When Dark Shadows premiered in June 1966, it was supposed to bring the sensibility of the then-fashionable “Gothic romances” to the small screen. That did not prove to be much of a ratings draw, so six months later they introduced undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who was at the center of a story that by March 1967 had swallowed up all of the major loose ends and committed the show to becoming a supernatural thriller.
Now, vampire Barnabas Collins has crossed over to an alternate universe. We have seen enough of “Parallel Time” over the last several episodes to know that it will feature a story derived from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, one of the foundational works of the “Gothic romance” genre. Viewers who have been with the show from the beginning will be intrigued at this return to its starting point.
The first person Barnabas meets is the counterpart of his distant cousin and onetime blood thrall, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. This Carolyn finds him in a room deep in the great house of Collinwood and demands to know who he is and what he is doing there. He starts in on the “cousin from England” jazz that won him his place at Collinwood in the continuity we have been following so far. He cites the portrait of him that hangs in the foyer in the familiar timeline, only to be told that there is no such portrait in this house and that his story does not add up. Carolyn marches off to blow the whistle on the intruder, and Barnabas bites her. We can see that Parallel Time is going to move fast- it took Barnabas 28 weeks to attack Carolyn in the other universe.
This Carolyn is married to the counterpart of Barnabas’ servant Willie Loomis. While Willie is an uneducated ruffian, Will Loomis is the author of several books, including three bestselling novels and a biography of Barnabas’ late counterpart, who died a natural death in 1830. Will and Carolyn live in the Old House, which corresponds to Barnabas’ own house in the main continuity. Quentin Collins, another distant cousin, is the master of Collinwood here, and widower of Angelique, who corresponds to the wicked witch who made Barnabas a vampire in 1796 but was apparently a mortal woman and a native of the twentieth century here. Other characters we see today include: Julia Hoffman, in the other universe, a mad scientist and Barnabas’ best friend, but here a uniformed domestic and Angelique’s fanatical devotee, Mrs Danvers to her Rebecca; Carolyn’s mother Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, who is not the owner of Collinwood and the Collins family businesses but a guest in Quentin’s house; and Quentin’s new wife, Maggie Evans Collins. We also hear that Angelique’s father is “Tim Stokes,” the counterpart of Barnabas’ sometime ally, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes.
What we had seen of “Parallel Time” before Barnabas arrived let us know that Quentin was bringing a new bride home, much to the displeasure of Hoffman and Angelique’s other acolytes. We also knew about the Loomises. So that left us with two candidates to play the part of the intimidated, anxiety ridden “second Mrs de Winter.” Those were Kathryn Leigh Scott, who has been Maggie in the main continuity since episode #1 and has played other parts in time travel segments and as a ghost, and Lisa Blake Richards, who plays Sabrina Stuart, girlfriend of werewolf Chris Jennings.
I love Miss Scott, but I was hoping Miss Richards would be the overpowered new wife. Miss Scott has one of the deepest iconographies of any cast member. No matter how far Miss Scott dials down the big brassy Dark Shadows style of acting, regular viewers simply will not believe that she, answering to the name of Maggie, is going to be reduced to the position that the second Mrs de Winter finds herself in, where she is grateful to her own servants for allowing her a piece of bread and butter when she hasn’t eaten all day. It took all the abuse Barnabas could heap on her, supported by Julia’s magical powers of hypnosis, to break Maggie in 1967. Miss Scott was successful as neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond when the show was set in 1897, but they went out of their way to show that Rachel was not Maggie. The second Mrs Quentin Collins not only has the same name as the wised-up representative of Collinsport’s working class whom we met long ago, we even hear today that her father was an artist who lived in the village, as our Maggie’s was.
Miss Richards, by contrast, would come in clean. Sabrina, stuck in a dead-end story where her character was a mute for a long time, has made relatively little impression. Miss Richards specialized in a very precise, understated approach. She would be the perfect choice to tackle the job Alfred Hitchcock gave Joan Fontaine in his 1940 feature adaptation of Rebecca and depict a character succumbing to obscure anxieties.
We hear today that this Maggie has a sister, which ours never did. Perhaps Miss Richards will appear as that character. We do not hear whether Sam Evans is still alive. He is dead in the main continuity, but that was the result of an attack by a monster who would not have existed in this one. Longtime fans might get their hopes up that we will see David Ford again as Sam’s counterpart. Carolyn Loomis tells Barnabas today that the idea of widowhood is not as unattractive to her as he seems to imagine; since Nancy Barrett had divorced Ford a few months before this episode was taped, bringing him back into the cast might have helped her add some zest to this aspect of her character.
The blocking does not always take into account the dimensions of the brief outfits Junior Sophisticates provided Miss Scott. So when Quentin carries Maggie into the great house today, the camera looks right up her miniskirt. The ratings were still high during this period, but you can tell no one was watching who worked for either ABC’s Standards and Practices Office or the Federal Communications Commission.
Dark Shadows Commentary 