Mad scientist Julia Hoffman has traveled back in time from 1970 to 1840. Julia’s best friend, vampire Barnabas Collins, was unable to follow her into the past. Julia and Barnabas met in 1967 and became friends in 1968. In this period, Barnabas has been trapped in a chained coffin in the secret room of the old Collins family mausoleum for decades. She misses him so deeply that she convinces herself he must have used some mumbo-jumbo to project himself from 1970 into his body as it is in this time. She unchains the coffin and lets him out. He does not recognize her, and within seconds has his hands on her throat.
In the nick of time, Barnabas’ old retainer Ben Stokes shows up and tells him to let Julia go. Barnabas is shocked to see that Ben is far older than he was when last he saw him. Ben explains that 45 years have passed since he chained the coffin. Barnabas’ reaction settles a question that the vampire lore we have so far seen on Dark Shadows had left open. We have not known whether Barnabas experiences the passage of time while he is sealed in his coffin. Now, we see that he does not. That doesn’t stop him from throwing a big fit when Ben tells him that for the sake of all that is holy he must let himself be sealed back in; he pouts that he has already spent 45 years there, as if he had suffered consciously through all of them. That point will be exploited to broadly comic effect in Tim Burton’s 2012 feature film titled Dark Shadows, in which Johnny Depp’s version of Barnabas is closed in his coffin for a minute and a half and when the lid is reopened wails “How many centuries!?” This scene is played more subtly, but regular viewers will be just as inclined to laugh at Barnabas’ extravagant self-pity.
Ben tells Barnabas Julia’s preposterous story of a journey back in time from a future in which she is his fast friend. Barnabas tells Ben that he has gone mad, but Ben insists that he believes the story, bizarre as it is. Indeed, as a vampire Barnabas is hardly in a position to dismiss tales of the supernatural.
We got to know Ben from November 1967 to March 1968, when Dark Shadows was set in the 1790s. Young Daniel Collins was also a character on the show then. Daniel is in the cast of characters again now. He is the master of the great house of Collinwood, but is a man old before his time because of a severe mental illness and a heart condition that nineteenth century medicine is powerless to treat. When we saw that Ben and Daniel were in the story, longtime viewers realized that the 1840 segment would be a sequel to the 1790s segment. And indeed, Barnabas’ manner and tone of voice when he rises from his coffin are an exact match for what they were at the end of that part of the show. Jonathan Frid picks up right where he left off in #460. I know classically trained actors are taught to do things like that, but he pulls it off so brilliantly that I can’t help but wonder just how it was done.
Ben had laid out a plan for Julia in yesterday’s episode. He told her to present herself at the great house of Collinwood as Julia Collins. She was to tell the Collinses that she was the daughter of the Barnabas Collins who left for England in the 1790s, that she has been living in America, near Philadelphia, for many years, while her brother, Barnabas Junior, had stayed in England. She was to say that Barnabas Junior has written to her saying that he wanted to meet her at Collinwood and to feign surprise that her brother is not already there. She would say that her bags were at the Collinsport Inn. They might then invite her to stay at Collinwood.
Julia leaves the mausoleum. When Barnabas rushes out to claim more victims, she peeks out from behind a tree and watches him go. She now has nowhere to turn but Collinwood and no plan to follow but Ben’s.
Samantha Collins, daughter-in-law of Daniel and the lady of the house at Collinwood, is in the woods when she senses a malign presence. She starts running, and we see Barnabas. By the time Samantha bursts into the front door of the great house, she is on the point of tears. She tells her brother-in-law Gabriel Collins and houseguest Gerard Stiles that she felt that something evil was in the woods. She didn’t see whatever it was, but has somehow come to the conclusion that it was “tall.” Yesterday Gerard, who is a clairvoyant, had a vision of Julia; he described her as tall. Neither Jonathan Frid nor Grayson Hall was much above average height, while the cast included several actors who were. For example, Christopher Pennock, who plays Gabriel, was well over six feet. Gabriel uses a wheelchair, so this role does not emphasize his tallness, but we can’t help noticing it when they keep banging on about the great height of two medium-sized people.
Gerard says that he will go into the woods to investigate. Samantha tells him not to, that she wants him to stay with her and make her feel safe. She tilts her head towards his chest. Samantha’s husband, whose name is Quentin Collins, is missing at sea and presumed dead. In this moment, we see that she is considering Gerard as Quentin’s successor.
Gabriel speaks up. He tells Samantha and Gerard that there is no reason to investigate, since the police are all over the grounds. A woman was found dead earlier in the evening, her corpse drained of all blood. The presence Samantha sensed must have been, not a man, but the animal that killed that woman.
By opening the coffin, not only did Julia needlessly expose herself to the gravest possible danger and release a monster who has already taken one human life and will doubtless take more. She also put an additional obstacle in the way of her own effort to establish herself at Collinwood. That she will present herself and announce Barnabas to the Collinses on the very night the vampire attacks start makes it all but impossible for them not to connect the two of them with those attacks.
Samantha answers a knock at the front door and finds Julia. Julia feigns surprise that Samantha does not recognize her name. She is startled to see Gerard, whose ghost she met in terrible moments in the years 1970 and 1995, but composes herself quickly. Samantha invites Julia in. She tells the story Ben had crafted for her and expresses surprise the Collinses had not received the letters she sent.
Ben shows up and Julia makes a show of recognizing his name. She says that her late father often spoke warmly of him, and that he will be impressed by how much Barnabas Junior looks like his old man. They embrace. By that point, Samantha and Gabriel are sold. Samantha insists Julia stay at Collinwood, and sends Gerard to the inn to fetch her bags. Gerard pounces when Julia says Barnabas Junior will be glad to see Collinwood “again”; she explains that their father told them so much about the place that it feels like they’ve been there before.
Gerard does fetch a set of bags from the inn. Apparently Ben had supplied those, as he had earlier supplied the period-appropriate clothing Julia is wearing. He’s a very handy fellow to have on your side, that Ben.
In the morning, Ben joins Julia as she is returning to the mausoleum. He tells her sternly that they must chain the coffin back up and that she must never return to the secret room, no matter how sure she is that her version of Barnabas is summoning her.
They find they are too late. The coffin is gone. Both Julia and Ben know that Barnabas has a compulsion to stash his coffin at the foot of the cellar stairs in the Old House at Collinwood, and Julia also knows that Barnabas’ second choice for a hiding place is behind the bookcase in the parlor of that same house. Julia also knows of a cave near the beach where Barnabas has hidden his coffin a couple of times. So it would seem that they should be able to take the chains with them to those places, find the coffin, and take care of the matter before lunch. But for some reason they just give up.
Back in the great house, Gerard confronts Julia with an earring he found on the dresser in her room when he was putting her bags away. He tells her its mate was found in the long-disused playroom upstairs two nights ago, and asks her how long she has been lurking around. She denies everything, failing to quell his suspicions. Freeing Barnabas to prey upon the living may have been the most foolish thing Julia could possibly have done, but it was not much wiser of her to leave one extremely distinctive earring in such a conspicuous place when she has lost its mate she knows not where.
It was Gabriel who found the earring. He showed it to Gerard shortly after, prompting Gerard to have his vision of the “tall” Julia. Gerard and Gabriel have a scene early in today’s episode, before they meet Julia, in which they go back over the matter of the earring. We can see not only that Gerard is onto Julia, but also that Gabriel has a plan of some kind in which he is planning to involve Gerard. Combined with Samantha’s obvious interest in Gerard, that in turn suggests that we will see how multiple members of the household entangle themselves with him and put him in a position from which he can become a threat to the future of Collinwood.
In the closing credits, Grayson Hall is billed as “Julia Collins.” It has been their custom to list characters by the names they use, even when the audience knows those names to be false. So after Angelique Collins rose from the dead, killed her sister Alexis Stokes, and assumed Alexis’ identity in #1000, when the show was set in an alternate universe, Lara Parker kept being billed as Alexis until all the characters who were fooled by her imposture were off the show. Actors sometimes wander onto the set during the closing credits. My wife, Mrs Acilius, imagines someone doing so while still in character, looking at a credit that gives away someone’s true identity, and pointing at it with wide eyes and an “Aha!” Maybe they were trying to protect Julia from that.
