A day of transformations. At dawn, the werewolf in the cell at the Collinsport jail turned into Quentin Collins. Edward Collins, Quentin’s stuffy brother, witnessed the transformation, and when we first see him he is staring at Quentin in bewilderment. Quentin is wearing the same blue suit he always wears, with the same distinctive hairstyle. But he has a glob of makeup on his face, and that’s enough to stymie Edward’s ability to recognize him.
This may reflect a hereditary disability of some kind. In #784, Quentin’s old friend and fellow Satanist, Evan Hanley, tried to steal the magical Hand of Count Petofi. The hand raised itself to Evan’s face and disfigured him, leaving his gray suit and highly identifiable hair and beard unchanged. But when Quentin saw Evan in #785, he was completely stumped as to who he might be.
Broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi enters. Edward accuses her of knowing who the man in the cell before them is. Magda does not share the Collinses’ peculiar inability to recognize people wearing facial appliances, so of course she does know. But she denies it. Edward does not believe her denials, and leaves in a huff.
Magda talks to Quentin, and he begins to speak. But he is not replying to her. Instead, he delivers lines that Count Petofi himself might have spoken when he was dwelling on the loss of his hand. He murmurs about “the forest of Ojden” and “the nine Gypsies” and suchlike. Magda realizes that Quentin has no idea who he is or what is going on.
Magda had placed the hand on Quentin’s heart the night before, as the moon was rising, hoping it would prevent the transformation. It didn’t do that, but by inflicting the same kind of facial disfigurement on Quentin that it had previously brought to Evan it does keep the werewolf story going beyond what might seem like a natural conclusion. When Magda leaves Quentin, she says that come nightfall she will consult with Quentin’s distant cousin, time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins. “He will know what to do!” she declares. Barnabas has been the central character of the show for more than two years, and he has yet to have a non-disastrous idea. Ya gotta have hope, I guess.
At home in the great house of Collinwood, Edward tries to interest his sister Judith in the fact that he just saw a wolf turn into a human. She impatiently declares that she is not going to spend all day thinking about such a thing. Edward starts to remind Judith that she saw the wolf herself. He might have mentioned that she has seen it more than once, including in the very room where they are standing, but she says that it is “morbid” to go on paying attention to the topic once the creature has been caught and they can believe that they are safe.
Judith tells Edward that she had a bad dream. She won’t talk with him about that either. He needles her about her recent marriage to the Rev’d Mr Gregory Trask, which he calls “ridiculous.” She says that she does not regret her marriage, and that even if she did it would not be any more ridiculous than his own marriage. Since Edward’s wife was an undead fire witch who tried to incinerate their children to prolong her existence, all he can say to that is “Touché.”
Edward exits, and Judith dwells on her dream. It concerned Trask’s late wife Minerva. Minerva died in #773; Judith married Trask in #784. Judith knows that a young man named Tim Shaw poisoned Minerva, and that Trask gave Tim an alibi. She believes that Trask has forsworn justice for Minerva’s death for her sake. Tim knew that Judith, while under a magic spell, had shot his girlfriend Rachel Drummond to death, and he threatened to expose her if Trask handed him over to the police. What Judith did not know, and what is not mentioned today, is that Tim himself had acted under a spell. Trask and Evan connived to brainwash Tim so that when the Queen of Spades turned up in a card game he would poison Minerva. In her dream, Minerva told Judith that there was danger, then repeated the phrase “Queen of Spades” several times.
Judith turns around and looks at a table. It had been bare when last she saw it, and there was no one else in the room. But now a solitaire game is laid out there. She screams, and Edward comes. Judith turns up the Queen of Spades, and walks out the front door. Edward follows her to Minerva’s grave.
Judith tells Edward her dream, and he transforms into a psychoanalyst. “Your dream is nothing more than a manifestation of your own guilt.” Judith asks Edward what he imagines her to feel guilty about, and he says that she married Trask so shortly after Minerva’s death. She dismisses this, and soon goes into a trance. She wavers back and forth from the waist for a moment, then straightens up with a jolt. When Edward calls to her by her first name, she replies “I will thank you to call me Mrs Trask!” Edward doesn’t know what to make of this demand, but the audience knows that Minerva has taken possession of Judith.
Back at Collinwood, Edward meets Magda. She tells him that she is there to see maidservant Beth. Edward says that he hasn’t seen her all day. That puts him up on the audience; we haven’t seen her since #771. When they were setting up for the trip to this period, Beth was presented as a major character, and her ghost haunted the Collinwood of 1969 along with Quentin’s. When Barnabas and we first arrived in the year 1897 in #701, Beth figured very largely in the story for several weeks. But Terrayne Crawford’s limitations as an actress required Beth to be written as someone who says just what she means, no more and no less. Since the rest of the cast is able to rise to the task of portraying complex motivations and multilayered communication, and since Dark Shadows finally has a writing staff that can provide those things consistently, Miss Crawford has faded further and further into the background.
Edward goes to the drawing room and telephones Evan. Magda eavesdrops. She knows of Evan’s disfigurement, Edward does not. Edward tells Evan he must come over at once, that there is an emergency he must address in his capacity as Collins family attorney. Evan does not want anyone to see his face, and so he tries to beg off. Edward threatens to fire him if he does not show up. Evan has been making vain efforts to restore his appearance for days; he looks at himself in the mirror, and returning viewers might draw the conclusion that his goose is cooked.
That Evan’s face is still disfigured after we have seen Quentin’s disfigurement raises the possibility that the show is heading towards an all-disfigured cast. Evan is played by the conspicuously handsome Humbert Allen Astredo, and as Quentin David Selby’s good looks have become one of the show’s very biggest draws. If they are both going to be uglified for the duration, then there is nothing to stop anyone from having some plastic glued onto their face.
Judith enters. She does not recognize Magda and announces that she is Minerva. She closes herself in the drawing room.
Evan arrives, looking like his old self. Magda is astonished. When they have a moment alone together, he responds to her questions by saying that he will never tell her what happened to undo the hand’s work. That will hook returning viewers more effectively than any cliffhanger is likely to do- Evan’s case had seemed absolutely hopeless.
When Edward tells Evan what Judith has been doing, Evan starts playing psychiatrist, picking up where Edward had left off. “Well now, tell me exactly how she has been behaving. In what way is this delusion manifesting itself?” Edward sends Evan in to see for himself. Minerva/ Judith reacts to the sight of him with horror. She says that he was the one who made Tim Shaw poison her. Minerva did not know this in life, but it has long since been established on Dark Shadows that the dead pick up a lot of information in the afterlife. The murders have been coming thick and fast in 1897, and if all the victims talk to each other they would have a pretty easy time piecing together what has been happening behind closed doors. We end with Minerva/ Judith holding a letter opener over her head, walking towards Evan with evident intent of stabbing him.
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