing to do while we sit around for weeks and weeks waiting for a confrontation. If he’d made an effort to charm Gerard, we could watch that effort crumble, and the last part of its collapse could coincide with their showdown.

The scene where Barnabas meets Daphne calls out for a different sort of fix. Everyone watching the show knows that Barnabas is a vampire, and everyone who saw the cliffhanger at the end of #1121 knows that Daphne is going to be important. So have him do a “Look into my eyes!” bit. Then we are in suspense- will he get useful information? Will he bite her? They show us Desmond approaching, and the suspense shifts- will Desmond catch them in a compromising situation? If he does, will Barnabas kill him? Even if the scene ends up doing as little to advance the plot as the scene they shot in fact does, the result would be an exciting sequence that promises big developments later on.

Comment by “Acilius,” 10 February 2021, on “Episode 1121: The Lost World,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 31 January 2018

In the great house, Julia is having a conversation with Gabriel Collins. She has told the family that she is a medical doctor. Nine more years will pass before Elizabeth Blackwell is admitted to that profession in 1849, making Julia the first woman to practice medicine in the United States. Extraordinary as her claim to be a doctor is, everyone accepts it equably enough. Gabriel says that one of these days Julia will have to see if she can do anything about his legs, which haven’t been able to bear his weight since an accident he had when he was a child. He starts to explain what his brother Quentin did to cause that accident. He is chattering away happily when he suddenly falls silent and drops his teacup. He is stunned to see Quentin entering the room.

Gabriel had thought Quentin was dead. Everyone thought that until a day or two ago, when Quentin returned after an absence of six months. He explained that while it is true that he and his son Tad were washed off the deck of a ship in a storm, they survived and made their way through South America by a highly circuitous route. Julia knows this, and greets Quentin calmly. But no one bothered to tell Gabriel. If that were not enough to tell us where Gabriel ranks in the hierarchy at Collinwood, it is made abundantly clear after Julia excuses herself and leaves the brothers to talk. Quentin says that he always felt guilty about his part in Gabriel’s injury, which is why he has put up with him so much longer than anyone else. But now, even he has had enough of Gabriel’s intolerable personality.

We see Daphne and Desmond sharing one of two circular tables covered with checkered cloths in front of a fireplace. On the wall above the fireplace is a metallic decoration in the shape of an eagle. In the foreground is a bar with a rack of drinking glasses. Longtime viewers know that the tavern in Collinsport was in the eighteenth and nineteenth century known as The Eagle, and that its tables were covered with checkered cloths even in the 1790s.

Daphne and Desmond at The Eagle

Daphne was prominent in the twentieth century segments that led us to 1840, while Desmond was never mentioned. His very existence seems to be omitted from the documents that Barnabas and Julia examined when they were trying to figure out what happened in 1840. So it is clear to us that he doesn’t have a shot with Daphne, but not to him. He’s dialed the charm up to 11, or would have if he weren’t such a grouchy New Englander that the most charming manner he can produce rises to about 4. She won’t answer any of his questions, but finally agrees not to check out of the Collinsport Inn and leave town until tomorrow.

Desmond goes home to a mansion known as Rose Cottage. He has brought a curio from his recent trip to southeastern China, intending it as a gift for Quentin. It is a human head in a glass box. When his mother reacted to the sight of this blasphemous thing with horror, Desmond told her that he was sure it was “a carving of some sort,” not an actual body part, and asserted that there was nothing frightening about it. He has since had second thoughts, though the head keeps waiting for Desmond to look away before it opens its eyes.

Quentin turns up and tells Desmond that he has come for the present he had told him he has for him. Desmond has changed his mind about giving the head to Quentin, so he has to scramble to come up with another present. Finally, he tells Quentin that the present is a couple of books about the occult. Quentin is delighted with them. He says he has been eager to get back into the study of “the lost world that we can’t understand, or even see.” He sits down and starts reading them right there, and Desmond suggests that it is time to go. Quentin is disappointed to have to wait to get home to read the books, but goes anyway.

Barnabas shows up and pesters Desmond about Daphne. Desmond is unimpressed with Barnabas, but does tell him that, contrary to the promise she made at the Eagle, Daphne has checked out of the inn and left no forwarding address. He shoos Barnabas away.

Back at Collinwood, Julia and Barnabas are in the drawing room. The doors to the rest of the house are wide open as they declaim loudly about how they are pretending to be people they are not and dare trust no one with their terrible secrets. Fortunately for them, the only person who overhears them is Daphne, who is sneaking into the house to leave a note in the foyer for Quentin.

Back at Rose Cottage, Desmond is yelling at the head. An image of the head is superimposed over him, and he shows signs of distress. We saw aged retainer Ben Stokes have a similar reaction the other day when the image of the head was superimposed on him; Ben died as a result. Desmond hears a voice telling him that he will follow its commands. We are to take it that he is now possessed by the head.

Episode 1121: It has become a comedy

Six months ago, in the spring of the year 1840, a man named Gerard Stiles came to the great house of Collinwood bearing a sad tale. Quentin Collins, heir to the house and all the family’s fortune, had been washed off the deck of a ship at sea with his son, Tad Collins. Gerard had done what he could to rescue them, but Quentin and Tad could be presumed dead. Gerard was invited to stay at the great house as a guest, and that is where he has been ever since. Quentin’s widow Samantha has married Gerard, and Quentin’s father Daniel has said he thinks he should adopt Gerard. The couple stands to inherit everything once meant for Quentin, much to the dismay of Quentin’s younger brother Gabriel.

Now, Quentin turns up at the house, alive and well. The audience might have seen this coming, but the audience is familiar with the story of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “Enoch Arden,” either from reading it in school or from seeing one of the many plays and movies based on it. Since that poem won’t be published until 1864, the characters are at a disadvantage.

Enoch Arden saw how happy his wife was with her new husband and decided to slink off into the darkness, never telling them he was alive. Quentin is even more gallant, telling Samantha that he will respect whatever decision she makes. If she chooses to resume her life with him, he will do his best to make a go of it; if she chooses to stay with Gerard, she can go with his blessing.

What this show needs is a good villain. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin goes to the drawing room, and sees a man whom he recognizes as a distant cousin recently come to the house from England. He has been told that Barnabas Collins is visiting, and that he is a dead ringer for the portrait of his late father that hangs in an upstairs bedroom. What he does not understand is why Barnabas reacts to the sight of him with a shocked exclamation of “Quentin!” He asks how he knows him, and Barnabas claims to have seen a drawing of him.

The truth is that Barnabas is a time-traveler from the year 1970. In that year, Gerard’s ghost will precipitate a disaster that will destroy Collinwood and everyone in it. He recognizes Quentin because Quentin looks just like his great nephew, another Quentin Collins who is a friend of Barnabas’ in that future time.

Another ghost who was prominent in 1970 but who has not yet been seen in this period is that of governess Daphne Harridge. In fact, none of the 1840 characters has heard of Daphne, and the governess at Collinwood is someone named Hortense. Returning viewers have been in suspense as to when we would see Daphne. That suspense is ruined today when Kate Jackson does the opening narration. Barnabas spots a figure skulking about in the woods at the end of the episode; he’s the only one who is surprised to see that it’s Daphne.

Episode 1120: A son who can sail the ships

Gabriel Collins is frustrated by his lot in life. His father, the demented Daniel Collins, had planned to leave the family’s entire fortune to Gabriel’s brother Quentin. When Quentin’s friend, Gerard Stiles, reported that Quentin and his son Tad had been washed overboard during a storm at sea and were to be presumed dead, Daniel saw no need to change his will. Quentin’s widow Samantha is now Daniel’s sole heir. Gabriel, his wife Edith, and their two children are to receive nothing. As a wheelchair user, Gabriel’s prospects for employment in the year 1840 are quite dim, to say the least.

Over the last few days, Gabriel has been trying to improve his odds of inheriting by blackmailing Gerard into murdering Samantha. Now, Gerard and Samantha have come back from a trip to the village of Collinsport. Gabriel is disappointed to find that Samantha is still alive, and shocked that she and Gerard have married. He recovers his composure and tells the happy couple that Daniel will surely disinherit Samantha now.

Gabriel goes to Daniel’s room, the locked cell at the top of the tower on the great house at Collinwood. Daniel is kept there because of his unfortunate habit of mistaking women for his late wife and trying to murder them as he did her. How Gabrel got his wheelchair up the stairs to the tower room is not explained. Indeed, he is continually turning up by himself in rooms on every floor of the house, which no one asks any questions about.

Daniel tells Gabriel that Gerard asked him for Samantha’s hand in marriage and that he gave his blessing. Gabriel says that has has a complete dossier proving that Gerard is guilty of many crimes, probably including murder. This does not impress Daniel in the least. Daniel says that he ought to adopt Gerard, who is the sort of man who should be his son.

Gabriel has somehow got himself back downstairs to the drawing room. He tells Samantha that he knows facts about Gerard that she does not know. She refuses to listen to him, and leaves the room with an airy laugh.

Gerard enters and gloats about Samantha’s loyalty to him. Gabriel tries to leave the room. Gerard grabs the back of his wheelchair and holds him in place. Yesterday, Samantha slapped Gabriel in the face, and it was proof of Christopher Pennock’s success at making Gabriel a man we love to hate that we could sympathize with her. But that sympathy also grew from our fondness for Samantha. We’ve seen Gerard do nothing but run con games, and we know that he is fated to be the face of a terrible disaster at Collinwood in 1970. Appealing as James Storm is, Gerard has shown us nothing we can like. His assault on Gabriel is therefore much more outrageous than was Samantha’s. That’s as it should be- we’re supposed to be outraged. Gerard tells Gabriel that he has to be “a good boy” if he knows what’s good for him. There’s no way saying that can make us root for Gerard, no matter how much we may loath Gabriel.

Gerard takes hold of Gabriel’s chair, imprisoning him. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Gabriel’s cousin Desmond enters. He congratulates Gerard, but soon makes it clear he does not approve of the marriage. Gerard storms out, and Gabriel asks Desmond to run an errand for him. He gives Desmond a letter and says that if he presents it at the bank, they will give him his safe deposit box. Desmond agrees to bring Gabriel the box.

Gerard calls on Daniel in the tower room. Daniel tells Gerard that he reminds him of Quentin. This is rather a bold move on the part of the writers. The first version of Quentin we met was an evil ghost who haunted the great house starting late in 1968; we first met Gerard as an evil ghost haunting Collinwood earlier this year. The stories of the two hauntings were both adaptations of Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw, and had a great deal more in common with each other than with the source material. James Storm’s costume and hairstyle as Gerard even evokes David Selby’s as that original Quentin.

In March 1969, the show traveled back in time to 1897 and we met that Quentin as a living being. He was the great-nephew of the Quentin who preceded Gerard as Samantha’s husband. He was a violent, drunken wastrel. We saw him with his siblings and other denizens of the great house who already knew all about those lamentable qualities, so he wasn’t trying to fool anyone. Since the 1897 Quentin had David Selby’s charm and easy manner and spoke in the witty dialogue of Violet Welles, we couldn’t help but like him. We saw that for all his faults, he truly loved his young nephew Jamison Collins, and we could root for that relationship. It was hardly a surprise that Quentin soon caught on with a large audience, making Mr Selby Dark Shadows’ second major breakout star.

The first such star was of course Jonathan Frid as vampire Barnabas Collins. Though Gerard may look like a miniaturized version of Quentin, so far in the 1840 segment he has been more like Barnabas. As Barnabas presented himself to the Collinses in the great house in 1967 as a living man, their long-lost cousin from England, so Gerard is continually pretending to be something he is not. We first heard of Barnabas as, in the words of the opening voiceover, “the strangest, darkest secret of all,” first learned of his supernatural presence as a disembodied heartbeat emanating from his portrait, and first saw him as a hand clutching the throat of the luckless Willie Loomis, so we knew that he was a monster; likewise, we first saw Gerard as an immensely destructive ghost.

The major difference between Gerard and Barnabas is that we still haven’t got to know Gerard. Barnabas set aside his “cousin from England” act when we saw him alone with Willie, whom he terrorized and beat unmercifully. The contrast between Barnabas’ savage cruelty to Willie and his suave pretense with everyone else kept us interested until the collapse of his first crazy scheme, his attempt to erase the personality of Maggie Evans and replace it with that of his lost love Josette. Then, we saw some glimmers of recognizable human emotions coming through his horrible personality, and we started wondering what sort of person could become what Barnabas was.

Gerard’s mask has slipped a couple of times, but only to reveal other masks underneath. We’ve seen that he was cheating Gabriel when he led him to think he was going to murder Samantha for him, and even his assault on Gabriel today is cloaked in passive-aggression, holding his wheelchair instead of hitting his body. In #1113, we saw him alone with Cockney showgirl Leticia Faye, whom he had brought with him to Collinwood as part of a scheme to get money out of the Collinses. The more he talked to her about that money, the more sure she seemed to be that she wasn’t going to see any of it, whatever Gerard managed to do for himself. So far, Gerard has been a type, Con Man, and a function, Villain. We have yet to see any reason to expect that he will become a character. Though Gerard is the face of The Destruction of Collinwood as we saw it a couple of weeks ago, before the trip back in time to 1840, Gabriel seems to be a much more promising addition to the cast at this point.

Gabriel and Samantha are in the drawing room. He tells her that his wedding present for her should be arriving at any moment. He also tells her that he hired Gerard to kill her, which she immediately dismisses as a lie. She tells Gabriel that he is as insane as his father. A few seconds later, Gerard brings Daniel downstairs. It is not clear whether Daniel heard her; if so, we wonder whether he would be more offended at being used as an exemplar of insanity or at being compared to Gabriel, the son whom he hates with such an unreasoning passion.

Gabriel objects that it is unsafe to let Daniel out of the locked room. Daniel replies that Gabriel is just like his mother. Since Daniel is obsessed with his murder of Gabriel’s mother, that response goes a long way towards explaining why he hates Gabriel so much.

Desmond shows up with Gabriel’s safe deposit box. Gabriel opens it in front of everyone, with much ado about how its contents will expose Gerard for what he really is. The box turns out to be empty. We remember that Gerard and Samantha went to the bank before their wedding, and wonder how he got into the vault and emptied the box. Though if we are wondering whether we will ever see Gerard do anything other than run games on people, the emptiness of the box may strike us as a suitable comment on what Gerard really is.

It seems that nothing can stop Gerard. Samantha embraces him and tells him he has made her forget all about Quentin. At that, the doors swing open and there’s Quentin, saying “I’m home!” As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, we’ve seen so many people eavesdrop through those doors over the last four years that it is hard to believe Quentin did not hear Samantha telling Gerard she was no longer thinking of him.

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1864 narrative poem “Enoch Arden,” about a man lost at sea who returns to find that his wife has remarried in his absence, was hugely popular for a century after its publication, inspiring plays and movies, and prompting legislative bodies around the world to adopt laws defining the period after which a missing person could be declared legally dead. Dark Shadows adapted so many other hits of nineteenth century English literature that it is frankly a bit surprising it’s taken them this long to get around to it.

Episode 1119: Where the Devil is everybody.

Ben Stokes

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In that period, we learned how scion Barnabas Collins first became the vampire we had met in April 1967, and more importantly learned that he could be interesting even if he were not a vampire.

We also met much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes. Ben was played by Thayer David, who first joined the cast of Dark Shadows in 1966 as crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. Matthew was so maniacally devoted to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard that he inadvertently killed a friend of hers whom he imagined to be her enemy and was about to deliberately murder another of her favorite people, well-meaning governess Victoria Winters, when the ghosts who haunt the estate of Collinwood emerged from the background and did him in. When we met Ben, he was as open-hearted and kindly as Matthew was dark and twisted.

Barnabas was the one member of the Collins family who took a liking to Ben. He taught Ben to read. Later, Barnabas would press his father, haughty overlord Joshua Collins, to free Ben from his indenture. When Barnabas became a vampire, Ben repaid his kindness by protecting him and abetting his crimes. Eventually, Ben’s devotion to “Mistah Bah-nah-bahs” led him to recreate the very crimes that triggered Matthew’s destruction, killing a man in the course of a struggle and murdering a woman in cold blood. We saw that he and Matthew were two versions of the same character. Ben became what Matthew was after a few months in the shadow of the Collins family curse. Matthew had spent his entire life in the shadow of that curse, and so he was doomed from the beginning.

Barnabas brought the vampire curse on himself when he met the gracious Josette, jumped to the conclusion that she could never love him, and consoled himself in a brief affair with her aunt’s maid Angelique. Unknown to Barnabas, Angelique had a talent for witchcraft. When it turned out that Josette did love Barnabas and agreed to marry him, Barnabas cast Angelique aside. Humiliated and enraged, Angelique used her powers of witchcraft to make him into a ghoul and sentence him to exist forever without love. The vampire curse was dramatically satisfying, because Barnabas had been so selfish that it was fitting he should be reduced to a metaphor for extreme selfishness. And Angelique’s declaration that anyone who loved him would die gave an extra pathos to his underestimate of his own lovableness.

As his involvement with Angelique led to Barnabas’ destruction, so Ben’s involvement with her blighted his life. He met Angelique in #372, and thought she was making a sexual overture to him. Without further ado, he walked up to her and took her in his arms. She gave him something to drink first, which made him the victim of a spell that subjected him to her will. As Angelique’s slave, he did harm to Barnabas and others whom he loved, filling him with anguish and self-loathing. Ben did not share Barnabas’ selfishness, so there would have been little point in making him a vampire. But his desperate response to Barnabas’ kindnesses suggests that he, too, believes himself to be unlovable.

Now, the show has traveled back in time again. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman, Barnabas’ devoted friend in 1970, escaped a disaster in that year by passing through a time warp that took her to 1840, when the seeds of the disaster were planted. Barnabas used some mumbo-jumbo to project his 1970 personality into his body as it was in 1840 and joined her there. The two of them needed help establishing themselves in the Collinwood of that period. They found that Ben was living there and that he was still devoted to Barnabas. Ben was very old, but also amazingly resourceful. He was able to provide Julia with contemporary clothing and a set of luggage that she seemed to have left at the Collinsport Inn, and to substantiate the story that Barnabas and Julia were the son and daughter of the original Barnabas Collins. Now they are securely ensconced in the bosom of the Collins family. At the rate Ben has enabled them to go, Julia and Barnabas should be able to solve all the problems they face in another week or two.

Of course, it cannot be so. Ben sees that Desmond Collins, a cousin of the Collinses who live in the great house, has brought a severed head back from a trip to the southeastern coast of China. Ben recognizes this loathsome thing as an object that was mentioned in connection with a series of murders many years before. He has gone to Desmond’s home, a mansion known as Rose Cottage, and left a book with a chapter about the murders and a note urging him to destroy the head. He also spent some time looking at the head and telling it he was going to see to it that it was destroyed. That turns out to have been unwise; when Ben is walking home through the woods, the head appears to him and he cries out in distress. The next morning, Ben’s corpse is found. It looks as if he tried to cut his own head off.

The Happy Couple

In March 1969, Barnabas began the longest of all Dark Shadows’ excursions backward in time when he went to the year 1897. When he arrived at Collinwood, the matriarch of the house was dying. She was Edith Collins, nonagenarian widow of Gabriel Collins. On her deathbed, Edith reminisced about the difficult relationship she and her darling Gabriel had with Gabriel’s father, Daniel Collins, master of Collinwood. At the time, that startled longtime viewers. We had seen Daniel as a twelve year old boy in the 1790s segment, and he seemed pleasant enough. But if we were to believe that he was the man his daughter-in-law remembered decades after his death, he grew up to be bitter and estranged from his own nearest kin.

We have met the adult Daniel, and he is indeed a difficult sort. He is confined to the tower room in the great house because of his unfortunate tendency to mistake women for his late wife and to try to kill them as he killed her. He also has dementia, so that people have to keep telling him which members of the family are dead and what year it is. In fairness to Daniel, these points are extremely difficult for anyone to keep track of on Dark Shadows. We’ve also heard that Daniel has a heart condition that medical science as of 1840 is powerless to do anything about.

We have met Gabriel, too. He uses a manual wheelchair to get around; apparently he is quite skilled with it, since he keeps appearing in rooms on every floor of the house without any apparent assistance getting up and down stairs. He is a vicious bully, a characteristic Edith did not bring up in her deathbed reminiscences.

Today, we meet the young Edith. She is played by Terrayne Crawford, who in the 1897 segment played lady’s maid Beth Chavez. We haven’t seen her on the show since Beth’s final appearance in #880, though she did have a small part in the feature film House of Dark Shadows which was in theaters at this time.

Unlike the dying Edith of 1897, this version of the character despises Gabriel. There is an amusing idea in there. Perhaps in the 57 years between what we see today and what we saw then, Edith talked herself into believing that she and Gabriel had a lovely marriage and that only Daniel’s hostility gave them trouble.

If that was an idea they were planning to develop, they probably should not have given the part of Edith to Miss Crawford. She seems to be a very nice person, but she had severe limitations as an actress. All of the roles in the 1897 segment included dialogue which called for the depiction of multiple layers of feeling at once, and Miss Crawford was alone among the cast in failing to meet this challenge even a single time. So when Beth tells a devastatingly handsome married man that she doesn’t want him to make passes at her, that’s all there is to it- she simply does not want that, and he simply is a jerk for continuing to do it. We can see no conflict within her to set up a story in the course of which she will stop resisting his charms and begin an affair with him.

Eventually they started writing Beth as a one-dimensional character. That allowed Beth to be part of the story, but they did have to sacrifice some themes they had apparently meant to develop. So in her first appearance, Beth reacted with alarm when a Romani character dropped a hint that she was going to reveal to the Collinses that Beth was Romani, too. That fit with Beth’s origin as a servant who had come to Collinwood in the train of Jenny Collins, who was herself secretly Romani. But delivering on it would have required Beth to have more complicated feelings than Miss Crawford could be relied on to portray, so that was laid quietly to one side.

Showing the audience that Edith is the sort of person who will, in her own mind, eventually retcon her crappy marriage into a great but haunted romance would place even greater demands on a performer than would showing that Beth is hiding the facts about her ethnic background. But as we see her today, Miss Crawford seems to have become an even worse actress than she was playing Beth a year ago. She keeps changing her tone of voice in the middle of her lines for no apparent reason, making us wonder if she is trying to suppress the hiccups. That isn’t because she is tense- on the contrary, she is relaxed and comfortable, with a big grin on her face, an inexplicable affect when every conversation Edith has consists of everyone reviling and threatening everyone else.

Gabriel is in a good mood despite Edith’s loathing for him. He is blackmailing the evil Gerard Stiles into murdering Samantha Drew Collins, widow of his brother Quentin Collins. This will leave Daniel with no choice but to leave the Collins fortune to Gabriel. Samantha has no suspicion that anything like this is going on, but she does know that Gabriel hates her and cordially returns his hatred.

Gerard has told Gabriel that he will give Samantha a poison that will cause her to have a fatal stroke while he and she are in the village and Gabriel is at home, so that she will die in front of witnesses and no one will suspect him even if it is discovered that the stroke was artificially induced.

Gerard comes back to Collinwood. Gabriel menacingly says that “If you tell me anything went wrong…” Gerard replies that nothing went wrong. It is done. Delighted, Gabriel asks for all the details. Gerard says that he and Samantha made a stop at the police station to arrange for Ben’s body to be released for burial. Gabriel asks if it happened at the police station. Gerard says no, then goes on to say that they went from there to the bank. Gabriel asks if it happened at the bank. Gerard says no. He then says that they went to the courthouse. Gabriel is thrilled at the idea that it happened at the courthouse, and Gerard confirms that it did happen at the courthouse.

Gabriel asks where the body is now. Before Gerard can answer, the front door opens and the body comes walking in. What happened at the courthouse was not Samantha’s death. It was Gerard and Samantha’s wedding. Gabriel is dumbfounded.

Gabriel absorbs the news of the wedding. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When he first joined the show in January 1970, Christopher Pennock had some troubles with line delivery that limited him almost as badly as Miss Crawford’s weaknesses limited her. But he has grown by leaps and bounds over the last ten months, and he really breaks through as Gabriel. The three “It happened in the–” questions and his responses to the answers they elicit are pattern from a bit that was old when Gallagher and Shean did it in vaudeville in 1910, but he and James Storm execute it so well that it feels fresh today. The expression on his face when he learns that Samantha has married Gerard is just exquisite.

The measure of Pennock’s success came earlier in the episode, when Samantha slapped Gabriel in the face. Virginia Vestoff is likable enough that her characters can get away with almost anything, but not even she could sell an audience on an able-bodied person who physically assaults a wheelchair user. But Pennock has established Gabriel as such an utter louse that we can see Samantha’s point.

Also in this episode, Samantha clears the toys out of a space known as “The Playroom.” It is explicitly acknowledged that her son Tad had outgrown the toys in it long before, a point the fans like to make whenever The Playroom is mentioned. Samantha has set aside her earlier resolution to leave the room unchanged to honor Tad, who was washed away in a storm at sea and is presumed dead, along with his father Quentin. She has decided the time has come to move on from the past.

The time warp that brought Julia to 1840 was localized in The Playroom, so we wonder what clearing it out will do to the prospects for a return trip. Also, The Playroom occasionally popped into being, complete with Tad’s old toys, in 1970 and in 1995, due to the influence of a bunch of ghosts of people from this period. So while first-time viewers will not likely find any significance in Samantha’s redecoration project, returning viewers may have many questions about it.

Episode 1118: Relics of the Anti-Saints

From March to June 1969, during a segment of Dark Shadows set in the year 1897, John Karlen played inveterate prankster Carl Collins. Carl could barely contain the manic glee his own practical jokes inspired in him, even though they rarely moved anyone else to more than irritation. A childlike man, Carl quickly dissolved into helplessness before even the slightest challenge.

Now, the dramatic date is 1840. Karlen is Desmond Collins. We met Desmond yesterday, and he seemed to be cut from the same cloth as Carl. He has returned from a trip to East Asia, and has brought a severed human head in a glass display case. His mother Flora reacted to this object with horror, as one would expect. In response, Desmond kept insisting that there was nothing frightening about the head and averring that he could not understand Flora’s reaction. His demeanor is calm and mature, setting him apart from Carl. But as regards the head, his judgment seems to be just as ludicrously poor.

Desmond does show good sense in one matter. Yesterday, Desmond expressed distrust of two people who have recently presented themselves at the great house of Collinwood under the names Barnabas and Julia Collins. Julia and Barnabas have identified themselves as brother and sister, and have said that their father was the Barnabas Collins who lived on the estate in the late eighteenth century and left for England in the 1790s. Desmond talks with Barnabas in the drawing room of the great house today, and is still openly suspicious.

The two people at Collinwood now who were there in the 1790s are Ben Stokes, an old man who was an indentured servant at Collinwood back then, and Daniel Collins, who was a child then and is now the master of the house. Daniel reacts with amazement to the sight of Barnabas. He is convinced he is the same man, unchanged after four and a half decades. Barnabas tells him he is the son of that Barnabas. There is still a note of suspicion in Desmond’s voice when he remarks that it is Barnabas’ night for being mistaken for his father, but he can hardly keep doubting that he is a member of the family.

As it happens, Daniel’s first impression was right. Barnabas is the person he knew long ago. Julia is not related to the Collinses at all. Barnabas has not aged, because he was turned into a vampire in the 1790s and was sealed in a coffin from that time until Julia released him a few nights ago. She is a time traveler from the year 1970, where she and Barnabas are friends. Barnabas is also a time traveler of a sort; he used some mumbo-jumbo to project his 1970 personality into his 1840 body, so that he and Julia are on the same page now. They have traveled into the past in hopes of preventing a disaster that will befall the Collins family in 1970, so their motives are good. But after all, one of them is a vampire and the other is a mad scientist. They are not likely to be an unmixed blessing to any house they enter.

Ben is visiting Flora at the house she and Desmond share, a mansion near Collinwood known as Rose Cottage. He sees the head, and recognizes it as something that figured in a series of murders many years before. Those murders took place in and around a town called Bedford, and are therefore known as The Bedford Atrocity. Ben asks Daniel if he remembers the matter. He certainly does, and mentions that his late sister Millicent had a book that included a chapter about it. He suggests Ben look for the book in the attic.

Ben finds the book there, and he is sure that if he shows it to Desmond he will convince Desmond to destroy the head. He takes the book to Rose Cottage. No one is home. He leaves the book in the room where the head is kept and writes a note for Desmond. He explains to the head that he is going to destroy it. This turns out to have been an unwise move. When Ben is walking home through the woods, an image of the head is superimposed over him and he reacts with distress.

In a day concerned with nautical mishaps, it is somehow fitting that Ben gets stuck in the head. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There are a couple of other points worthy of mention. Daniel is conscious of his position as master of Collinwood, but he is not the haughty overlord Louis Edmonds played when he was Joshua Collins in the part of the show set in the 1790s or the stuffy but lovable figure he created as Edward Collins in the 1897 segment. He is dignified, courteous, and kindly. But he is also gravely mentally ill. When first we saw him, he tried to kill Julia, not for any of the good reasons anyone might have to do such a thing, but because he thought she was his late wife, whom he killed years ago and keeps trying to kill again every time she shows up disguised as someone else. He cannot remember who is alive and who is dead, or what year it is. (In fairness, these are very difficult things to keep track of on Dark Shadows.) It’s a cliche that Jonathan Frid played Barnabas “as if he were playing King Lear.” In his scenes today, Edmonds quite literally is playing King Lear. Mrs Acilius and I marveled at the depth and complexity of the characterization.

Barnabas meets the evil Gerard Stiles. Barnabas knows that Gerard’s ghost will cause the destruction of the great house and its residents in 1970 and that he will still preside over its ruins in 1995. Gerard tells Daniel a story about the deaths of his son and grandson, Quentin and Tad Collins. Barnabas is in the room when Gerard tells this story, and has reason to disbelieve it. Later, he is alone with Gerard and challenges his story. Barnabas learns nothing from this encounter, but Gerard learns that Barnabas is his enemy. Barnabas very often introduces himself to his foes by showing his cards in this way. That habit does keep the plot moving, but it is frustrating that the protagonist does not even try to ingratiate himself to his adversaries and get information from them he can use to advance his goals.

Episode 1117: That Hideous Strength

The Signal of Another Start*

In June 1970, Dark Shadows was set in a universe other than the one where it usually takes place. The show insisted on calling that other continuity “Parallel Time.”

In the main continuity, mad scientist Julia Hoffman is the friend and enabler of vampire Barnabas Collins. When Barnabas crossed over to Parallel Time, he found that Julia’s counterpart there was as devoted to wicked witch Angelique as the Julia he knew was to him. He made himself Angelique’s enemy, and in #1036 Hoffman was poised over him with a stake and a hammer, ready to destroy him. In the nick of time, Julia arrived from the main continuity and saved Barnabas. She bashed Hoffman’s head in, stole her clothes, and set about impersonating her. When Barnabas first saw Julia in Parallel Time, he thought she was her Doppelgänger, and since she was in his hiding place he was going to kill her. Fortunately for Julia, Barnabas had got into the habit of making speeches to people before he murdered them, so she was able to tell him who she was. With that, the murder was off and their friendship was back on track.

Now, it is Julia who has crossed over into another world. She has traveled back to the year 1840, and has told the family in the great house of Collinwood at that time that she is the daughter of the Barnabas Collins who supposedly left for England in the 1790s. She has also told them to expect her brother, Barnabas Junior, who, she says, looks just like their old man.

In a moment of extreme folly, Julia went to the room where Barnabas was sealed in his coffin in the 1790s and released him. This mirrored the folly of her waiting around in his hiding place after she killed Hoffman in Parallel Time. The Barnabas of 1840 had no idea that any time had passed since he was imprisoned four and a half decades before, and certainly did not know what Julia was talking about when she claimed that they had met in 1967 and become friends in 1968. He was about to kill her when his old friend Ben Stokes turned up in the nick of time and stopped him.

Now, Barnabas has discovered that Julia is interfering in his plans. He has bitten the lovely Roxanne Drew, intending for her to die and rise as his vampire bride. Julia and Ben found Roxanne and brought her to the Old House on the grounds of Collinwood. Julia is giving Roxanne a blood transfusion which has prevented her death. When Barnabas sees what is going on, he grabs Julia and is about to bite her.

Barnabas is already flashing his fangs when he has a seizure and collapses. He stands back up and finds Julia holding a cross at him. He tells her that he is the Barnabas of 1970, projected into his 1840 body by some mumbo-jumbo involving the I Ching. He could be making that up based on things she has already told him, so she keeps holding the cross. He goes on to give specific facts about several people they know in 1970. She realizes he is telling the truth. She puts the cross down, and gives him a hug. As Julia came from the main continuity and destroyed her own Doppelgänger to save Barnabas, so Barnabas has come from the future and destroyed his previous self to save Julia.**

Embraceable vampire. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The 1970 model Barnabas does not want Roxanne to be a vampire, and he is ashamed of his earlier self for having tried to make her one. Roxanne comes to, sees him, and is delighted to think he has come to bite her again. When he says that things have changed, she is disappointed and he is embarrassed. He goes away.

Julia has a superhuman power of hypnosis that she has often used to erase people’s memories and overwrite them with information that will not incriminate Barnabas. She tries this on Roxanne. She is halfway through the process when some noises outside prompt her to leave the room and investigate. The room is at the top of the stairs, and has been a major set for years. We’ve caught glimpses of the door that opens to it a couple of times, but this is the first time there is set built all the way to the railing.

Julia goes to the railing and calls downstairs, asking if anyone is there. No one answers, so she goes back into the room. Roxanne has somehow got away.

Barnabas goes to the great house and introduces himself as Julia’s brother. Julia comes. They get a private moment, during which Julia tells him that Roxanne escaped and that she does not know whether the hypnosis was successful. Roxanne enters, looks at Barnabas, and announces to the assembled Collinses that she knows who he is. She is escorted upstairs. Barnabas and Julia are on the verge of panic until Roxanne’s sister, Samantha Drew Collins, comes down and says that Roxanne doesn’t remember anything of the last couple nights.

The Gods are Weak at First*

The 1970 version of Barnabas is not the only character to make his grand entrance today. We also meet Desmond Collins and an acquaintance of his.

Desmond is the son of Flora Collins, a lady novelist and all-around silly person who lives in the nearby mansion called Rose Cottage. He has just returned from a long journey with a present for his friend, Quentin Collins, husband of Samantha and heir to the Collins estate. Flora breaks the sad news that Quentin and his son Tad Collins were lost at sea some time ago, that they have been missing ever since, and that they are now presumed dead.

The present is in a large cube that is covered with a cloth. Desmond removes the cloth and exposes a glass box holding a severed head. Flora reacts with horror; Desmond laughs and says that it is surely a carved figure of some sort, entirely harmless. We know better; the episode ends with the head opening its eyes.

The perfect gift for the man who has everything, except a sense of decency. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In 1945, C. S. Lewis published the third volume of his “Space Trilogy,” a novel called That Hideous Strength. It was a commercial success at the time, and has been in print ever since. I have mixed feelings about Lewis’ writings; I essentially agree with his religious views, but he often expressed them in a cutesy-poo style that is still endemic among Anglican writers and that makes me wish I were a Zoroastrian or a Buddhist or something whenever I encounter it.

But the first fifty pages of That Hideous Strength are terrific. I teach in a university, and the account of life inside the fictional University of Edgestow is the most insightful depiction of campus politics I’ve ever read. The place is dominated by a clique of administrators who keep talking to each other about what “Our Head” wants them to do. In British institutions of higher education, “Head” is a title for a permanent director of a department or institute, so that’s what you think they are talking about. But no, it’s an actual severed head through which the voice of Satan speaks to them. They worship the head and follow the commands they receive from its mouth.

That Hideous Strength was certainly popular enough that it is likely the writers of Dark Shadows had looked to it as a source of material. In particular, Sam Hall was a serious enough Protestant that he persuaded Shirley Grossman to convert from Judaism and join him in the Lutheran church before they married and she became Grayson Hall. Lewis was so celebrated for his apologetics that it would be rather odd if his name did not attract Hall’s notice. So we can expect that Desmond and others will form a cult of some sort and that the Head will give them diabolical orders to follow.

The Head is that of Michael McGuire, making the first of scores of television appearances. One of my favorite parts of his was Sumner Sloan, the prominent academic who dumped Diane Chambers in the first episode of Cheers and came back for her in her last episode as a regular part of the cast of characters. McGuire also appeared in my favorite episode of Columbo, “A Friend in Deed,” in which his character tries to confess to killing his wife in a fit of rage only to find himself involved in a plot to kill another man’s wife in cold blood. I suppose one of McGuire’s specialties was “Do Not Date This Man.” I’ve never heard that he was anything other than a nice guy in real life, though.

*These section titles are taken from William Dickey’s 1961 poem, “Continued in Our Next”:

Over the quiet paper, in light that is

Interested only in a casual way,

All quite polite, the neat pen idly marries

Third sons to princesses.

They go away,

To the widest margin, to a land of white,

Wholly uninhabited until they came,

And from the sacks with which they are provided

Stock it with leaping trout and huntable game.

Hounds to be cursed at when the blood trail falters,

Eventually, reasons why the hounds went wrong.

Then to the reasons they establish altars.

The gods are weak at first.

When they grow strong

They bring into the world their choicest thunders.

Plagues, curses color the narrow countryside.

The peasantry speaks of horned, unnatural wonders,

And in the violence takes a natural pride.

But all the while the map-makers are busy.

Faint explorations die in the savage hills,

Others go on to the farthest fabled city,

Where for six months the sun is lost, and the cold kills.

Geometers prove the world, and it is conquered.

Truth overtakes the aborigine.

The gods depart. Mankind is anchored

To clear historical necessity.

Until one day at midday

When the sun ought to be loudest in the shouting sky

Shadow occludes it. Suddenly life is done.

The fire goes out. The constellations die.

Only, above the following page, the pen,

Whose quality is not to have taken part,

Hovers in uncommittedness again,

Poised for the signal of another start

Towards some fresh country, princesses more golden,

And younger sons who wage a bolder fight,

Stags nobler, hounds more diligent than the olden,

The page lies empty in the easy light.

This poem reminds me of Dark Shadows. The creative process is so close to the surface of the show that an image of a writer with pen and paper is a suitable way to start a description of it. When the third sons and the princesses are moved to the “widest margin, to the land of white” it’s ambiguous if that just means the writer is making notes on the otherwise blank edge of the paper or whether the characters are going off to the Arctic. We see the same ambiguity in “the pen whose quality is not to have taken part.” That brings to mind both the characters visiting from other times or other universes and the writers who use those cosmic journeys to start the story fresh.

The “natural pride” that the “peasantry” takes in the crimes of the “unnatural wonders” explains both why there are characters who are willing to go on living in Collinsport and why the audience keeps coming back to the show. The wish for “princesses more golden” and for “younger sons who wage a bolder fight” casts our minds to stories like the conflict between Barnabas and Jeremiah Collins over the love of the gracious Josette and the ongoing scheme Gabriel Collins has devised to do away with his sister-in-law Samantha, grubby little imbroglios that never could lead to anything but sorrow, and leaves us wondering why we choose to follow this show rather than seeking out happier and more glorious tales.

**My wife, Mrs Acilius, had a lot to say about this inverted parallel.

Episode 1116: Her temperature could rise

Friday’s episode ended with one of the most effective scenes in all of Dark Shadows. Vampire Barnabas Collins summoned his latest victim, Roxanne Drew, to the gazebo on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. Roxanne looked at Barnabas adoringly and told him she was willing to die for him. He took her up on this. He bit her, draining her body of blood and letting it fall to the floor of the gazebo. He told her that her corpse would be found in the morning and that her family would grieve for her during the day. At dusk, she would rise as a vampire and would belong to him forever. He walked away from the gazebo, leaving her body lying there. Jonathan Frid and Donna Wandrey showed the full terror of this unimaginably cruel scene. The result chills the audience as deeply as anything they have shown us.

Today, it turns out Roxanne isn’t dead after all. That gives Roxanne’s sister Samantha a chance to find her, and Barnabas’ friends Julia Hoffman and Ben Stokes a chance to hide Roxanne from Samantha and to keep her from dying. When Barnabas finds out what Julia is doing, he moves to attack her, but collapses in the nick of time.

Julia uses some medical equipment she has improvised to give Roxanne a blood transfusion. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There is also some activity involving Samantha and the evil Gerard Stiles, but that’s basically it. They can’t all be gems of course, but last week was a such bright spot that these twenty two minutes of busywork come as a big disappointment. We can only hope the show gets back up to speed soon!

Episode 1115: The woman in question

The year is 1840. Vampire Barnabas Collins summons his latest victim, Roxanne Drew. They meet at the gazebo on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. He says he has a way they can be together forever. She says she would die for him. That’s what he had in mind. He bites her, drains her body of blood, and lets her fall to the floor of the gazebo. He tells her corpse that it will be found tomorrow, and that Roxanne will be mourned. The following night, she will rise as a vampire. He walks off, leaving her.

Roxanne, left like a cat leaves a mouse for its people to find.

Roxanne’s sister Samantha also has a new relationship, and may also be murdered as a result. Her husband, whose name is Quentin Collins, is missing and presumed dead after a shipwreck. Quentin and Samantha’s son Tad was with his father and is also missing. Quentin’s friend Gerard Stiles has been a guest at the great house of Collinwood for some time. We saw the other day that Samantha turns to Gerard when she needs comforting, and they kiss today.

After Gerard and Samantha’s love scene, Gerard is alone in the drawing room with Quentin’s brother Gabriel. He is in the act of walking out on Gabriel when Gabriel addresses him as “Mr Miller.” Gabriel leafs through a stack of papers about the life of crime Gerard led under his original name, Ivan Miller. Gerard grabs the papers from Gabriel. Gabriel clutches at Gerard’s arm and squeezes it so hard Gerard falls to his knees. Gerard is stunned by Gabriel’s strength. Gabriel gets around by pushing himself in a manual wheelchair, which does indeed build the muscles in the arms and upper back, so it is a believable moment.

Gabriel then hands Gerard the papers and says that they are his copy. He has another copy stashed where it will go to the authorities should any harm befall him. He says that he will hold them back provided Gerard makes himself useful to him. First he dispatches Gerard to acquire a large packet of arsenic. Then he tells Gerard that his next duty will be to poison Samantha with the arsenic a little bit at a time, so that she dies a painful, lingering death. Gerard says that he would rather just leave Collinwood and make a fresh start somewhere else rather than do that. Gabriel says that since Samantha’s death will make him the heir to his terminally ill father’s vast estate, he will be able to pay Gerard very handsomely for the task. He offers him 10% of the Collins fortune. Since Gerard apparently murdered a woman in Portugal a few years back, Gabriel is quite sure he will not be squeamish about murdering another woman, especially when he stands to profit so richly. Gerard says they have a deal.

In #1077, set in 1970, another Quentin Collins was reading the family history when he learned for the first time that he had a “grand uncle” who lived in 1840 who was also named Quentin Collins. Not even the family history mentioned Tad’s name. Since that Quentin was born in 1870 (though he looked much younger than his hundred years,) we could take it that neither Grand Uncle Quentin nor his widow was the one through whom ownership of the Collins family wealth passed to the other generations we have seen. Indeed, longtime viewers may recall that in #701 and #702, set in 1897, Quentin’s very elderly grandmother Edith Collins reminisced on her deathbed about her husband Gabriel. So we know that Gabriel and Edith are the parents of a son who will sire that other Quentin and his siblings, among them Edward Collins, whose son Jamison will go on to be the father of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and Roger Collins, the adults at the great house in the 1960s.

As of this day in 1840, however, Gabriel’s father Daniel Collins has named his son Quentin his sole heir, with Tad in second place and Samantha in third. Told that Quentin and his son are dead, Daniel has refused to rewrite the will in Gabriel’s favor. Early in the episode, Samantha tells Gabriel that when Daniel dies, it will be up to her to take care of him and his wife, and that she will do so provided they behave themselves. Knowing that it does not work out that way, we can believe Gerard will actually carry out the assignment Gabriel gives him today.

The disappearance of Quentin and Samantha from the Collins family’s memory by the late nineteenth century is only the first of four reasons we might believe Gabriel’s plan will come to fruition. The second is the casting of Samantha. Virginia Vestoff was a splendid actress whose performance lets a great deal of fresh air into every scene she appears in. However, Samantha is Vestoff’s first role on Dark Shadows. If she were a member of the show’s established repertory company, we might be confident that Gerard will disappoint Gabriel and let her live. But first timers, even spectacularly talented ones with solid backgrounds on Broadway and in daytime television, often turn out to be short-timers. So her presence adds to the suspense about her character’s future.

The third reason is an echo of the circumstances of one of Dark Shadows‘ most prominent on-screen murders. In 1967, Barnabas coerced his associate, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, into preparing a lethal injection for her old friend Dave Woodard, who was threatening to expose their crimes. As Gerard brings the arsenic to Gabriel today, only to be shocked to hear that he will have to commit the murder himself, so Julia offered the hypodermic to Barnabas, only to be told that she would administer the deadly shot. The murder of Woodard actually came off, so longtime viewers have another reason to expect that Samantha, too, might die. And of course that Gabriel pulls the same maneuver on Gerard that Barnabas pulled on Julia shows that they really are members of the same family and that they are bearers of that family’s curse.

The fourth reason grows from what we have seen of the future of Collinwood. In segments set in 1970 and 1995, we have seen that Gerard’s ghost will destroy Collinwood and rule over its uninhabitable ruins for decades after. Today that starts to make sense. If Gabriel’s descendants own the house and hold their position in the community as the result of a hideous crime their ancestor committed through Gerard, then it is fitting that Gerard should be the face of the long-delayed reckoning for that crime.

I should mention that Vestoff is not alone in giving an excellent performance today. Christopher Pennock was pretty hard to take when he first joined the show as monstrous man-child Jabez Hawkes in #935; he moved well, but he delivered his dialogue with so much bombast that he stood out even among the cast of Dark Shadows. He was noticeably better as Jekyll/ Hyde characters Dr Cyrus Longworth and John Yaeger from #985, but still enunciated his lines too self-consciously to really draw the audience in. As astrologer Sebastian Shaw from #1073, he was a little more natural, but Sebastian was such a poorly conceived character that he couldn’t really show his stuff.

As Gabriel, Pennock finally comes into his own. He is smooth as silk in Gabriel’s scenes with Gerard today; it’s a pleasure to listen to him sidle his way from one syllable to the next. He’s just as pitch-perfect projecting Gabriel’s humiliation and uncontrolled rage in his scene with Samantha as he is at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum with Gerard. Certainly Vestoff and James Storm are first-rate scene partners; they may deserve a share of the credit for Pennock’s fine work. Or maybe he just needed to sit down, I don’t know.

It’s no news to fans of Dark Shadows that Jonathan Frid was capable of great work. He’s been on top form this week. The other day, Barnabas’ aged friend Ben Stokes told him a bizarre story, to which Barnabas replied “You’re mad, old man.” No actor could deliver Henry V’s dismissal of Falstaff, “I know thee not, old man” more heart-breakingly than Frid delivers that line. And watching his face as Roxanne falls dead in Barnabas’ arms, you can feel the terror and the awe of the moment. The murders sometimes come so thick and fast on Dark Shadows that watching them we can feel like we are seeing the coyote raise yet another the mushroom cloud at the end of his fall after failing to catch the roadrunner, and Barnabas himself often takes killing very lightly. But there is nothing cartoonish about what he does to Roxanne.

Episode 1114: I am the stranger

In June, Dark Shadows was set in an alternate universe to which vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman had traveled. Julia and Barnabas found a comatose woman. Barnabas took one look at her, saw how silent and immobile she was, and fell in love. He’s dead half the time, so we can’t judge him for that reaction.

The woman’s name was Roxanne Drew, and Barnabas’ love for her survived even after she regained the ability to walk and talk. Roxanne didn’t make it to the original continuity when Barnabas and Julia returned there in July. Barnabas’ sorrow for her was lightened in #1081, when he met Roxanne’s counterpart in his native universe. Their relationship took a turn for the worse in #1106, when he discovered that she, too, was a vampire. In #1107, he found out that Roxanne was alive in 1840, and that she underwent a mysterious and terrible change in that year.

Now, Barnabas is keeping Roxanne chained in her coffin in the secret room behind his bookcase. Julia has traveled back in time to 1840 and hopes to prevent a disaster that has destroyed the great house of Collinwood and its residents. Trying some mumbo-jumbo that he hopes will lead him to join Julia in the past, Barnabas has a vision of a tombstone saying that she died on 6 October 1840. He and his friend Timothy Eliot Stokes go to the graveyard and see such a tombstone there. Barnabas says that 6 October is three days away; the episode was originally broadcast on 1 October 1970, which is more than three days from 6 October. But there is a weekend in between, and days when the show isn’t on don’t count.

The stones. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas says that he must find a way to travel back in time before 6 October. Stokes asks why, and Barnabas says he himself doesn’t understand how it works. But regular viewers know that anniversaries have a power in the cosmos of Dark Shadows that physical laws have in our world. If an event took place exactly 130 years ago, or any other number of years ago, it is possible for people in the present to interact with that event in ways they cannot on other days of the year. That has been the case ever since undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins was on the show, before Barnabas made his first appearance.

Julia’s grave is next to one commemorating Minerva Trask, a hateful biddy who was one of the most effective villains during the period in 1969 when the show was set in 1897. That turns out to be foreshadowing. The scenes with Barnabas and Stokes in a contemporary setting are a prologue to an episode set mostly in 1840. Julia meets the living Roxanne, who is accompanied by Lamar Trask, a kinsman of Minerva’s loathsome husband Gregory.

Julia is a guest at Collinwood, impersonating Barnabas’ imaginary daughter and telling the family to await the arrival of her brother, Barnabas Junior, who looks remarkably like their late father. Julia is in the drawing room, talking to herself about how much she misses Barnabas, when Roxanne enters. Roxanne makes a little joke about talking to inanimate objects, and introduces herself as the sister of Samantha Drew Collins, wife of the missing Quentin Collins and lady of the house.

Trask enters. Julia is startled to see him. Roxanne asks Julia to guess what business Trask is in. She says she could not possibly, and Trask protests that guessing games are silly. That’s a shame. Julia must have seen What’s My Line?; we can imagine her asking “Is there a product connected with what you do? Is the product bigger than a bread box? Is the product alive? Are your services equally available to men and women?” etc.

Roxanne says that Lamar is an undertaker. She spits the word out, and asks him sarcastically if he prefers to be called a mortician. She reviles his profession in quite vigorous language. The dramatic date may be 1840, but at this moment we are very clearly in the aftermath of Jessica Mitford’s 1963 book The American Way of Death, an extremely influential polemic against the mortuary industry.

Lamar insists that Roxanne go out on the terrace to talk with him privately. When they are gone, Julia wonders to herself what will happen later this year to turn Roxanne into a vampire. She really ought to know. She released Barnabas from his chained coffin the other day, hoping that he would already be her friend returned from the future. But instead he was the same monster sealed up there in the 1790s, who had no idea who she was. Had his old friend Ben Stokes not shown up in the nick of time, Barnabas would have killed Julia then and there. He has gone on to take other victims, killing some of them, and remains at large. So it seems quite likely that Barnabas will bite Roxanne to death, causing her to rise as a vampire. When that happens, Julia will be to blame.

This is a temporal paradox. Julia hadn’t traveled back to 1840 when she first met the vampiric Roxanne, and Barnabas hadn’t been out of his coffin between the 1790s and 1897 at that point. Roxanne’s vampirism was involved in the circumstances that led to Julia’s trip to 1840. So the vampirism caused the trip that caused the vampirism. And Roxanne the vampire had clearly never seen Barnabas before when she met him in 1970. Of course it doesn’t make logical sense, but so much of the story is made up of the consequences of Julia and Barnabas’ bungling that it would be wrong if it were any other way.

On the terrace, Lamar asks Roxanne to marry him. She refuses, angrily. My wife, Mrs Acilius, said that it was odd Lamar wanted to marry Roxanne, since she obviously hates him. I pointed out that he seems to hate her as well. Many married couples come to hate each other over the years, so I suppose it is a time-saver of a kind if two people get married who already hate each other.

Lamar keeps telling Roxanne that he made a deal with her father to marry her, and she keeps telling him that she doesn’t care. She wants to marry a mysterious stranger who will sweep her off her feet and show her a new life. Barnabas is eavesdropping from behind the wrought iron fence. He has not met Roxanne before, and cannot see her well, but he can well imagine himself being a mysterious stranger who will change everything in a woman’s life. Moreover, Barnabas hears her raging at Trask, whose late father was an enemy whom Barnabas killed with an even higher degree of sadism than is usual for him. Since Trask Junior looks and sounds just like Trask Senior, Roxanne’s hostility to him is enough to make Barnabas feel a special closeness to her.

Barnabas approaches Roxanne after Lamar has left. He persuades her to invite him to her home. When Barnabas was first on the show in April and May of 1967, they made good use of the trope that vampires can enter only where they are invited, but they soon became very inconsistent about that. It places a restriction on Barnabas’ movements that can be story-productive though, so I’m always happy when it seems they will be bringing it back.

In her room, Roxanne is disappointed Barnabas did not call. He materializes inside her window. She can’t very well be happy about that, but he talks her out of screaming. She looks into his eyes and falls into a trance. He bares his fangs, and she tilts her head to offer him her neck. Her fate would appear to be sealed.

This is the first episode credited to Lela Swift as line producer. Swift has been with the show as its principal director from the beginning. Even though Henry Kaplan is listed as director today, it has the crisp look and inventive compositions that characterize Swift’s style, not the muddy images and extreme closeups with which Kaplan was content to fill the time. We can hope that, with Swift in the driver’s seat, the show will consistently meet her high standards of visual strategy.

Episode 1113: Do you smell the smoke?

From March to November 1969, Dark Shadows was mostly set in the year 1897, to which time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins had made his way. Barnabas’ friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, would join him for several weeks towards the end of the 1897 segment.

While Barnabas and Julia were busy in the past, the show cut to a contemporary setting a few times to show us that time was passing there and that the actions taking place in 1897 were changing the circumstances at the great house of Collinwood in the twentieth century. When Barnabas returned to the contemporary setting, the other characters knew where he had been and remembered both the events he went back in time hoping to prevent and those that had replaced them.

The 1897 segment was so good I wished it had gone on longer. One way I imagined they might have been able to stretch it out would have been to do more with the intercutting timelines. So perhaps spend a week in 1897, then a week in 1969. Obviously that would have required a lot more advance planning than they ever managed to do, since they would have had to keep redressing the sets to represent the different periods, but I thought it might have been worthwhile.

Today, we have evidence that some idea like this also occurred to the makers of the show. Julia has gone back in time to 1840 to keep a series of events from starting that will lead to the ruination of Collinwood and its inhabitants in 1970. Barnabas was unable to join her. We spend time today with Julia in 1840, and then with Barnabas in 1970.

Arriving in 1840, Julia’s first act was to make contact with Barnabas’ old friend Ben Stokes. Ben believed her story and made himself incredibly helpful to her effort to establish herself at Collinwood. But she convinced herself that Barnabas had magically projected himself from 1970 into his body as it is in 1840. So she went to the secret room of the old Collins family mausoleum, unchained his coffin, and released him. He was about to kill her when Ben showed up and stopped him. Ben persuaded Barnabas to let Julia leave the room alive, and repeated her story to him. Barnabas reacted with incredulity, telling Ben that he had gone mad to accept such a tale, but Ben insisted Julia was their friend. Now Barnabas has resumed killing people, and Julia is terribly afraid that unless he stops he might be caught.

Barnabas is in the bedroom at the Old House at Collinwood once meant for Josette DuPrés to call her own after she married him. He takes Josette’s portrait off the wall and tells her that he must go on without her. We’ve heard that before. In #281, he stood in the same room and spoke to the same portrait, telling Josette that her ghost must go away and never come back so that he could face the world with someone else. We soon found that his plan was to turn that someone else into a simulacrum of Josette, and later he kept deciding that other women were reincarnations of Josette, so that speech did not represent the emotional growth we might have hoped to see. Finally, Josette’s ghost appeared to Barnabas in #948 and told him to lose her number, and his next love interest was a woman who did not remind him of her. That new woman was comatose, and Barnabas rhapsodized about how much beauty he found in her silence and immobility. Also, there was a bit of a problematic age gap, since she was 22 and he was well over 200. Baby steps, baby steps.

Barnabas has a heart to heart with Josette’s portrait. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Ben enters and tries to talk Barnabas into returning to his coffin and allowing himself to be chained back in. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, points out, he doesn’t even mention that murder is bad. He knows Barnabas well enough to know he’d roll his eyes at that kind of talk. He just focuses on the danger Barnabas is putting himself in. Barnabas says that Ben does not know how horrible it is to spend years trapped in the darkness. Returning viewers may smile at this, since Barnabas doesn’t know that either. When Julia opened his coffin, he had no idea more than a single day had passed since he was chained there in the 1790s. He flounces off to take more victims.

In the drawing room of the great house, Julia meets Cockney psychic Leticia Faye. She asks Leticia if she can tell what will happen in that room in 1970. Leticia laughs and says her visions don’t extend that far. She adds that there wouldn’t be much point in them if they did, since no one alive today will be around to see if they came true. Julia claims to have had a dream about 1970, and Leticia humors her. She goes into a trance, and smells smoke. That’s about it, and when Leticia comes out of it she is still laughing, perhaps thinking that it didn’t amount to much. But it reminds Julia of the disaster she escaped, and leaves her wondering what Barnabas is doing in 1970.

We cut to Barnabas’ house in that year. He is doing what he does best, sitting around feeling sorry for himself. Ben’s descendant, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes, is there. They are talking about the funeral held that afternoon for the residents of the great house killed in the disaster. Stokes does not know that Barnabas is a vampire, and so Barnabas has to make an excuse for his absence from this daytime event. He simply says he was too upset to attend.

Heiress Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes and charming rogue Quentin Collins survived the disaster and are in the Old House, both quite insane. Barnabas and Stokes cart them off to a psychiatric facility. This is the final appearance on Dark Shadows of either of these characters, each of whom has been enormously important to the show.

Carolyn is played by Nancy Barrett, who also plays Leticia. Quentin is played by David Selby. We had expected to see Mr Selby in 1840 as another character named Quentin Collins, but when Julia arrived she learned that Quentin was missing and presumed dead after a nautical mishap. This glimpse of Quentin doesn’t add much to the story, but it does serve to reassure us that Mr Selby has not left the cast and that we will be seeing the 1840 version of Quentin sooner or later.

Barnabas decides to cast some I Ching wands. That’s what got him back to 1897, and the wands fall in the same pattern this time as they did then. He meditates on them. He sees a door, and seems to pass through it. On the other side, he sees a tombstone engraved “Julia Hoffman Collins 6 October 1840.”

Julia is masquerading as the daughter Barnabas had after he left for England in the 1790s, and has been telling the Collinses to expect her brother, Barnabas Junior. We haven’t heard her give “Hoffman” as a middle name. Of course it had to be there for Barnabas to be shocked by the stone. Otherwise, he would just have wondered who “Julia Collins” was.

It strikes me that they missed an opportunity. Julia has said that she moved from England to Philadelphia. Even though she lived there for so many years that she picked up an eastern Pennsylvania accent, she did not contact the family at Collinwood. Eventually they are likely to find out that she has a great deal of medical expertise, most unusual for a lady in 1840. Had she introduced herself as Julia Collins Hoffman, she might have explained that she met her late husband Dr Samuel Hoffman while he was studying in London, married him there, and lived with him in his hometown, Philadelphia. At the name “Dr Samuel Hoffman,” a theremin might have played on the soundtrack. Electronic music enthusiasts would laugh at the nod to the real Dr Samuel J. Hoffman (1903-1967,) the great player of and composer for the theremin. And fans of Dark Shadows would be happy that Julia’s imaginary husband has the same first name as Grayson Hall’s real husband, series writer Sam Hall.

This episode marks not only the final appearances of Carolyn and the original Quentin, but also the last time Peter Miner’s name will appear in the credits as line producer. Starting tomorrow, Lela Swift will be in command at 433 West 53rd Street. Swift was the principal director since the beginning of the show, chiefly responsible for the show’s often striking visual composition. It will be exciting to see what she can do now that she has a wider scope of action.