This episode was taped during a National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians strike. While the camera operators picketed outside, network executives and other amateurs were handling the equipment. It shows. As the episode begins, there is a lot of chatter and miscellaneous noise off camera; none of the shots is properly focused; each zoom shot moves at alarmingly fast pace; and at one point the camera swings wild. Dark Shadows was produced under such poor conditions that any one of those things might have made its way even into an episode made by trained professionals, but today is the single roughest cut yet.
At least the technical incompetence of the suits has some funny results. That can’t be said of the work of the alleged actor scabbing in the role of Dr Dave Woodard. Robert Gerringer, who started playing Woodard in May, honored his union obligations and refused to cross the NABET picket line; the stooge replacing him is so monotonous in his delivery of dialogue and so undistinguished in his bodily movement that he is little more than a blank spot on the screen. Much of this episode is devoted to him rummaging around looking for some papers; it would take considerably more skill than non-Woodard ever displays to make that interesting to watch.
The actor is so dull that he ruins one of the major sources of suspense. We ought to be conflicted about Barnabas’ plan to kill Woodard, because while we want the story to advance and Barnabas to stay on the show, we don’t want the good guys to be killed. Moreover, Woodard is the only one now who fully understands and supports one of our favorite characters, strange and troubled boy David. We certainly shouldn’t want David to lose his only backer. But this guy is such a waste of screen space that it is fatally easy for us to root for the character’s death.
There are a few interesting moments scattered here and there in Ron Sproat’s script. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman tells vampire Barnabas Collins that she tried to quell Woodard’s suspicions by telling him Barnabas had a rare blood disease that she was trying to treat. In fact, Julia does believe that vampirism is a rare blood disease, and she is trying to cure Barnabas of it, so she wasn’t lying when she told him that. It’s always startling to find Julia resorting to the truth.
Julia also tells Barnabas that Woodard came up with an idea she has encouraged him to believe, that she is in love with Barnabas. Barnabas laughs at this notion, and Julia objects that it doesn’t seem so preposterous to her. An incredulous look on his face, Barnabas glances at her wig, then at her clothes. He has a point- it really does not look like an ensemble a woman would wear if she was into dudes.
Yesterday’s episode gave us several clues that Julia is in fact attracted to Barnabas. Today, she not only seems hurt when Barnabas laughs at the idea she might be falling for him, but she flashes a look of jealousy later when he says something extravagantly complimentary about well-meaning governess Vicki. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, this makes it rather unsettling when Julia remarks that she had thought Barnabas was incapable of feeling any emotion, even fear. We know that Julia is a very strange person, but as we find out what she looks for in a partner we start to wonder just how strange she is.
Barnabas is bewildered by everything Julia says and does. When she says she is surprised that he is frightened by Woodard’s investigation into him, he says that of course he is frightened, as it could easily result in his extinction. When she goes on to say that she had thought him a totally unemotional being, he becomes for a moment the audience’s point of view character- he doesn’t say anything, just gives her a look as if she is completely nuts.
At the moment, Barnabas is especially vulnerable because Julia is keeping her notes on the experiment in a little box in her bedroom at the great house of Collinwood. That is an odd place for them. She presumably makes the notes while she is working in her laboratory in the basement of Barnabas’ house, and she consults them while she is there. The laboratory is well-hidden- Woodard and local man Burke Devlin searched the basement in #333, and found no trace of it. So it doesn’t make any sense to create another danger of exposure by keeping them anywhere but there. Of course Woodard sneaks into Julia’s room today and finds the notes.
Housekeeper Mrs Johnson is in this one, after fourteen and a half weeks away. In fact, it’s only her second appearance since #211, the episode in which she was the first character to exchange lines with Barnabas. It’s great to have her back, though of course it saddens me that Clarice Blackburn crossed a picket line.
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