alexandra moltke – Page 2 – Acilius on Dark Shadows

Episode 465: Too cool for ghoul

The other day, vampire Barnabas Collins added well-meaning governess Vicki to his diet. Barnabas has bitten several people in the year he has been on Dark Shadows, and his victims have reacted to the experience in a wide variety of ways. Vicki’s post-bite syndrome is unique on the show, and as far as I know unique in vampire stories. Her reaction could most succinctly be summarized as “not feelin’ it.”

Barnabas had hoped to enslave Vicki with his bite, as he had enslaved others, and attributes her blasé response to the unseen presence of wicked witch Angelique. But it may be that Barnabas has himself to blame. Several times in 1967, Vicki went out of her way to make herself available to Barnabas for biting. She invited herself to his house for a sleepover in #285, pressed her neck towards his teeth while embracing him in #311, and has rarely missed a chance to be alone with him. There is a hilarious meta-fictional element to this theme, as Vicki tries to secure a place for herself in the main storyline by becoming the vampire’s thrall.

For his part, Barnabas has time and again looked at Vicki’s neck, shown his fangs to the camera, and then backed off. Even when he finally did bite Vicki in #462, he spent so much time and energy displaying his internal struggle that my wife, Mrs Acilius, commented “Barnabas is about to make himself sick.” Indeed, he took so long making that display that the episode ended before he sank his teeth into Vicki, and we had to wait until the next day to be sure he’d actually gone through with it. You hardly expect Vicki to be excited that such a reluctant suitor has at long last deigned to attach himself to her.

Vicki has recently returned from a long visit to the year 1795,* when the human Barnabas died and the vampire began his career. Barnabas fears she may have discovered his secret while in that period, a fear that deepens as her scattered memories return.

In fact, Vicki never discovered that Barnabas was a vampire. She does have some information that, coupled with what she and others have already found out, could lead to his exposure, but she isn’t thinking about that at all. Instead, her main focus is on an unpleasant man named Peter, whom she met and with whom she fell in love in the 1790s. On Wednesday, she learned that shortly after she left the eighteenth century Peter had been hanged for a killing she committed,** and she is frantic with guilt about it.

At the top of today’s episode, Barnabas sends Vicki a telepathic message that they will be eloping tonight. She accepts this without any visible emotion. Then her friend, hardworking young fisherman Joe (Joel Crothers,) comes to the door. In the 1790s segment, Crothers played naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes, a villain who was responsible for many terrible crimes against Vicki and people she cared about. This is the first time we’ve seen Joe since the show returned to contemporary dress, and Vicki takes a while to adjust to the fact that it is her trusty old pal before her, not the detestable schemer who did so much to blight her time in the eighteenth century.

Joe has come to bring Vicki a charm bracelet that his girlfriend Maggie had given her. The charm bracelet turned up in the old courthouse in the village of Collinsport. The courthouse has been disused for years and is about to be torn down. Joe wonders when Vicki was there; she makes many cryptic remarks in reply, but can’t bring herself to tell such a sensible fellow that she was tried there for witchcraft and sentenced to death 172 years before, much less that his counterpart gave the testimony that condemned her to the gallows.

After Joe has gone, Vicki still isn’t motivated to do anything to prepare for her departure with Barnabas. Instead, she takes a nap in the drawing room. She has a dream in which she sees Peter in his gaol cell. She promises him that she will prove his innocence, and marches off. She finds Nathan dozing at a desk. She tells Nathan that he could prevent Peter’s execution if he were to tell the judges that he lied when he told them he saw Peter kill the man whom Vicki actually killed. Nathan cheerfully explains that he cannot tell the judges anything, since he is dead. He tells Vicki that she is dead, too- he was strangled, she was hanged.

Nathan, having a wonderful time in the afterlife, proposes a toast “to Death- the best of all possible worlds!” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Nathan’s statement is proof that the dream is not simply a product of Vicki’s psychology, but a communication with Nathan’s spirit. Barnabas strangled Nathan, but his father Joshua Collins hid that fact from the world, and neither Vicki nor anyone else alive in 1968 has any way of knowing about it. Vicki wasn’t hanged, but she was about to be when she was whisked back to her own time, and Nathan would have no way of knowing she survived.

Vicki goes back to Peter’s cell and finds it empty. She turns and sees the gallows, on which Peter is hanged before her eyes. She wakes up calling out Peter’s name.

Vicki opens her eyes to see Barnabas standing in front of her. He asks her who Peter was; she says he was someone she knew long ago, and that it will be hard for her to forget him. He asks if she knew he was coming; she affirms that she did. If he knew about the contents of the very elaborate dream she just had, he would have all the more reason to ask such a question. The only action of Barnabas’ mentioned in it was Nathan’s murder, and Nathan doesn’t bother to tell Vicki by whom he was strangled. There are four speaking roles and a background player in the dream, and not only is Barnabas not one of them, no one mentions in it his name, sees his image, or comes into contact with any of his belongings. Barnabas has been dominating the show since he was first named in #205, and Vicki, whom he was under the impression he had enthralled, has lost all interest in him.

Barnabas tells Vicki it’s time to go. She says she has to do something else first. She wants to go to the old Collins mausoleum and see if there is a secret room hidden there. If there is, she will know she really did travel back in time.

Barnabas was trapped in his coffin in that secret room from the 1790s until 1967, and is anxious that no one should discover its existence. He is also eager to get going with whatever plan he has made for Vicki. But he finds himself powerless to oppose her. Not only is he not her dark and irresistible master, as he had been of his other blood thralls, he isn’t getting nearly as much deference from her as she had always shown him before he bit her.

We cut to a car, in which Vicki is driving Barnabas to the cemetery. Apparently it is Vicki’s car. This is the first time we have seen Vicki driving, and it brings up a bit of a riddle for viewers who have been paying close attention to Dark Shadows from the beginning. In the first 46 weeks of Dark Shadows, Vicki was continually asking to borrow heiress Carolyn’s car, getting rides from people, walking longer distances than others thought reasonable, trying to catch the bus, and wishing she had a bicycle. In #232, #233, and #259, it was implied that Vicki had a car of her own. They never explained how or when she came into possession of such a thing, but they stopped all the business of her trying to find a way to get around. As we watch Barnabas squirming in the passenger seat, we can believe he would rather be standing with her at a bus stop.

Barnabas keeps telling Vicki that he doesn’t think they ought to go to the mausoleum. She snaps at him that he was originally enthusiastic about going. The statement is entirely false, and the line is entirely convincing. We saw that Barnabas was appalled at Vicki’s interest in the mausoleum, and we saw that she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice his feelings. The two of them bicker about the need to get settled before sunrise, and they sound for all the world like an old married couple. Barnabas exercises exactly zero control over Vicki, and the result is hilarious.

The bickering couple. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The show so often puts Vicki in the role of Designated Dum-Dum, requiring her to facilitate the mechanics of the plot by doing things she would have no reason to do, that the show’s original protagonist is eventually swallowed up by Dumb Vicki. It’s always refreshing to see Smart Vicki put in an appearance. I don’t know if the woman we see today is a perfect example of Smart Vicki, but she certainly is Smart Alexandra Moltke Isles. Mrs Isles’ performance is so good that even a hater like Danny Horn had to admit in his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day that she is fun to watch. And the character is Strong Vicki, taking action in pursuit of her own objectives, making use of the information available to her, and bending Barnabas to her will.

The scene in the car will have an amusing echo for longtime viewers. From November 1966 to March 1967, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank Garner kept telling Vicki how interested he was in her. Vicki went on some dates with him and accepted him as her sidekick in her struggle against undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, but all in all was almost as cool towards him as she has been to Barnabas post-bite. In #153, Vicki was Frank’s passenger in his car. He thought they were going out for a glamorous evening, but she abruptly insisted that they go to the old cemetery north of town and visit an old crypt. Frank was about as pleased then as Barnabas is now. I suppose a fellow ought to know what he’s getting into when he and Vicki get into a car together.

Barnabas sees a figure ahead and asks Vicki what it is. She looks and slows down. A man in contemporary dress who looks like Peter lopes into the road, smiles a big goofy grin, and waves. Even though Vicki’s movements and the sound effects told us she took her foot off the accelerator as soon as Barnabas said he saw something, the man is so close to the car that she slams on the brakes, the tires squeal, and she loses control of the vehicle. He must have wandered right in front of the car. That confirms for returning viewers that the man must be Peter. He always did the least intelligent and most dangerous thing, usually while grabbing at people and shouting in a petulant voice. Poor Vicki. Barnabas is a vampire and a cold fish, but she’s managed to get herself stuck with a guy who makes those shortcomings look minor by comparison.

Ugh, this guy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

*It was 1795 in #365, and in #413 they explicitly told us the new year 1796 had come. But after Vicki returns to the 1960s in #461, the only year they talk about is 1795.

**With justification- she shot a man who was trying to strangle a young boy.

Episode 464: Justice to history

High-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins was Dark Shadows‘ first villain. Through the first 40 weeks of the show, dashing action hero Burke Devlin was determined to prove that Roger, not he, had been driving when his car hit and killed a pedestrian ten years before, and Roger would stop at nothing to keep Burke from succeeding. The Revenge of Burke Devlin storyline was never particularly exciting. By the time Burke formally gave up on his quest for vindication in #201, it had been running on fumes for some time. Roger hasn’t been central to a plot since then. The show has capitalized on actor Louis Edmonds’ unrivaled gift for sarcasm by having him deliver the occasional zinger, and otherwise has used him as a symbol of the inability of the Collins family to use its wealth and connections to solve any of its problems.

For nineteen weeks ending this past Monday, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century and Edmonds played haughty overlord Joshua Collins. That performance was a triumph, and the entire segment turned out to be The Tragedy of Joshua Collins. So returning viewers will have an appetite to see more of what Edmonds can do, and will be excited when we come back from the opening title sequence to a scene focusing on Roger.

Roger spends this scene staring at a portrait and reciting poetry to it while various people enter the room and try to get his attention. That may not sound like a promise of thrills, but it is on this show. For example, Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David, had a lively if somewhat one-sided conversation with the portrait of Josette Collins that hangs in the Old House on the estate in #102, and that conversation presaged danger for David and an important role for Josette’s ghost. The show’s first supernatural menace was Roger’s estranged wife, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, and several characters had important relationships with portraits of Laura during the four months she was in the cast. And dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis once spent a week staring at the portrait of the late Barnabas Collins that hangs in the foyer of Collinwood. As a result, Willie wound up opening Barnabas’ coffin, finding that he was a vampire, and turning Dark Shadows into an entirely different kind of show.

Roger talks to the portrait of Angelique.

The portrait that has captured Roger’s attention is of Angelique, the wicked witch who turned Barnabas into a vampire in the first place. Well-meaning governess Vicki found this portrait in an antique store and brought it home yesterday. It was Vicki who took us to the 1790s when she became unstuck in time. While there, she met Angelique and the living Barnabas. Shortly after her return to the 1960s, Vicki found that her memory of her time in the past had become spotty. She can’t explain why she wanted the painting, but it does make sense to her that Barnabas reacts to it with violent dislike.

We first saw the portrait in #449, when it was clear that Vicki would be returning to the 1960s soon but unclear whether Angelique would follow her. Showing us that they had commissioned a portrait of Lara Parker was their way of telling us she would be back. Having Roger become obsessed with the portrait is their way of telling us that he will be the instrument of her arrival, as Willie was the instrument of Barnabas’.

We learn that Roger’s obsession will blur the distinction between him and Joshua when long-term houseguest Julia Hoffman approaches him and he speaks to her in Joshua’s voice, addressing her as the Countess DuPrés, who was a houseguest at Collinwood in Joshua’s time. Julia and the countess are both played by Grayson Hall. Vicki mistook the countess for Julia when she first met her in 1795, and since her return to 1968 has kept mistaking Julia for the countess. Now that Roger has made the same mistake, Julia must be trying to figure out what’s going on.

A man comes to the front door. Vicki answers it and sees a familiar face. It belongs to Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. She hasn’t met him before, but she met his ancestor, much put-upon servant Ben Stokes, in the 1790s.

Like Ben and crazed handyman Matthew Morgan from 1966, Professor Stokes is played by Thayer David. Matthew and Ben were both major characters, so we can assume that Stokes will be as well. Matthew was a bad guy, Ben a good guy. When Ben was on the show, the contrast between him and Matthew was drawn very heavily to make the point that Matthew’s crimes are what Ben’s virtues would have led him to do had his personality been warped by the environment in which Matthew grew up. That environment was the consequence of the curse that Angelique placed on the Collinses in the 1790s. Burke expressed this idea in #64 when he said of Matthew that “Collinwood breeds murderers,” but he was understating the effect. Matthew grew up, not on the estate, but in the nearby village of Collinsport, and the curse leaves its mark on everyone who comes from there. Since Stokes is an out-of-towner, he is likely to be unaffected by the consequences of the curse, and so we do not know what we will find under his worldly and self-possessed exterior.

Stokes is researching his ancestor Ben, and wanted to buy the portrait because he thought it might depict a woman Ben knew. Stokes says that Ben wrote a memoir. Barnabas is in the room; in the 1790s, Ben was his closest friend, and knew all about his vampirism. So he is alarmed by the idea of a volume of memoirs by Ben. He can take some comfort when Stokes tells him that most of the manuscript was lost in a fire a few years ago.

The idea of a servant writing memoirs that might expose Barnabas’ secret first came up in #326. At that point, Willie was out of his control, and Barnabas told Julia, who is a mad scientist and his confederate, that he was afraid Willie might start “writing his memoirs!” That phrasing was meant to raise a laugh, since Willie is conspicuously not burdened with literary ambitions. But it planted a seed that flowers for the first time here, and that will flower again later.

Stokes offers Vicki $200 for the painting. Barnabas is eager to get the thing out of the house and urges her to take Stokes’ money, but before she can Roger bids $500. Stokes can’t afford that, and so it stays at Collinwood.

Stokes’ interest in family history establishes a contrast between him and Roger. Stokes, like Roger, appears to be a confirmed bachelor. But while Roger’s lack of interest in the responsibilities of marriage is of a piece with his indifference to all family ties, so that he was eager to divorce Laura and palm David off on her even after it had become clear to other characters that she was a danger to the boy, Stokes is an avid genealogist. He has renounced the prospect of marriage because he has other ways to be of service, not simply because he wants to wallow in his own crapulence as Roger does.

Suddenly Vicki remembers that the woman in the portrait is named Angelique, that Angelique was a witch, and that her spells caused all the misfortune that began at Collinwood in 1795. We hear all of this while Barnabas is in closeup, squirming gloriously. Stokes leaves with Barnabas and tells him he knew that the woman’s name was Angelique, but that it’s news to him that she was a witch. He is impressed by Vicki’s knowledge, and says that he can sense that she is attuned to paranormal phenomena. He wants to get to know her better.

Vicki suddenly remembers who Angelique was. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Most characters we have met spend a long time slowing the story down by scoffing at the idea of the supernatural. That Stokes is a self-identified student of the occult and immediately receptive to Vicki’s identification of Angelique as a wicked witch tells us that he will serve to speed up the pace of events.

This again makes a stark contrast with Roger. When Vicki managed to get Roger away from the painting for a moment in Act One, he told her that he refused to believe that she traveled to the past and returned to the present. When she lists some of the abundant evidence he and everyone else saw that can be explained no other way, he says he attributes all of that to mass hallucination.

In his Dark Shadows Every Day post about this episode, Danny Horn at one point refers to Stokes as a character whose function is “to backfill Dr. Woodard’s spot in the cast,” referring to a stolid medico whom Barnabas and Julia murdered several months back. But in this contrast, we see that the character whose place Stokes is actually taking is Roger. When the show started, the Collinses of Collinwood were the central frame of reference for the action. But Roger and his sister, matriarch Liz, are for various reasons locked out of the supernatural storylines. Since those are the only storylines they have, the show needs to build another family to anchor the action, and that family is going to be defined, not by marriage and genealogy, but by a shared commitment to getting as deep as possible into the weirdest shit going.

Stokes tells Barnabas that there was a series of unsolved murders in Collinsport in the 1790s, and wonders if it might be possible to prove that Angelique was responsible for them. Barnabas suggests that it is too late to do justice in such an old case, to which Stokes replies that it is never too late to do justice to history. Not only does this reply deepen the contrast between Stokes and the amoral Roger, it has, by happenstance, a deep resonance for many who might see the episode today. It originally aired on 4 April 1968, just a few hours before the Rev’d Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, was assassinated. Millions are still unsatisfied with the official answers about who killed Dr King and why; they might cheer the idea that there is a species of justice that is still possible even after 56 years or more have gone by.

Barnabas bit Vicki the other day in an attempt to control her and keep her from revealing any information about him she may have acquired during her sojourn in the past. Disquieted by his conversation with Stokes, Barnabas stares out his window and summons Vicki to his house. In her bedroom, an enchanted music box Barnabas gave her as part of an earlier brainwashing attempt opens itself and begins to play. She rises from bed and goes to him listening to the music box all the way.

At Barnabas’ house, Vicki gives him the music box. He tells her that the next time he calls her, they will go away together forever. He bites her neck.

Barnabas has Vicki over for a bite. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We cut to Vicki’s bedroom. The music box is back in its place and she is back in bed, asleep. Julia comes in to check on her. Vicki says she’d had a bad dream, and Julia finds the bite marks on her neck.

In the weeks leading up to Vicki’s visit to the past, Julia had alienated Barnabas by opposing his efforts to seduce Vicki. Now she marches over to Barnabas’ house and renews her opposition. She accuses him of having been in Vicki’s bedroom. He answers that he brought her to his house. This might seem to be a trivial distinction, but perhaps not to viewers who have been with the show from the beginning. Today’s focus on Roger might remind us of #4, when Roger tried to let himself into Vicki’s room while she was sleeping, obviously in search of some kind of sexual thrill that would not be preceded by her consent. Barnabas can’t deny that he is the moral equivalent of a rapist, but he isn’t going to miss an opportunity to differentiate himself from Roger.

Barnabas doesn’t seem very interested in anything Julia is saying. Even when she gives him an ultimatum, threatening to expose him if he doesn’t back off by tomorrow night, he reacts with a mild irritation. Regular viewers, remembering the displays of jeering contempt and seething rage which are typically the options from which Barnabas chooses his response to this sort of thing, will be startled by his relative blandness. Julia should be unnerved by it.

Episode 462: Whole image

In November 1967, Dark Shadows was very rapidly running out of stories to tell. Rather than introduce new characters and new complications to solve this problem, they kept killing off existing characters and foreclosing possible developments, making it impossible not to notice that they were speeding directly towards a blank wall. In #365, they did something no one could have seen coming. Rather than crashing into the wall, they passed right through it and relaunched the show as a costume drama set in the 1790s. The result was a triumph, nineteen weeks of high drama, low farce, lurid horror, pointed satire, and authentic tragedy. Now they are back in contemporary dress, and we are waiting to see what comes next.

Before the costume drama insert, mad scientist Julia was trying to keep well-meaning governess Vicki from falling into the clutches of vampire Barnabas. Julia’s efforts pitted her against many opponents. Vicki regarded Barnabas as a friend, actress Alexandra Moltke Isles was eager to get into the main storyline, the fans wanted to connect the show’s original point of view character with its breakout star, and the writers needed a fresh story to tell. But by repeatedly hypnotizing Vicki and making her subconsciously aware of Barnabas’ horrible secret, Julia was able to hold the line until Vicki disappeared into the 1790s and took the audience, the writers, and Mrs Isles with her.

At the top of today’s episode, Julia is hypnotizing Vicki again. Vicki is in bed, and Julia is extracting memories of her visit to the late eighteenth century, using a post-hypnotic suggestion to sequester those memories from her conscious mind.

Julia hypnotizes Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki has a dream in which the ghost of Jeremiah Collins, who befriended her in 1795, warns her about Barnabas. The ghost’s voice is provided by Addison Powell, whom Danny Horn named on his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day as “THE WORST ACTOR EVER TO APPEAR ON DARK SHADOWS.” I can think of two or three who might finish ahead of Powell in the contest for this title, but his voice performance today is indeed amazingly bad. He delivers his lines on a single shrill note throughout, and has a lot of trouble managing his breath. I suppose his attempts to get through long speeches without inhaling make sense for someone who just emerged from his grave, but the consequent lack of emphasis on any particular words or phrases and the intermittent gasps each time he runs out of oxygen do keep him from establishing the sense of mystery and terror that the scene calls for.

We then cut to the terrace outside the house, where we see Barnabas approaching the door. Julia meets him, with a new haircut.

Julia’s hair. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This is Grayson Hall’s actual hair; the wig she was wearing in the first scenes had been part of Julia’s costume from her first appearance, in #265. The last time an actress was freed from a wig to perform under her own hair was when Maggie Evans’ tight little blonde hairpiece gave way to Kathryn Leigh Scott’s reddish brown tresses in #20. With that, the wised-up waitress who was everybody’s pal and nobody’s friend became The Nicest Girl in Town. Longtime viewers who remember Maggie’s transformation will recognize what is happening today, when the same device marks a reset of a character. Julia, who yesterday was precisely as hostile to Barnabas and as helpless before him as she was when we left off in November, is today both willing to cooperate with him and very much in control of the situation. He even goes down on one knee to beg her to help him find out what Vicki learned during her sojourn in the eighteenth century. She promises nothing.

Kneeling Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After another visit to Vicki in her room, Julia assures Barnabas that she can use her mastery of hypnosis to cordon off any memories Vicki may have that might pose a threat to him. Unconvinced, Barnabas decides to take matters into his own hands.

Julia tells Barnabas she can control Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas appears in Vicki’s room. She awakens and is surprised to find him at her bedside. She recoils from him as she had been doing in November, when Julia had made her unconsciously aware of his true nature, but, again as she had done in those days, she overcomes her aversion and turns to him. He tells her to come to him. She hesitates, but does. He tells her he can give her peace and make it seem that everything that is distressing her is far away. She embraces him and asks him to do so. It looks very much like a seduction. Considering that Vicki kept embracing Barnabas and pushing her neck towards his teeth before Julia started hypnotizing her, it is an overdue one. Barnabas opens his mouth. He displays the same inner struggle he has shown on previous occasions when he had the chance to bite Vicki, but is still bending his head towards her neck when we fade out for the closing credits.

Barnabas about to bite Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 461: Crosses in life

Nineteen weeks ago, well-meaning governess Vicki disappeared from a séance in the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood and found herself in the year 1795. Her miserable failure to adapt to her new surroundings led to her conviction on charges of witchcraft. At the end of Friday’s episode, we attended her hanging.

Today we begin with an unusually long opening voiceover. These typically end before we see the actors; only a couple of times have they picked up again after a scene. This episode marks the first and only time the narration resumes after the opening title. It is necessary- they have to explain that what’s happening to Vicki in the 1790s is somehow simultaneous with the séance in the 1960s.

An unexpected guest in the drawing room. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Vicki disappeared in #365, a woman named Phyllis Wick materialized in her place. Now, we cut back and forth between the hanging and the séance. Phyllis clutches her neck and cries out in pain as the rope tightens around Vicki’s neck. Then Victoria reappears in the drawing room, wearing the dress she wore in the 1790s and bearing the wounds she sustained then. Back in the eighteenth century, the hangmen remove the hood they had put on Vicki and see Phyllis’ dead face underneath.

It’s a standard of stage magic for the magician to get into a box, for the box to be sealed tight, and for the magician’s assistant to be the one who gets out when the box is opened. That gag may not have been so familiar in the eighteenth century, but the inexplicable substitution can hardly undermine the certainty the executioners feel that Vicki was a witch.

By the end of the scene in the drawing room, first time viewers will be very largely caught up on what was going on when Vicki left in November. Before Vicki even appeared, we learned that Barnabas Collins recognized Phyllis Wick and was alarmed to see her, telling us that he is an interloper from the past trying to conceal a secret. Permanent house-guest Julia Hoffman announces that she is a medical doctor. Julia apologizes to Liz for having concealed this fact, which not only lets us know that she did conceal it but also tells us that the house belongs to Liz. Julia and Carolyn exchange frosty words, making it clear that they are enemies. Julia is even chillier to Barnabas, while Barnabas and Carolyn exchange a conspiratorial look. In contrast to all of these promises of drama, the reasonable observations Roger makes and his straightforward helpfulness suggest that he hasn’t been an active part of a storyline for some time.

The scene in the drawing room does not match the one Vicki left. Everyone is sitting in a different spot, the conversation after Vicki disappeared doesn’t seem to have played out the same way, and Phyllis is played by another actress. The Dark Shadows wiki has some fun with this, saying that the changes “can be rationalized as a changed history due to Victoria’s presence in [the] past.” This is the kind of theory that I enjoy very much, but I’m afraid it doesn’t work. If Vicki has come to a later stage of the time-band in which she spent the last nineteen weeks, Barnabas would remember her, not Phyllis, as his little sister’s governess.

As it is, Barnabas is desperate to find out what Vicki learned when she was in the era that holds the key to his secret. Julia leaves Vicki alone for a moment, and Barnabas appears at her bedside. She talks to him in a quiet, urgent voice about her fragmentary recollections of the 1790s. Alexandra Moltke Isles’ performance in this scene is so beautiful that I can’t imagine it failing to touch even the most shriveled hearts.

Vicki tells her tale to Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We end with Barnabas telling Carolyn that if Vicki knows enough to be a threat to him, he will stop at nothing to silence her. When Carolyn asks what he means, he repeats his ominous vow.

There are many line bobbles and a couple of physical stumbles today. Most obvious is a moment when Grayson Hall, as Julia, stumbles over a piece of metal equipment while entering Vicki’s room. But the whole thing is so well-structured and the actors are so completely into it that none of them bothered us.

Episode 456: The little boy I brought with me

In 1966, the well-meaning Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke Isles) came to the great house of Collinwood to be governess to strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy.) Throughout the first 25 weeks of Dark Shadows, Vicki gradually learned that David’s stories of ghosts and other paranormal phenomena were not signs of a disordered imagination, but were simple statements of fact. Once she came to terms with that reality, Vicki and David became the closest of friends.

Now it is 1796. Vicki has come unstuck in time. For a brief period she served at Collinwood as governess to the children there, including Daniel Collins (David Henesy,) with whom she became the closest of friends. Vicki’s signal failure to adapt to her new surroundings soon led her to be convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. She escaped from gaol and found a hiding place in the secret room of the Collins family mausoleum. Daniel joined her there.

Daniel, too, had been fleeing for his life. An unsightly man had abducted him. Daniel got away from him and made his way to the cemetery, where he had earlier seen Vicki duck into the mausoleum. When Daniel went out again, the man appeared and tried to strangle him. Vicki found out what was going on and shot the man to death.

Daniel and Vicki then left the cemetery and went to the great house. The lady of the house, Naomi Collins, believes that Vicki is innocent. Daniel is sure Naomi will help her.

In the study. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Today, Daniel and Vicki arrive at the house, and Naomi does indeed hide them. The three of them are in the study when Daniel’s brother-in-law, naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes, knocks on the door. Naomi hustles Vicki into a closet and lets Nathan in. Nathan dismisses Daniel’s claim that he was attacked, but when Daniel gives a description of his assailant Naomi realizes that it matches a man she saw Nathan with earlier. She is convinced that Nathan tried to do away with the boy.

She is correct. Nathan wooed Daniel’s sister Millicent for her money, only to discover after they were married that she had signed all of it over to Daniel. If Daniel dies, it reverts to her, which is to say to her husband. So Nathan set about scheming to have Daniel killed. As it was always dangerous to disbelieve David, so it would be dangerous to disbelieve Daniel.

When Naomi tells Nathan that the authorities will investigate Daniel’s story, he warns her against attracting the attention of the constable. He can see that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. So he tells her that it is to do with her son Barnabas. Naomi declares that Barnabas is in England, repeating a lie that her husband Joshua commanded her to propagate. Nathan says that isn’t true. “So you know Barnabas is dead,” replies Naomi. Nathan denies that as well, and says that Barnabas has recently been murdering people in the town of Collinsport.

Naomi was in the house when Barnabas died and saw him in his coffin afterward, so she is not inclined to accept Nathan’s assertion. But Millicent keeps saying that she has seen Barnabas, Naomi thought she heard Barnabas’ voice the other day, and Joshua is obviously keeping some secret from her. So when Nathan tells her that Barnabas is in the room on top of the tower attached to the house, she can’t resist going up there to see for herself. At the end of the episode, Naomi is in the tower room, opening Barnabas’ coffin.

Episode 455: Old enough now

In Dark Shadows #316, broadcast and set in September 1967, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) escaped from the hidden chamber in the Collins family mausoleum, only to find himself in the clutches of his distant cousin, Barnabas the vampire. He was spared from Barnabas’ murderous intentions when local man Burke Devlin happened by.

Today’s episode was broadcast in March 1968 and set in the 1790s. Young Daniel Collins (David Henesy) leaves the hidden chamber in the Collins family mausoleum, only to find himself in the clutches of a criminal named Noah Gifford. Daniel is spared from Noah’s murderous intentions when bewildered time-traveler Vicki, who was once Daniel’s governess, emerges from the hidden chamber and shoots Noah dead.

Vicki and David inside the hidden chamber. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The contrast between the two scenes shows how much thicker the narrative texture of the show is in the 1790s flashback than it was before. In #316, David had accidentally got himself trapped in the hidden chamber. That led to a whole week of episodes where he was helpless and people looked for him, Barnabas with the intention of killing him because he overestimated how much David knew about him. Burke just chanced to be there at the right moment to rescue David. That was all there was to it, really, and once it was over it didn’t change the story very much.

But Daniel deliberately went to the hidden chamber because he was fleeing from Noah, who was working as an agent of naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes. Nathan is married to Daniel’s sister, fluttery heiress Millicent Collins, and is scheming to get control of her money. Murdering Daniel is one part of that plan. Vicki is in hiding because she has been convicted of witchcraft, sentenced to die, and has escaped from gaol. She chooses to rescue Daniel at the risk of her own life because she loves him, and also because he will grow up to be the ancestor of the Collinses whom she knew in the 1960s. All of the characters involved in Daniel’s encounter with Noah know what they are doing, have chosen to pursue important goals, are brought together by the convergence of ongoing plot-lines, and take actions that propel the flashback segment towards its conclusion.

One of the themes Danny Horn developed on his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day was that the actors didn’t know how to handle firearms. Alexandra Moltke Isles provides several spectacular examples in today’s episode. Danny’s post about it includes several screenshots of Vicki pointing her loaded gun at Daniel, including one of her aiming it directly at his crotch. Since one of Vicki’s chief goals is safeguarding Daniel’s ability to someday produce offspring, this would seem to be a particularly maladroit gesture.

Episode 454: The course of history

Throughout its first 38 weeks, Dark Shadows told the story of well-meaning governess Vicki and her attempts to befriend strange and troubled boy David (David Henesy.) This story reached its conclusion in #191, when David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, beckoned David into the flames of a burning fishing shack. David ultimately fled from the shack, running into Vicki’s arms. Once David had chosen Vicki and life over his mother and death, there was nowhere for their story to go. Since there was nothing going on in any of the other narrative arcs on the show at that point, #191 marked the end of Dark Shadows 1.0.

In #365, Vicki became unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. That inaugurated Dark Shadows 3.0, successor to the period when we got to know Barnabas Collins, vampire. Today’s opening voiceover tells us that the eighteenth century flashback is almost over. Longtime viewers will get this message not only from the voiceover, but from an echo of #191. Daniel Collins, played by David Henesy, runs from the fishing shack, thereby escaping from mortal jeopardy, and goes to Vicki in search of safety.

Daniel escaped from the fishing shack. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki has utterly failed to adapt to the eighteenth century, with the result that she has been convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. With her repellent boyfriend Peter, Vicki has escaped from gaol. Fugitives Vicki and Peter are hiding out in the secret chamber hidden in the Collins family mausoleum when Vicki has a dream that young Daniel is about to be murdered by naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes. Before Vicki’s witchcraft trial, she had been Daniel’s governess, and he is still her friend. He ran into her and Peter after they escaped from gaol, knows that they are in the mausoleum, and is faithfully keeping their secret.

Vicki has brought with her from the 1960s the knowledge that Daniel will be the ancestor of the Collins family she knew in her own time. She fears that her dream will come true, her young friend will die, and his descendants will never be born.

As it happens, Nathan is scheming to kill Daniel. Nathan has married Daniel’s sister Millicent. After the wedding, Nathan discovered that Millicent had signed her vast fortune over to Daniel. If Daniel dies, the money all reverts to Millicent. So Nathan summons his unsightly henchman Noah to a fishing shack on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood and demands that he abduct Daniel, put him on a boat, and throw him into the ocean. When Noah balks, Nathan threatens to go to the constable and turn Noah in for the crimes they have already committed together. The show has out of its way to demonstrate that Noah isn’t very bright, so it isn’t a complete shock that he would think it was safer to murder a child than to call Nathan’s bluff.

Noah finds Daniel in the woods, grabs him, takes him to the fishing shack, and tells him they will be taking a boat ride together. Noah is then distracted by the wind, allowing Daniel to run away and find refuge with Vicki in the hidden chamber.

Throughout her time in the 1790s, Vicki has made a series of attempts to prevent the terrible events recorded in the history of the Collinses. She has failed every time, and the past has fallen into the same shape it took when these events originally played out and a woman named Phyllis Wick was the governess at Collinwood. But by trying to save Daniel, Vicki is not trying to change the course of history- she is trying to preserve it. It is not explained whether Phyllis rescued Daniel in the first version of this history, or if Nathan’s murder plot was somehow the result of Vicki’s intervention. Either way, it reinforces the message of the opening voiceover. Vicki has now passed all of the tragic milestones of the period, and is left with nothing to do but to contain damage that she herself might have done. It is time for her to go home.

Episode 453: Legal guardian

In December 1966, crazed handyman Matthew Morgan (Thayer David) abducted well-meaning governess Vicki and held her prisoner in a secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Vicki had run into Matthew there when she saw his dusty footprints leading up to the bookcase in #115. Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy,) did not know that Matthew had abducted Vicki, and was convinced that he had gone into hiding because he was unjustly accused of murdering local man Bill Malloy. So when David found out Matthew was in the Old House, he brought him food and water. In #120, David heard Vicki’s muffled voice behind the bookcase; in #123, he pulled the bookcase back and found her; in #124, he was too frightened to help her escape.

Now, Vicki has come unstuck in time, and found herself in the late eighteenth century. She made a promising start, landing a position as governess to the children at Collinwood, among them Daniel (David Henesy.) But she has adapted poorly to her new surroundings, so poorly that she has been convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. Accompanied by her boyfriend, an unpleasant young man named Peter, she has escaped from gaol. Vicki was shot in the arm while escaping, and is still bleeding. She and Peter have made their way to the Old House. There, much put-upon servant Ben (Thayer David) at once gives Vicki and Peter such help as he can.

When a knock comes at the door, Ben tells Vicki and Peter he will hide them. He goes to the bookcase, and Vicki whispers “The secret room.” When Vicki first saw Ben, they were in this parlor, and she was frightened because she mistook him for Matthew. In her hushed voice and the look of awe on her face when she sees Ben trying to save her life by putting her in the room where his Doppelgänger will try to kill her in 1966, Alexandra Moltke Isles’ Vicki conveys the thought that Ben and Matthew really are two versions of the same guy. Ben is a kind-hearted sort whose fierce loyalties sometimes overcome his good sense; Matthew a paranoid ogre whose single-minded devotion to matriarch Liz leads him to kill and menace those dearest to Liz. The difference between the two men begins in the events that have been taking place around Vicki in the 1790s. Ben grew up in the ordinary world of day and night, where natural laws apply and there is hope for goodness. Matthew has spent his whole life in a town laboring under an ancient curse. Matthew’s crimes would be the fruit of Ben’s virtues, had Ben been warped by the evil of centuries that hangs over the Collinsport of the 1960s.

While Vicki and Peter huddle in the secret room, Daniel bursts into the parlor. Ben tries to hurry him out, but the lad notices a trail of bloodstains leading to the bookcase. Before Ben can stop him, Daniel opens the bookcase and finds the fugitives.

Daniel discovers the fugitives. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Daniel is as convinced of Vicki’s innocence as David will be of Matthew’s, and he is eager to help her and her friend. Ben says he will take the fugitives to a safer hiding place, and forbids Daniel to follow them. Of course Daniel does follow them, and sees them enter the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. He cannot see inside, where Ben opens a secret panel and ushers Vicki and Peter into the hidden chamber behind. This chamber will be hugely important in 1967. Vicki will hear about it in that year after David, who spent a week trapped there ending in #315, tells people about it in #334. But David will be unable to show the chamber to Vicki or anyone else, and most adults assumed it was just something he had imagined. Vicki is astonished to see it today.

Daniel goes home to the great house of Collinwood, where his brother-in-law, naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes, handles him roughly and demands to know where he saw Vicki. When Daniel denies having seen Vicki, Nathan asks him how he came to have a bloodstain on his sleeve. He tells Daniel that Vicki was wounded when she escaped from gaol, and declares that it is her blood on Daniel. He warns Daniel that it is a crime to withhold information about a fugitive. Daniel keeps denying everything.

Back in the hidden chamber, Vicki is asleep. She dreams that Nathan is trying to kill Daniel. Returning viewers know that this is in fact true. Nathan married Daniel’s sister, fluttery heiress Millicent, because wanted her vast fortune. He found out on their wedding day that she had signed everything over to Daniel. It has occurred to him that if Daniel should die, it will all revert to Millicent, so he is scheming to bring that death about. Vicki has been in gaol since all of this started; nothing she has seen or heard could have led her to conclude that Nathan was a threat to Daniel. We must take it as a message from the supernatural world. This is not the first time we have seen Vicki receive such a message while in a concealed place. In #126, when Matthew was bringing an ax to decapitate her, Vicki was visited in the secret room behind the bookcase in the Old House by the ghost of gracious lady Josette bringing her good news.

The segment of Dark Shadows set in the 1790s is nearing its end. They have killed off most of the characters, have stopped introducing new ones, and those who remain are all facing crises that can be resolved only by further reducing the number of people available to participate in the action. The echoes of #123 and #124 will underline that point for viewers who have been with Dark Shadows from the start. Not only did those episodes tip Matthew into the final part of his storyline, they introduced David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, marking a new phase of the show. Calling back to those installments, and condensing the action of #115 through #126 into a few minutes, they are telling us that the end of the 1790s segment is near, and that when it comes it will come fast.

Episode 437: It’s gone on too long

Bewildered time traveler Vicki tells her lawyer/ gaoler/ boyfriend/ accomplice/ therapist/ assailant Peter that her time in the late eighteenth century seems like a nightmare. She then does something she often did in the early months of Dark Shadows, reminiscing about her childhood as an inmate of the farcically horrible Hammond Foundling Home. She says that she had so many nightmares when she was there that she became a connoisseur of nightmares. When she realized she was having a bad dream, she would choose to remain asleep right up to the moment she was about to be killed so that she could see how the whole thing would play out. I suppose that might have been useful training for a career as a character in a horror story, but if so Vicki has not benefited from it. She’s done nothing but make matters worse for herself since she arrived in the year 1795, and she is now in her last day as the defendant in a witchcraft trial which has been going very badly for her.

During this scene, Vicki gets very upset. Peter demands that she calm down and slaps her in the face when she doesn’t. That was a time-honored form of treatment for anxiety in fiction back then. It’s always gross to see, but is especially bad when the actor administering the slap is Roger Davis. Mr Davis was, shall we say, uninhibited in his physicality when dealing with his female scene partners. In his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn includes screenshots of 10 distinct moments in this episode when Mr Davis aggressively rubs himself all over Alexandra Moltke Isles. Later in the series, he would, in separate incidents, hurt both Terrayne Crawford and Joan Bennett while on camera. His fake slap does not make contact with Mrs Isles today, but his sense of personal boundaries is so severely underdeveloped that we can hardly blame her for visibly ducking to avoid his hand.

Seriously, who needs that guy? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki takes the stand and says that she is a native of the twentieth century, whisked back in time by what force she knows not. Cross-examined by visiting witchfinder/ fanatical bigot/ prosecuting attorney Rev’d Trask, Vicki admits that her last memory of 1967 was when she was at a séance, and that this was not the first séance she had taken part in. Trask declares that this is an admission of witchcraft, which, if you think about it, it is. Vicki becomes upset, and we cut directly to a commercial break without a musical sting. This is a technique the show very rarely uses, and it is always effective when it does.

One of the witnesses against Vicki, untrustworthy naval officer Nathan, has a scene alone with Trask while they are waiting for the verdict. Nathan tells Trask he never thought he would meet a preacher whose specialty was blackmail. Trask denies that he blackmailed Nathan into testifying against Vicki. He has a point- it was more a matter of extortion, followed up with bribery. Anyway, actors Jerry Lacy and Joel Crothers were sensational together. Mr Lacy is exciting to watch when he’s wound up tight, the usual condition of a character on Dark Shadows, and Crothers always moved loosely and fluidly. The two of them strike an ideal balance.

The episode ends with the judges finding Vicki guilty and sentencing her to hang by the neck until dead. If we take her recollection of her childhood nightmares as a programmatic statement, we should expect her to mount the gallows and stick her head in the noose, then immediately find herself back at the séance.

Episode 436: Thin air

Bewildered time traveler Vicki Winters is on trial for witchcraft, and it is not going well. Her lawyer/ gaoler/ boyfriend/ whatever else they don’t have the budget to hire another actor to play, an unpleasant young man named Peter, says that he wants the judges to see her as he does, as “a lovely girl who isn’t capable of witchcraft or anything else.” Unfortunately, Peter is right about Vicki’s capabilities- ever since she came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795, Vicki hasn’t done a thing worth mentioning.

Later, Peter catches up to much put-upon servant Ben Stokes. He persuades Ben to take him to the unmarked grave of wicked witch Angelique. Peter digs up the grave, but Angelique isn’t in at the moment, and there is no place to leave a message. Peter goes back to Vicki’s gaol cell and tells her that she may as well take the stand at her trial and tell the judges that she is a refugee from the 1960s.

In between these scenes, untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes finds Ben and tries to pay him for information about a man who was once their mutual friend, Barnabas Collins. Ben indignantly refuses the money. When Nathan keeps trying to talk him into it, Ben handles him roughly, then stalks off.

Ben shows Nathan he is not for sale. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This exchange will be of some interest to those who have been watching Dark Shadows from the beginning. Nathan is played by Joel Crothers, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell. In #3, hard-charging businessman Burke Devlin found Joe and tried to pay him for information about the Collins family. Joe indignantly refused the money.

It’s interesting to see Crothers reprising the situation, playing the opposite role. Burke had poured on a heavy display of oily charm in response to Joe’s quiet stiffening, telling a rather alarming story about the beginning of his rise to wealth and inviting Joe to adopt him as a father figure. By contrast, Nathan retreats rather quickly in response to Ben’s angry outburst, but then rephrases the offer in a hale and hearty tone, trying to assure Ben that he sees him as an equal and wants to be his buddy.

Neither Burke nor Nathan gets anywhere with his persistence, but each man’s approach is typical of him. As a man born into the working class of Collinsport who became a millionaire, Burke proceeds from an ironclad certainty that every wage earner in town wants to follow his example. He cannot doubt that Joe will jump at the chance to take his money and his advice. As a self-involved navy officer, Nathan believes that enlisted sailors will be sincerely grateful to him if he acts like their friend, and extends that belief to include governesses, ladies’ maids, bartenders, streetwalkers, indentured servants, and everyone else he sees as his inferior.

Ben’s angry response to Nathan’s proposition also echoes the early days of the show. When Dark Shadows was set in 1966, Thayer David played violently irritable handyman Matthew Morgan. When Ben lunges at Nathan today, he is the very image of Matthew lunging at Burke in #64. But where Matthew had to be restrained by bystanders and threatened by the sheriff before he settled down, Ben quickly backs off.

The contrast between Matthew and Ben goes to the heart of the eighteenth century flashback. Each is a formidable fighter. Each is excessively devoted to a member of the Collins family, Matthew to reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Ben to Barnabas. Each lands himself in trouble because of that devotion. But Matthew grew up in a Collinsport that had been laboring under a curse for many generations. He is unstable, irrational, dangerous. But for Ben, the curse just began a few months ago, long after his adult personality was fully formed. He is a sane man, and a good one. We can hope that he will emerge from Barnabas’ shadow and make a bright future. In that hope, we can see what the curse will cost not only the Collinses, but all the people of Collinsport.