In April 1967, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis found a chained coffin. Believing the coffin to be loaded with jewels, he broke the chains and opened it. To his horror, Willie found that the coffin contained vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas bit and enslaved Willie, then ventured forth to prey upon the living.
In #230, Barnabas was in the process of taking Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, as his victim. Willie secretly tried to save Maggie. When the rescuers Willie had tipped off appeared, he and Barnabas hid behind a wall and eavesdropped on their conversation. Barnabas realized what Willie had done. Enraged, he beat Willie with his heavy cane. In #232, Willie’s sometime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, visited Barnabas’ home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Jason saw that the left side of Willie’s face was covered with large bruises. Up to that point, the keynote of Barnabas’ character had been the care he took to conceal his evil nature from the world. It came as a shock to see that he had been so crazed that he left marks on Willie where anyone could see them.
After Maggie escaped from Barnabas, her memory of what he did to her was erased by several magical interventions, and she came to regard him with warm affection. By March 1970, a romance was blossoming between them.
In that same month, Barnabas discovered that an alternate universe could occasionally be glimpsed in a room in the long-disused east wing of the great house at Collinwood. Hoping to be cured of his vampirism, he managed to cross over into that universe in #980. He found that he was still a vampire, and that he was surrounded by strangers, albeit strangers with names and faces that were very familiar to him.
Willie’s counterpart is alcoholic author William H. Loomis. The new universe is a mirror image of the old one, so that while Willie unchained Barnabas’ coffin, Will puts chains on it. Barnabas kept Willie as a prisoner in the Old House and used him as a slave, while Will owns the Old House and keeps Barnabas prisoner, extracting information from him that he plans to use as the basis of a new book. Eventually Will became careless, and Barnabas bit him. Now Will and his wife, the former Carolyn Collins Stoddard, are both victims of Barnabas’ bloodlust.
Barnabas has managed to persuade the occupants of the great house that he is their distant cousin whose ancestor left Collinwood for Peru in the nineteenth century. While he was at the great house, he met Maggie’s counterpart. She is the wife of drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, the master of Collinwood. Barnabas eavesdrops on their joyous reunion, which brings his own loneliness into sharp focus.
Barnabas goes home to the Old House. He eavesdrops while the Loomises argue. Carolyn has shaken free of her dependence on him and wants to warn people that there is a vampire in their midst; Will says Barnabas would kill her before she could ever do such a thing. Barnabas interrupts the conversation. He tells Carolyn that since she is a Collins, he feels a kinship for her that makes him reluctant to harm her in any way. When she asks if he would kill her and Will if they turned against him, he says flatly that he would do so “Without hesitation.” The show is often marketed as the story of a “reluctant vampire” who is determined to protect his family; this exchange shows both the basis for that description in Barnabas’ words and the limits of its accuracy regarding his deeds.
Barnabas goes into the hidden chamber off the front parlor of the Old House where his coffin is currently being kept. Before he turns in for the day, he tells Will to come back at nightfall with a cross and to prevent him leaving the chamber that night. He refuses to explain why.
Will follows the strange command. While he is keeping Barnabas in the hidden chamber, Maggie comes to the house. Will and Barnabas hide behind the wall and eavesdrop on her conversation with Carolyn. Maggie goes on about the fine impression Barnabas has made on the Collinses, and she sounds quite taken with him herself. That leads to another reversal. While in #230 Barnabas and Willie’s eavesdropping led Barnabas to realize what Willie had been up to with Maggie, today Will and Barnabas’ eavesdropping leads Will to realize that Barnabas is afraid he will bite Maggie.
The end result is the same. His craving for Maggie’s blood overwhelms Barnabas. When Will tries to obey his original command to keep him in the chamber, Barnabas uses his mind control powers to weaken Will’s will. Will manages to continue resisting, holding the cross towards Barnabas. It looks like a fair fight, until Carolyn opens the panel and bumps into Will. Barnabas thrashes him with his cane and runs out. Carolyn tends to Will, paying special attention to the badly bruised left side of his face.
Barnabas goes to the great house. He finds Carolyn at the front door. He reminds her of his threats, and recedes into the bushes. When Maggie comes out to see what is happening, Carolyn makes a weak excuse for her late visit. The puzzled Maggie thanks her for her concern, and they part.
We then cut to a bedroom where Maggie is sleeping. A bat squeaks at the window, and Barnabas materializes. He bares his fangs and plunges his head towards her neck.
This is the 26th of 26 episodes of Dark Shadows to survive only as a kinescope after the original videotape master was lost. It’s always a pleasant surprise for me when these crop up, but it’s probably just as well there won’t be any more of them. The “Parallel Time” segment is the first part of the show to make really good use of color, so that the two kinescopes from it, this one and #1006, are the only ones to represent a significant artistic loss. One more videotape master went missing, for #1219, but they had stopped making kinescopes by then, so MPI Home Video whipped something up from an audio track that a fan recorded off the air at the time of the original broadcast. They added narration by Lara Parker and some stills from #1218 and #1220.
This episode marks an epoch in the development of Dark Shadows. For the first time, videotape editors are named in the closing credits. They have done a fair bit of videotape editing in the last few months, but now they formally acknowledge the editors as a permanent part of the show. Dan Rosenson and Robert Steinback, hail to thee!
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