Vampire Barnabas Collins and his friend mad scientist Julia Hoffman have traveled in time from 1970 to 1840. Barnabas’ one-time wife, wicked witch Angelique, has met them there. But this Angelique does not remember the adventures she had as an ally of Julia and Barnabas in 1897 and 1970. Instead, she seems to have come straight from the 1790s, when her monomaniacal focus on Barnabas led her to make him a vampire and kill most of his family and friends. She does not know who Julia is, and demands Barnabas resume their marriage.
Angelique has been introducing herself around the great house of Collinwood as Barnabas’ wife. She learns that Barnabas and a young woman named Roxanne Drew have a mutual attraction. She makes sure that Barnabas introduces her to Roxanne as his wife. Alone with Barnabas, Angelique threatens to kill Roxanne and raise her as a vampire unless Barnabas becomes a loving husband. Her threat gains substance when Roxanne collapses and blood gushes from her neck while she is with the man her father wants her to marry, overbearing undertaker Lamar Trask.
We’ve been here before. From March to November 1969, Barnabas found himself in the year 1897. There, he met neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond, governess to the children in the great house. Angelique showed up and found that Barnabas was in love with Rachel. She introduced herself to everyone as Barnabas’ fiancée, and made a point of forcing Barnabas to confirm to Rachel that he was engaged to her. Rachel reacted to that news just as Roxanne reacts to the news that Barnabas is married. For a while it looked like Angelique would kill Rachel. Rachel was even mixed up with a Trask, the hypocritical Rev’d Mr Gregory Trask. So longtime viewers will find today’s whole segment very familiar indeed.
There may have been a way to make it fresh. Barnabas and Julia knew Roxanne as a vampire in 1970, and they learned that she became one in 1840. She did not recognize Barnabas at that time, so he couldn’t have made her one the first time she died in 1840. Neither would Angelique have had a motive to show herself at Collinwood, let alone to start making new vampires, were Barnabas not in evidence there. So they might have come up with a story in which Roxanne’s curse was the doing of the supernatural menace in the current A story, The Head of Judah Zachery.
The Head of Judah Zachery is based on the supernatural menace that drives the plot of C.. S. Lewis’ 1945 novel That Hideous Strength, The Head of François Alcasan. Alcasan’s Head issued commands to a little circle of cultists in charge of the fictional Edgestow University. Prominent in that circle was a clergyman known as the Rev’d Straike, a man whose every utterance is ludicrously vehement. The first two episodes of Dark Shadows featured a private investigator known as Strake, and episodes #899 and #900 featured a cultist named Strak. Trask is an anagram of those names and a reminder that all men of the Trask family sound very much like the Rev’d Straike. So perhaps the curse could have come upon Roxanne as the result of Lamar’s involvement with the cult of Zachery’s Head. That would have left room for Angelique to find herself in another uneasy alliance with Julia and Barnabas.
This episode includes two moments of special interest to the most intense fans. Angelique and Barnabas refer to his late sister Sarah. Once a pivotal character on the show, Sarah has gone unmentioned for a couple of years. It’s nice to hear her name again.
Trask says that he has done an investigation of Barnabas, and found information contradicting his claim to have lived in a house in Cadogan Square in London. Since Cadogan Square wasn’t built until the 1870s, you might think this would be a fairly simple investigation to complete. But it does touch on two bits we’ve already seen. In 1967, dashing action hero Burke Devlin commissioned an investigation into the life Barnabas claimed to have led in England; and in the feature film House of Dark Shadows, still in theaters at this time, Barnabas said that he had lived in Cadogan Square.
