Once upon a time, an American girl named Kitty moved to England, where she joined the household of the Earl of Hampshire as a governess. The Earl married her, and she became his Countess. Now it is 1897. The Earl is dead, driven to suicide by sorcerer Count Petofi. Kitty has returned to America, without the stepchildren who were once her charges and with so little money that she writes a letter apologizing to her mother that she cannot pay the train fare from Maine to her home in Pennsylvania. She is staying in the great house on the estate of Collinwood, home to her late husband’s friend Edward Collins. Her hope is that Edward will marry her and allow her to go on living in the style to which she has grown accustomed.
Her hopes would seem to be well-founded. Edward was so devoted to the late Earl that for a time he was under the delusion that he was his valet, and he is smitten with Kitty. But there are several flies in the ointment. For one thing, regular viewers know that Edward is in fact penniless. His sister Judith inherited the whole of their grandmother’s estate. He lives in Judith’s house as a guest and works in her business as her employee, and while she is in the mental hospital he must take orders from her husband, the odious Gregory Trask.
Second, Petofi is in the area. It was he who cast the spell that prompted Edward to reveal his true self-image as the Earl’s manservant, and he has evil plans for many of the people with whom Kitty must deal. She met Petofi at Collinwood the day she arrived there, but has kept her acquaintance with him secret from Edward and everyone else.
Third, vampire Barnabas Collins saw Kitty and believed she was his lost love Josette come back to life. Shortly after, she had a psychological break suggesting he was right. A music box that Barnabas has given to several women whom he wanted to turn into Josette appeared in Kitty’s room the other day, after a woman who used to be Trask’s daughter Charity but has now been transformed into Cockney showgirl/ mentalist Pansy Faye had warned her it was a sign of great danger.
It seems unlikely Barnabas put the music box on Kitty’s table. For one thing, Charity/ Pansy had staked him shortly before, so that he is apparently hors de combat. Further, it was placed there during the daylight hours, when he is always out of operation. Also, it appeared while Kitty was sitting a few feet away, and she did not see anyone else in the room. Petofi stripped Barnabas of his power to materialize and dematerialize at will some time ago, so he would not have been able to manage that trick. The explanation that will occur to longtime viewers is that Josette’s ghost did it. She was very active at Collinwood before Barnabas made his first entrance in April 1967, when the show took place in a contemporary setting. Perhaps she is active in 1897, as well.
Kitty doesn’t know about any of that, so she assumes that Petofi is responsible. She marches over to Petofi’s residence, an abandoned mill. Originally this was a hideout, but by now most of the principal cast have visited him there at least once, so she could have stopped just about anyone on the street and asked for directions. She accuses him of having Charity/ Pansy give her a chilling warning about a particular music box, and of then causing that music box to appear in her room. He has no idea what she is talking about. She produces the music box and they play it. She then has another mental flash onto images of Barnabas. Petofi finds all of this most interesting, and walks Kitty back to Collinwood.
There, Kitty finds the devastatingly handsome reprobate Quentin Collins moping over a glass of liquor. She asks him if she has him to thank for the music box. He is shocked to see it. He says that it looks just like one that belonged to a distant relative of his, but that he doesn’t believe it can be the same one. She asks if the relative is Barnabas Collins, and he is shocked again. He asks how she knows that name. In response, Kitty introduces Quentin to the concept of “learning”: “I collect information, Mr. Collins, and I remember what I hear… I listen when people speak.” Quentin reacts as if it is the first time anyone has described these activities to him, which, considering the world he lives in, is not so unlikely.
Back in his squat, Petofi sees his servant Aristide for the first time in several days. Aristide went absent without leave when Barnabas threatened to kill him, and has come back now that he has heard Barnabas has been safely disposed of. Petofi is irked, not only at Aristide’s unauthorized departure, but even more at his failure to carry out the task he had entrusted to him. They had captured Julia Hoffman, MD, Barnabas’ friend, who followed him after he traveled back in time from 1969 to 1897. Petofi wanted to know how they managed this journey, and was convinced Julia was withholding the information he needed. Aristide rigged up a death trap that Barnabas triggered when he came to Julia’s rescue. Aristide did not stay to make sure it actually killed her.
Aristide shows Petofi that the gun he pointed at Julia’s heart did fire a bullet through the back of the chair to which he tied her. One would think that even a sorcerer, seeing that bullet hole, would conclude that Julia got out of the ropes while Aristide wasn’t looking. But instead he looks with a wild surmise and goes to Julia’s hiding place, in the old rectory on Pine Road.
Before Petofi enters, we see Julia holding a hypodermic and preparing an injection. She hides the needle when she hears the knock on the door. Julia had been giving Barnabas a series of shots meant to put his vampirism into remission. That she is still preparing the shots suggests to regular viewers that Barnabas’ staking was a trick of some kind, and that he is still in operation somewhere.
There are rules of etiquette in the universe of Dark Shadows that people follow no matter how absurd it is to do so. Julia lets Petofi into the room, even though he has tried to kill her. One cannot refuse admittance to anyone who knocks! She accepts a snifter of brandy from him and drinks it. One cannot refuse to share liquor with anyone who offers it!
As it happens, Petofi has put cyanide in the brandy. Enough cyanide, he says, to kill ten women. When he tells Julia this, she briefly tries to pretend that she is ill, then gives up. He declares that she cannot die. She admits that this is true. He figures out that only her “astral body” is in 1897, while her physical person remained in 1969. She confirms this.
Later, Petofi concludes that if he is to go to 1969, he will need to have a physical body there. Barnabas the vampire originally died in the 1790s and was in 1897 a body sealed in a coffin, so when he traveled back in time he could animate that body and be subject to all the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. Petofi decides that the body he wants is the best-looking available male one, which is Quentin’s. We have seen that Petofi can vacate his own body and take possession of another’s, as when in #801 he took up residence in twelve year old Jamison Collins. He has also, for reasons of his own, granted Quentin eternal youth. So it now seems logical to him that he should compel Quentin to make the exchange.
Of late, the editors of the Dark Shadows Wiki have taken to having discussions with each other in comments placed in parentheses and italicized. I couldn’t resist adding a comment myself to a discussion attached to the entry for this episode. My contribution is the fourth of the four below:
In 807, Aristede tells Charles Delaware Tate that if Petofi got his hand back, he would be able to live forever. As Petofi got his hand back, he must have a body in the future, so why would he need Quentin’s?
(Who would you rather look like?)
(Isn’t the point of the body-switch to evade the gypsies?)
(Yes, that is the point of the body-switch — but surely he only needs to switch bodies? If he can switch bodies now, and become unrecognisable, why does he need to go to the future as well?)
(Petofi says that he has many ambitious plans. If he carries them out, they may attract widespread attention. The Rroma have been keeping track of him for a long time, and may become suspicious if a known associate of Petofi’s starts doing all sorts of spectacular things.)
I expect this whole discussion to be deleted soon- it isn’t really in keeping with the purpose of the site, which is just to serve as ready reference for basic facts about each episode. But it does address a theme that often comes up in online discussions of this storyline, so I wanted to preserve it here.
Dark Shadows Commentary 