Time travelers Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman are doing battle with two distinct supernatural menaces. One of these is the ghost of Gerard Stiles, who, as they learned while visiting the far-off future year 1995, is destined to destroy the great house of Collinwood and the people who call it home before the end of the current year, 1970. The other is a vampire whom they have not identified, but who has been feeding on their friend and frequent victim, Maggie Evans.
In the drawing room, housekeeper Mrs Johnson sees Gerard. Gerard takes control of her, as he does when he meets people in that room. She goes upstairs, where Julia is keeping vigil over Maggie. Mrs Johnson says she woke up from a frightening nightmare in which Barnabas was suffering. She describes the setting of the nightmare. Julia recognizes it as Rose Cottage, the deserted mansion where Barnabas has gone to confront Gerard. Julia tells Mrs Johnson to take over for her in Maggie’s room, and rushes off to her friend’s side.
Julia bursts into the room where Barnabas is standing around, his confrontation with Gerard having come and gone without noticeable result. Barnabas is surprised to see her. As she explains what Mrs Johnson told her, the room bursts into flames. They try to escape, only to find that the door will not open. All seems lost, until the door opens from the other side. A woman named Roxanne Drew has come to their rescue.
Before their sojourn in 1995, Julia and Barnabas spent a while in an alternate universe which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” In Parallel Time, Barnabas met Roxanne’s counterpart while she was comatose. Charmed by her immobility and silence, he fell in love with her. Even after she came to and started moving around and speaking, Barnabas remained attached to that Roxanne. Barnabas and Julia escaped from Parallel Time through a room in a burning house; we learned in #1071 that Roxanne followed Barnabas and Julia into the burning room too late for them to rescue her. We can only assume she died in the fire. In the current universe, an inverted mirror image of that one, this other Roxanne is the one who rescues Julia and Barnabas from a burning room.
Roxanne separates from Barnabas and Julia in the woods, saying she has something else to do. They return to Collinwood. They find Mrs Johnson unconscious and Maggie missing. In the woods, Maggie approaches a shrouded figure, whom we assume to be the vampire and who appears to be Roxanne.
This episode marks the final appearance of the character Mrs Johnson and of the actress Clarice Blackburn. Blackburn had taken a writing job on another soap by this time and was not available for acting work on a regular basis. She was an outstanding performer; Nancy Barrett says that Blackburn was the single best actor in the entire cast of Dark Shadows. Since Miss Barrett herself is a serious contender for this title, that is not an opinion to be taken lightly.
In the 1995 segment, Mrs Johnson died in the episode broadcast on 23 July 1970. That would suggest a dramatic date of 23 July 1995, very close to Blackburn’s actual date of death, 5 August 1995. But it gets eerier than that. In #1071, when charming rogue Quentin Collins says that he looked into Parallel Time and saw Roxanne trapped in the burning room, he goes on to fix the date of Julia and Barnabas’ departure from Parallel Time as 3 August, two weeks after the broadcast date. That would be the date of their arrival in 1995, and would mean that the third night of their time in that year, the night when Mrs Johnson died, would have been 5 August 1995.
Dark Shadows Commentary 