Episode 1046: Such a fearful unreality

Writer Gordon Russell takes bits of old episodes and mixes them as if he were rotating a kaleidoscope. There is a plot involved also, but the screen iconography is the main thing.

The show has been operating on the principle of the kaleidoscope for some time. They’ve traveled back in time repeatedly. Now they have traveled sideways in time and taken us to an alternate universe, which they insist on calling “Parallel Time.” Each of these segments represents a turn of the kaleidoscope, rearranging the actors, sets, musical cues, curse stories, imaginary geography of the estate of Collinwood and village of Collinsport, and other elements to create new patterns that shed unexpected light on familiar material.

Evil wizard Tim Stokes has used a combination of black magic and medical science to establish a remote connection between a woman named Roxanne and his late daughter, Angelique Stokes Collins. This connection drains the “life force” from Roxanne into Angelique, reanimating her and leaving Roxanne comatose. To sustain this circumstance, Roxanne must remain in precisely her current condition. If she dies, all of her “life force” will vanish, returning Angelique to the tomb. Whenever she recovers even a tiny bit of her lost strength, Angelique collapses, possibly to die.

Vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman are visiting from the main continuity, and they are determined to stop Angelique’s evil plans. They have learned what Stokes has done, and have taken Roxanne into their own custody. As we open, Julia has just given up on an attempt to revive Roxanne and gone back to the great house at Collinwood, where she is impersonating her own Doppelgänger, the housekeeper. This woman, also named Julia Hoffman, was Angelique’s most fanatical devotee until Julia killed her, stole her French maid outfit, and assumed her identity.

Alone with Roxanne in the secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor of the Old House on the grounds of the estate, Barnabas gives a soliloquy about his feelings for her. She opens her eyes and sits up.

In the spring of 1968, Julia took charge of an experimental procedure another mad scientist had devised to free Barnabas of his vampirism. The core of this procedure was the creation of a Frankenstein’s monster named Adam. In #490, Julia ran the apparatus and was disappointed when Adam seemed still to be inanimate. She and Barnabas left the lab, and Adam came to life. Her disappointment and departure are repeated in this scene, though Barnabas is there to see Roxanne open her eyes.

When Roxanne comes to, we cut to the great house and see Angelique collapse. She crawls around on the floor, trying to make her way to a telephone. This action is shown in quick cuts, but not quite quick enough. It is so much the sort of melodramatic business that was overdone in movies in the 1940s and 1950s and parodied in sketches on The Carol Burnett Show in the 1960s and 1970s that it raises a bad laugh.

Barnabas takes Roxanne out of the secret room, to the parlor. He finds that she cannot speak. He shows her a drawing of her that he found in another secret room, the chamber in the back of the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. It is signed “Claude North.” Roxanne reacts to the drawing with delight and to the name “Claude North” with dismay.

In the summer of 1969, the show was set in the year 1897. One of the characters we got to know in that year was the mysterious Amanda Harris. It turned out that Amanda had popped into existence when an artist thought her up and made a sketch of her. This artist, a repellent little man named Charles Delaware Tate, had no idea he was endowed with the power to bring his fancies to life by drawing them until he met Amanda, at which point he developed an exceedingly unpleasant obsession with her.

Roxanne’s origins are at this point as unknown to us as Amanda’s were when we first got to know her. So the drawing will suggest to longtime viewers that “Claude North” will turn out to be this universe’s version of Tate. When Stokes tells Angelique that he might be able to bring Roxanne back by contacting North, the thought of having further dealings with the man is abhorrent to him. Like Roxanne’s own display of distaste at North’s name, that fits with the idea that he might be a version of the loathsome Tate.

In the great house, Maggie Collins, current wife of Angelique’s widower Quentin, finds Angelique crawling on the floor and picks up the telephone to call the doctor. Angelique says that she needs her father, not the doctor, puzzling Maggie. While they contact Stokes, Barnabas takes Roxanne to the mausoleum and shows her the secret room in an attempt to restore her memory and her power of speech.

In #283, the original continuity’s version of Maggie was a mental patient at Windcliff, a private hospital Julia controls. She had succumbed to amnesia, reverted to early childhood, and become largely nonverbal after an ordeal as Barnabas’ victim. In that episode, Julia took Maggie on a trip to the mausoleum, where Barnabas had tortured her, in an attempt to restore her memory and power of speech. Now, the relatively benevolent Barnabas is taking Roxanne to this universe’s version of the same location in the same hope.

Stokes attends to Angelique in her room. He gives her some medicine to keep her alive until they can find Roxanne. He warns her that if Roxanne manages to speak, her first word will send Angelique back to the grave. He performs an incantation to summon the spiritual forces of darkness to come to their aid. When Mrs Acilius and I were watching this on Amazon Prime, Stokes’ incantation was interrupted by an ad for Chipotle. I’d always thought calling on the Devil and his minions was likelier to bring Taco Bell upon you, but I don’t suppose Chipotle is all that different.

During the 1897 segment, we saw a new version of a character from an earlier phase of the show, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. That iteration of Laura was a heat vampire who drained the warmth from the living to remain animated. They’ve given the current version of Angelique the same condition, though we haven’t seen it lately. In #737, Laura was in a bad way. She lay in bed and her thrall Dirk Wilkins cozied up to her in the most sex-like interaction we had seen on the show up to that point (or up to this point, come to that.) Angelique’s bedroom is laid out the same way today as Laura’s was then, and as Dirk was on Laura’s right, Stokes is on her right. Earlier episodes made it clear that there was something deeply weird about the relationship between Stokes and Angelique. In the contrast between this scene and the one between Laura and Dirk, longtime viewers can see that Angelique and Stokes’ particular weirdness does not involve incest per se. Rather, it is their shared dedication to evil for its own sake that warps everything between them.

Back in the Old House, Barnabas puts Roxanne to bed on her table in the secret room. He goes into the parlor. A car pulls up. It is Carolyn Loomis, wife of his late blood thrall Will Loomis. Carolyn chatters happily about some shopping she did and asks for Will. Barnabas realizes she does not know that Will has died. He breaks the news to her. He says that Angelique killed him, which is part of the truth. Carolyn says it is because of Barnabas that Will was killed, which is the other part of the truth. Barnabas seems to have a whole speech prepared about how he will avenge Will’s death by defeating Angelique, but Carolyn keeps interrupting to ask who will avenge it by defeating him

Elsewhere in the 1897 segment, Barnabas’ enemies had killed his blood thrall Sandor Rákóczi. In #798, Sandor’s wife Magda blamed Barnabas for her husband’s death. She told him she would avenge Sandor by killing him. She then despaired of that and offered herself to him as his next victim. Barnabas grandly replied, “No, Magda, you will not kill me, and I will not harm you. We will grieve together.” Carolyn does not allow Barnabas to speak so loftily.

Carolyn goes to the great house. She is just about to reveal Barnabas’ secret to Maggie when Barnabas himself shows up. While he defuses the situation, Stokes realizes that the Old House is vacant. He slips out to search for Roxanne there. When Barnabas returns, Roxanne is nowhere to be found.

It may seem unlikely that the show will resolve this cliffhanger in the obvious way, by showing us that Stokes took Roxanne from the secret room. They usually go for surprise. Nonetheless, longtime viewers will be inclined to expect this to happen, even though it is so on-the-nose. This room was first seen in #113, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan opened it as a dungeon for well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. Not even Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins, knew of the room’s existence, and David knew the Old House better than any other character on the show at that point. The room is therefore uniquely Matthew’s territory.

Like Matthew, Stokes is played by Thayer David. Stokes’s ancestor was eighteenth century indentured servant Ben Stokes, whose counterpart we saw in the 1790s segment as a commentary on Matthew, an example of the good and sane man Matthew might have been had he not grown up in the shadow of the ancient curses of Collinwood. Once those curses had been in operation for a little while, Ben started turning into Matthew. As Matthew inadvertently killed a man because of his unbounded devotion to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Ben inadvertently killed a man because of his unbounded devotion to Barnabas. As Matthew set out to cover up his accidental homicide by killing Vicki, who was played by an actress whose father was a Danish count, so Ben deliberately committed a murder to cover up his own accidental killing, and his victim was a lady with the title “Countess.” As a descendant of Ben and therefore a reflection of Matthew, it is a matter of course that Stokes knows about the room. Barnabas’ decision to hide Roxanne in the room is just one more case of a severe misreading of Dark Shadows by someone who didn’t watch the 1966 episodes.