Mad scientist Cyrus Longworth developed a potion that changed his appearance so drastically that even people who knew him well cannot recognize him when he is under its influence. He used this disguise to carry out beatings, rapes, and murders. Now, he has spontaneously transformed in front of his fiancée, Sabrina Stuart. Cyrus had fooled Sabrina into thinking that his disguise was a separate person named “John Yaeger.” Sabrina had reason to hate Yaeger and fear him. She was shocked to learn that Yaeger and Cyrus were one and the same, and Cyrus ridiculed her for her continued attachment to him. Nonetheless, Sabrina pledged to support Cyrus come what may, and she does keep his secret today. Even after he threatens her with the sword in his cane, a threat which seems all too real since Christopher Pennock holds the prop too close to Lisa Blake Richards’ face when he pops the sharp blade out, she still stands by her man.
Cyrus has slipped into the great house of Collinwood and entered the master bedroom. He is watching the lady of the house, Maggie Evans Collins, while she sleeps. Cyrus tried to rape Maggie in a dark alley last week, and apparently he has decided to finish the job while she is in her own bed. At the last moment, Maggie’s stepson, strange and troubled teen Daniel Collins, enters. Cyrus hides behind the curtains while Daniel asks for his father.
Cyrus has ot chosen a particularly good hiding place. The light is on him, and he is directly in Daniel’s line of sight. It is preposterous enough that an armed intruder as physically prepossessing and as unscrupulous as Cyrus would hide from Maggie and Daniel, and this slip emphasizes that Cyrus, however much he may revel in the harm he has done as when in his disguise, is basically a coward.
Daniel has been bitterly hostile to Maggie up to this point. Today they are suddenly great friends. He says sadly that he sometimes gets a premonition when something evil is about to happen in the house, and that he has such a premonition now. She talks to him affectionately, so softly that we can’t tell whether she is calling him “Daniel” or “Dan,” and touches his hair. Regular viewers have seen these two actors play friends in the first 196 weeks of Dark Shadows, when the action took place in a different universe and they were various other characters. It’s good to see them pick up where they left off, and exciting to think of what they might be able to do to breathe more life into Maggie’s stories. Alas, this is the last time we will see Daniel.
Later, Cyrus meets with someone we’ve never seen before. The closing credits will identify this man as Aldon Wicks. Cyrus says he wants to buy an old farmhouse from Wicks. He is particularly interested in a room in the basement, which he wants to outfit with an extra-heavy door. Wicks puts the door Cyrus wants on the room. When the time comes to pay up, Cyrus asks Wicks a bunch of questions, the answers to which all imply that no one knows where he is or will miss him if he disappears. So Cyrus stabs him to death with his cane. That’s certainly one way to cut costs on a real estate transaction.
The opening voiceover is delivered by associate director Ken McEwen. In the first 54 weeks of Dark Shadows, every voiceover was delivered by Alexandra Moltke Isles in character as well-meaning governess Victoria Winters, whether Vicki was in the episode or not. Between them and today, the narrator has always been an actor who appears in the episode. McEwen was drafted to appear in a few episodes as lawyer Larry Chase when Don Briscoe’s health problems caught up to him and forced him to leave the cast. Maybe they gave McEwen a contract to appear in three episodes more than turned out to include parts for Larry, and that explains his voice responsibilities in this one, #1079, and #1082.
A third pair of videotape editors are credited today, Carl Pollack and Fred Labib, joining the teams of Indra Sadoo and Chuck Gardner and Dan Rosenson and Robert Steinback.
Dark Shadows Commentary 
Reading this has finally opened my eyes to the fact that in addition to being a terrible husband Quentin is even worse as a father. Angelique was Daniel’s mother. There is every indication that he loved her. She died, which is pretty traumatic for a child. What does Quentin do? He abandons Daniel leaving him to the care of Liz, Roger, and Hoffman. Liz probably loves him, but is very ineffectual in this universe. Roger and Hoffman aren’t interested in Daniel. He is left grieving his mother basically alone. Then, to make things worse, Quentin remarries without even having Daniel MEET his new stepmother. I mean Good Lord, this is a recipe for disaster, setting up having Daniel hate Quentin and Maggie for life and needing so MUCH therapy. Maggie doesn’t get away scot-free either. She should have insisted on meeting Daniel and easing him into the situation, but she wasn’t the actual parent, Quentin was.
When I first saw this in the original broadcast, 15 year old me never even thought about the effect on Daniel. To be fair, neither did the show, really. Daniel is kind of there and whatever he feels isn’t shown as important. This would have worked in the time and culture of the original Rebecca, where kids were shipped off to boarding school and meant to be seen and not heard. But in modern culture, this is just cruel. This whole thing would have worked better if David Hennessy had not been in the story, or had simply been, like Amy, a cousin who was living at Collinwood, for nebulous reasons. Someone whose life hadn’t been turned upside down by his mother’s death and his father’s subsequent selfish desire to have a new, pretty wife.
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A new, pretty wife whom he could barely stand to have around! For all the horrible faults of the original Quentin, he did have a wonderful time with all the women he seduced. And he loved Jamison. This guy just isn’t having any fun.
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