The whole idea of the supernatural is that what appears to be weak is able to overcome what appears to be strong. So, as far as we can tell the dead are infinitely weaker than the living, yet it is two dead characters, vampire Barnabas Collins and wicked witch Angelique Stokes Collins, who dominate all the living people they interact with today. Even dead characters who barely appear utterly outclass live ones. In the opening sequence, Barnabas and his blood thrall Will Loomis hear the voice of late housekeeper Julia Hoffman. Hoffman’s ghost does not manifest visibly; she is such a subtle presence that Will can’t tell the difference between her and a stray piece of purple cloth. Even so, he is helpless against the dead Hoffman. Only the equally dead Barnabas can talk her into getting out of their way.
As far as we can tell, people have more influence over each other when they are close together than when they are far away, and if one person is going to resuscitate another they have to be in physical contact. But Angelique’s father, a wizard known as Tim, somehow connected her to a girl named Roxanne when Roxanne was in the back room of his apartment and Angelique was sealed up in her tomb, miles away. That unexplained connection drained most of the “life force” from Roxanne into Angelique, allowing Angelique to move among the living and reducing Roxanne to a vegetative state. Roxanne must remain in precisely her current state of debility, or Angelique will die again. Whenever Roxanne regains even a minuscule amount of strength, Angelique collapses. If Roxanne were herself to die, the whole of the “life-force,” including the share which animates Angelique, would vanish. The first and third letters of Roxanne’s name specify what she is to Angelique, the ℞ prescribed for her.
As far as we can tell, the actions we take in our lives have consequences while the actions we do not take have none. But 13 weeks ago Barnabas crossed over into an alternate universe where counterparts of the people he knows are living with the consequences of actions he did not take when he met his universe’s counterpart of Angelique in the 1790s. In his life, Barnabas had an affair with Angelique, then spurned her when he found that the gracious Josette was available to him. In revenge, Angelique turned him into a vampire and brought death and misfortune to many others. In this continuity, Barnabas’ counterpart left Angelique alone, married Josette, lived a quiet life, and died a natural death.
Hoffman’s counterpart in Barnabas’ native universe is as devoted to him as Hoffman was to Angelique. This Julia Hoffman is a medical doctor and a mad scientist. She has crossed over to the current continuity, killed her counterpart, and assumed her identity. She is working with Barnabas against Angelique.
Barnabas and Will take Roxanne from Stokes’ apartment to Will’s house on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. Barnabas wants to control Angelique by periodically stimulating Roxanne a little, knocking Angelique out each time he does so. His original plan was to revive her altogether, destroying Angelique, but he has decided that if he does this he will have less of a chance of proving that Angelique, not foul-tempered sourpuss Quentin Collins, was responsible for the death of a man called Bruno Hess. As far as we can tell, people who can move around and talk are better able to defend their reputations than are those who are rotting in their graves, but Barnabas seems to think that it is the other way around in Angelique’s case.
Julia has refused to aid Barnabas in this nonsensical scheme, but now that Roxanne is in the house she acquiesces. Before she can get to work, they hear a knock on the front door. Will leaves Julia and Barnabas with Roxanne in the secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor. Angelique herself is the visitor, asking to see Barnabas. Will tells her that Barnabas is not in and that he won’t be back for some time. She goes to the bookcase and appears to be reaching for the lever that exposes the secret room, but simply takes a book. She sits down to read while she is waiting for Barnabas. Will claims that he has resolved to stop drinking and resume his work as a writer, and that he has to be alone to do so. Angelique can’t think of anything to say to that, so she goes.
Once Angelique has returned to the great house, Quentin’s young cousin Amy Collins comes to her in the drawing room to say that she saw a man scurry across the grounds and climb in through a window, and that a few minutes later she heard a man outside her bedroom door. She could not see the man, but thinks he might be Quentin. Angelique tries to persuade her she did not see what she saw. Amy has given up when Angelique grows faint, the result of what is happening to Roxanne. When Angelique’s head clears, she asks Amy in a very serious tone to repeat exactly what she told her. Any inclination the girl may have had to believe that she was mistaken vanishes with this.
We next see Amy exploring the long-disused west wing of the house. She hears someone moving around among the cobwebs and bric-a-brac. She does not find this person, but does discover the statuette Angelique used as a voodoo doll when she cast the spell that killed Bruno, Bruno’s scarf still tied around its neck.
Julia, masquerading as Hoffman, returns to the great house. Angelique scolds her for neither being at hand when she wanted her nor keeping close enough track of Barnabas to prevent him taking Roxanne away from her father’s apartment. Julia answers the first of these complaints by referring to her other duties. She answers the second by trying to say that another of Angelique’s enemies might have made off with Roxanne. Angelique has no patience with either of these statements.
Will comes to the great house. Amy tells him about the man she saw on the lawn, says that she believes he was Quentin, and shows him the statuette with the scarf around its neck. Regular viewers not only remember Angelique using the statuette to strangle Bruno from afar, but will also remember that her counterpart in the main continuity used the same statuette in the same way to cast a choking spell on her husband Sky Rumson in #955, when Sky was trying to set fire to her (theirs was an imperfect marriage.) But out of that context, there does not appear to be anything sinister about the statuette. That isn’t a flaw in the prop- it’s the whole point. As a supernatural intervention, the voodoo doll is not supposed to look like it could have anything to do with the consequences of the spell it is used to cast.
Will recognizes the statuette as a voodoo doll, as his wife Carolyn had done when Maggie showed it to her the other day. That’s a breach of faith with the audience. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced form of technology is indistinguishable from magic. If the implements of witchcraft are things that could be sent off to the police lab for forensic analysis, they are not sufficiently advanced to stay outside the category of technology, and you are not telling a story about magic at all.
Will retraces Amy’s steps through the west wing, hoping to find Quentin and offer him his support. He makes his way to the tower room. The door opens, and he is startled to see who is entering.
Denise Nickerson was a splendid young actress. When she first joined the cast as Amy Jennings in the main continuity, she was central to the plot for months, and did a great job. We remember those days when she goes to the west wing looking for Quentin. It was Amy Jennings who, on her first night in the great house, entered the west wing and went straight to the room where the ghost of that universe’s version of Quentin was waiting for her. But she has been seen less and less. This is Nickerson’s first appearance in eight weeks, and it is hard to be optimistic that we will see much more of her in the future.
Dark Shadows Commentary 