Bill Malloy’s investigation into the manslaughter case that sent Burke Devlin to prison ten years ago is coming to a head. Bill tells Burke, Sam Evans and Roger Collins to meet him to discuss the case in Roger’s office at 11 PM. When Bill leaves the Evans cottage, Sam mutters something about stopping him and looks directly into the camera.
Roger is no happier at the idea of the meeting. Louis Edmonds’ performance ever so subtly hints at Roger’s reluctance to attend:
Roger gives a speech to Vicki about how David is better off than he was at nine, since he already knows that the world is a horrible place. The speech is vague, rambling, and high-flown. That’s suitable for the occasion, since Vicki isn’t supposed to know what the hell he’s talking about, but Louis Edmonds struggles with it. In a future period such speeches will become a hallmark of the show. Malcolm Marmorstein is credited as the writer of 82 episodes in all, from 115 (broadcast 2 December 1966) to 309 (broadcast 31 August 1967,) and often as not speeches just like that crop up in them. Marmorstein’s flowery gibberish will defeat actor after actor, until Jonathan Frid joins the cast as Barnabas Collins. In Frid’s voice, the speeches sound so gorgeous you barely notice that they don’t make a lick of sense. After a while, Marmorstein stops giving them to other actors, and they become the way Barnabas talks. I wonder if Marmorstein did some uncredited work on this episode. Art Wallace, sole credited writer of episodes 1-40, is listed on screen again as the author of this teleplay, but at many points it sounds more like Marmorstein than it does like Wallace.
This one also has a key moment in one of the aspects of the show that most saddens me, the decline and fall of Vicki. In the drawing room, Roger is in a panic about Bill’s investigation. Vicki sees this and asks if the investigation has something to do with her quest to learn her origins. Roger laughs in her face. Of course it doesn’t have anything to do with that story-line- nothing happening on the show does. As long as she’s chained to that rotting corpse of a narrative element, Vicki is going to be of limited relevance.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 