Today is taken up with the witchcraft trial of bewildered time-traveler Victoria Winters. That is to say, the actors stand around the courtroom set and shout random nonsense at each other until it is time for the closing credits.
The only line of dialogue that made an impression on me was Vicki shouting “That’s! Not! TROOOO!” when untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes was on the stand falsely accusing her of something or other. In the first months of the show, Vicki often shouted that to strange and troubled boy David, usually in response to David saying something that the audience knew was perfectly true. In those days, the show’s slow pace and its focus on the budding friendship between Vicki and David gave Alexandra Moltke Isles and David Henesy a chance to overcome the crummy writing of their scenes together and show us what it looks like when two people learn to trust each other. But the part of the show set in the late eighteenth century moves at a rapid clip, and nothing human is at stake in the witchcraft trial. So when we hear another “That’s! Not! TROOOO!” this time, we miss the days when Mrs Isles was in a position to rescue us from the writers’ delinquencies.
When Nathan makes his entrance, we hear some music I don’t believe we have heard before. Christine Scoleri of Dark Shadows Before I Die identified it as a piece that it is on Dark Shadows: The Soundtrack Music Collection as “Cue 157: Dramatic Curtain.” It doesn’t fit the situation. It’s a busy little tune, suggestive of fidgety nervousness. It’s true that the whole trial is just so much fidgeting on the part of the show, but the background music really isn’t the place to complain about that.
Dark Shadows Commentary 