Amy Collins twice sees the ghost of Dameon Edwards, whom she and others at the great house of Collinwood apparently knew when he was alive a year or so previously. At that time, Dark Shadows was set in a different universe than the one it has been showing us for the last few weeks, so the first thing the audience has ever heard about Dameon is that he is dead. Nor do we learn much more about him today. He looks at people with a vaguely sad expression, wanders off, and vanishes into thin air, never speaking a word. His part reminds me of G. K. Chesterton’s line that “Journalism consists largely in saying ‘Lord Jones is dead’ to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.”
When Amy sees Dameon the second time, he leads her to the basement of Collinwood. This is a bit of a treat for longtime viewers. We may only have been in this universe for a few weeks, but the house is supposed to be laid out similarly to the one where we spent the previous 196 weeks, and the basement of that house was a significant set in the first year of the show. We haven’t been to that basement since #273, when it was revealed that reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard was mistaken in her belief that she had killed her husband Paul and that he was buried in a locked storeroom there. It turned out Paul wasn’t dead at all. Liz was so embarrassed when her mistake was revealed that no one ever mentioned it again.
Dameon reminds us of that storeroom when he leads Amy, not to the spot where it was, but to an alcove in the wall opposite it. Amy’s cousin Daniel’s bedroom is a mirror image of his counterpart David’s bedroom in the other continuity. If the basement is a mirror image as well, the alcove to which Dameon leads Amy corresponds to the locked storeroom. Dameon turns towards the door, and vanishes as he walks into it. Amy screams.
Dameon is completely new to the audience, and the story of Liz’ belief that Paul was buried in the basement is so old that the reference will be lost on anyone who hasn’t been writing up notices about every episode of the show for the last few years. So the whole thing is pretty ineffective. Indeed, while Amy is screaming Denise Nickerson is visibly struggling not to laugh out loud.
I’m sure this episode is the result of a failed plan. Dameon must represent a character who would have meant something to us. Since most of the people we have seen in the last few weeks have the same names and are played by the same actors as counterparts from the original continuity, that character would likely have been a familiar face. The one face that would have brought the locked room in Liz’ basement to the minds of longtime viewers would have been that of Dennis Patrick. Patrick was in #273 as Jason McGuire, the seagoing con man who first convinced Liz that Paul was buried in her basement and then returned to exploit that belief by blackmailing her, and returned late in 1969 as Paul himself. Liz’ counterpart in the current universe is named Mrs Stoddard, so Paul must have existed there as well.
Patrick and his wife Barbara Cason were at this time in Tarrytown, New York, playing supporting roles in the feature film House of Dark Shadows. Patrick’s role as the sheriff puts him in only a few scenes, and Dan Curtis may well have hoped that once he’d got Patrick back to the East Coast he would be able to persuade him to return to the show for a short stint as Parallel Paul’s ghost. But Patrick was based in Los Angeles at this time, busy there as a producer and in demand as an actor, and he had no interest in coming back to a daytime drama taped in NYC for any length of time. So Dameon may have been a last-minute patch to cover Parallel Paul’s absence.
If Plan A had been that today’s ghost would represent Parallel Paul, Plan B appears to have been that he would remind longtime viewers of Quentin’s counterpart in the main continuity. Quentin was introduced late in 1968 as a ghost who did not speak. He first appeared to the children at Collinwood. Those were Amy’s counterpart, Amy Jennings, and her friend, strange and troubled boy David Collins, whose counterpart here is Daniel. Quentin’s ghost beckoned Amy and David into hidden rooms where they would, as they called it, “play the game.” When Dameon beckons Amy to the basement today, she asks if this is another of the games he used to play with her and Daniel.
The echo of the “Haunting of Collinwood” story is clear. But a revisiting of it that would have been effective would have taken some time to set up, especially since there is a living, speaking Quentin at the center of the show now. By the time they got to this topic, David Henesy had left to start his own stay in Tarrytown for House of Dark Shadows, so we won’t be seeing Daniel for a while. The most they can do is what we see here.
The upshot of these two aborted plans is a situation that does not seem to belong on the show at all, and it is no wonder Nickerson can’t keep a straight face. Even more than it reminds me of “Lord Jones is dead,” this installment reminds me of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1920 poem “The Penitent“:
I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut us all within;
And, “Little Sorrow, weep,” said I,
“And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I’ve been!”
Alas for pious planning —
It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp might have been lit!
My Little Sorrow would not weep,
My Little Sin would go to sleep —
To save my soul I could not keep
My graceless mind on it!
So up I got in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad.
And, “One thing there’s no getting by —
I’ve been a wicked girl,” said I;
“But if I can’t be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!”
I don’t know if Amy had been a wicked girl, but the other characters today all seem to have secrets that it would behoove them to feel sorry for when Dameon shows up. There is drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, who like Amy sees Dameon twice; sleazy musician Bruno Hess, whom Quentin suspects of having killed Dameon; and butler Mr Trask, who, when Quentin mentions Dameon, frantically denies knowing anything about him, and who, when Amy says she saw Dameon, squeezes a drinking glass so tightly it shatters in his hand.
This is the first time we see Mr Trask. He is the fourth character played by Jerry Lacy. Mr Lacy first joined the cast in the fall of 1967 to do his celebrated Humphrey Bogart imitation as lawyer Tony Peterson before finding immortality as overheated witch-hunter Reverend Trask in the 1790s flashback that ran from November 1967 to March 1968. That first Trask came to his end sealed in a basement alcove not so different from the one into which Dameon disappears today. That incident made a big impression, and was referenced several times on the show and time and again in spin-offs of Dark Shadows in other media. Mr Trask’s debut today may, in the original, never-developed plan, have been intended to remind viewers of it. Perhaps Mr Trask would be the one to open the alcove and find Parallel Paul’s remains. That would be a fitting way to join the story that introduced the idea of a basement burial to Dark Shadows with the famous story that showed one taking place.
Mr Lacy matched his triumph as the first Trask when he returned as his hypocritical descendant Gregory in the 1897 segment that spanned most of 1969. Today’s Mr Trask is in part a placeholder for sinister housekeeper Miss Hoffman. Quentin explains today that he sent Miss Hoffman to visit her friends. Mr Lacy was in one scene of House of Dark Shadows, a funeral sequence shot on the first day of principal photography, and unlike Dennis Patrick he was still living in NYC. So he was available for a couple of weeks of fill-in work. The role is thin on paper, but Mr Lacy gives the part a lot of life.
We meet Hannah Stokes, aunt of identical twins Alexis Stokes and Angelique Stokes Collins. Hannah is in the cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, home to sleazy musician Bruno Hess. When we first see her, Hannah is casting a horoscope. Later she reads tarot cards. Still later she sprinkles some bone meal on a stolen handkerchief and says an incantation over it. The point of all this mumbo-jumbo is to determine whether the blonde woman living in the great house on the estate is Angelique or Alexis. Since Angelique died six months previously, this question would seem to have an obvious answer, but Bruno and Hannah seem to know that death is seldom a major disability among characters on Dark Shadows.
Hannah laughs at Bruno, who shares her hairstyle but does not appreciate her talents.
Hannah goes to the great house to see her niece. Alexis hated Hannah, so if she is the woman she could be expected to receive the visit coldly. Angelique was close to her, but knew of Alexis’ attitude. So if she is the woman, she could be expected to behave in exactly the same way. Indeed, the episode began with Angelique’s son Daniel and her widower Quentin noticing little things Alexis did just as her sister would do them, prompting her to point out that they were raised by the same mother and picked up many habits from her. So if a resurrected Angelique is trying to imitate Alexis, she has enough material to work with that not even her aunt can tell them apart.
Hannah goes back to the cottage. None of her black magic answers the question of which sister is living in the great house, but she is sure that Angelique is present on the estate in some form, perhaps visible, perhaps ghostly. Bruno is convinced Angelique is present in her own form and using Alexis’ name. Quentin overhears their conversation and believes for a moment that Bruno is right, before talking himself out of it. Later, he and Alexis see Angelique’s piano playing itself in her old bedroom, and Alexis believes that Angelique’s ghost is playing it.
The most interesting thing about this episode is Paula Laurence’s turn as Hannah. Her whole performance today is an imitation of Lara Parker as Angelique. Laurence was such a different physical type from Parker I couldn’t put my finger on what she was doing until she was about to exit the cottage at the end of her first scene and she laughed at Bruno. She recreated the very distinctive laugh Parker uses as Angelique. At that, my wife and I simultaneously said “The same laugh!” From then on, it was impossible to miss the imitation. It comes across as a family resemblance, of a piece with Alexis and Angelique trimming plants the same way or humming the same tune while fluffing pillows.
The cottage is the place for spooky doings. We are in a different universe today than the one where the show was based for its first 196 weeks. In the main continuity, we first saw the cottage as the home of crazed handyman Matthew Morgan, who would be scared to death by ghosts. Matthew was succeeded as a resident of the cottage by undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Laura was central to the storyline that picked up where the ghosts who killed Matthew left off. Most of the major narrative loose ends, such as the “Revenge of Burke Devlin” arc, were wrapped up as points within her story, while the ghosts were pulled out of the unseen back-world behind the action and brought into the spotlight. By the time Laura went up in smoke, the back-world of uncanny beings and the front-world of business stories and estranged spouses had reversed their places, and Dark Shadows had become a supernatural thriller.
The cottage was vacant for a long time after Laura. The next inhabitant was werewolf Chris Jennings. He was haunted there by the ghost of the main continuity’s counterpart of Quentin, who had lived and died in 1897. Quentin’s ghost seemed to have greater power in the cottage than elsewhere on the grounds of the estate. When the show traveled back in time to 1897, we found that Quentin and his fellow Satanist Evan Hanley had spent time there working black magic. At one point Quentin and Evan asked for a spirit to come from Hell to join them in an evil plan, and the one who appeared was Angelique’s counterpart, who like Laura was an undead blonde fire witch. Also in 1897, we learned that Quentin had been entangled with another iteration of Laura, and that the cottage had been one of their places.
Vague as Hannah’s findings are, they combine with Angelique’s iconography and that of the cottage to assure us that her ghost is active on the estate and that she will be returning in physical form. They are still keeping us guessing about how Alexis fits into all of that, but it seems more and more likely that she is at least sincere in her belief that she is not Angelique. Maybe she is an entirely separate entity who will eventually meet her reanimated sister, or maybe it will turn out that she and Angelique are inhabiting the same body. The spirits of the dead have been known to sublet space from the living on Dark Shadows, so that is one of many possible outcomes.
Most of this one is taken up watching people argue with each other about whether they should hold a séance. This puts longtime viewers on familiar ground. We’ve seen fourteen séances on Dark Shadows over the years, and have heard about others. Many of those we’ve seen have been preceded by the sort of wrangling we see today. The most spectacular case was #365. That installment was structured just like this one, one quarrel after another about the idea of the séance, then in the final scene the séance is held and comes to a shock ending.
Episode 365 came at the end of a period when the show was as slow-paced as it ever would be, and when such story elements as they had were all coming to an end. The episode was surprisingly fast-moving and exciting, mostly due to the visual artistry of director Lela Swift. Not only did Swift use a visual strategy that told more of a story than you might have thought was available had you read the script, but her skillful blocking and fluid use of the camera allowed the actors to project a great deal of energy. The shock ending, which the ABC network had spoiled with a series of promos but which I don’t think anyone could have seen coming otherwise, was the show’s first trip back in time. At the climax of the séance, well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself transported to the year 1795.
Now, Vicki is long gone and mostly forgotten. The show has traveled in time again, not backward but sideways. We are in an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” In this continuity, counterparts of familiar characters have different personalities and are arranged in different relationships than are the people we know.
The episode is much less effective than was #365, not so much from the absence of Vicki or the presence of any of the new characters, but because the director’s chair is occupied by the hapless Henry Kaplan. Kaplan stood at the opposite extreme from Swift. His idea of a well-composed sequence of images was one closeup after another, punctuated by extreme closeups showing us what an actor’s ear looked like when she was speaking a crucial line of dialogue. He takes the trouble to set up some two-shots and even three-shots today, but they put the actors in such cramped little frames that they don’t dare move without a furtive glance at the camera.
The master of the great house of Collinwood is drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins. His penniless siblings and permanent houseguests Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and Roger Collins have just come home from a trip out of town to find family friend Sabrina Stuart in the drawing room, demanding that they hold the séance that Quentin’s wife Angelique ordained for this night. They are shocked, because the night on which Angelique said there would be a séance fell six months before. Sabrina is having some kind of fit that causes her to be unalterably certain that this night is that one.
Angelique died of a stroke at that séance, and Liz and Roger are horrified at the idea of reenacting it. Sabrina’s fiancé, mad scientist Cyrus Longworth, says that she went through a traumatic experience the night before, when a strange man forced his way into her room and terrorized her. He then reports a conversation with a psychiatrist who suggests humoring Sabrina and holding another séance. Cyrus brings Bruno Hess, musician, lover of Angelique, and all-around sleaze to join in the reenactment.
While Roger and Liz were away, Angelique’s identical twin sister, Alexis Stokes, came to stay at Collinwood. Quentin neglected to inform even the people who were in the house at the time that this had happened, setting Alexis up for one terribly awkward encounter after another with people who thought she was her sister returned from the grave. Quentin and Alexis also got alarmingly cozy with each other, prompting his new wife, the former Maggie Evans, to walk out on him after barely a week in residence at Collinwood. So it is no surprise that he didn’t bother to telephone Liz and Roger and let them know they would see Angelique’s identical twin sister when they came home.
Roger is standing in Angelique’s old bedroom, holding a one-sided conversation with her portrait. We know that he is in the habit of doing this; it was what he was doing when first we saw him in #975. Quentin probably knows about it too, since several other people in the house have the same habit and even those who don’t spend a surprisingly large amount of time going in and out of Angelique’s room. Roger turns around and sees Alexis. Believing her to be Angelique redivivus, he nearly faints. She gives him her hand to assure him she is not a ghost, and he will later introduce her to Liz as Angelique’s sister.
Roger’s counterpart in the main continuity was Dark Shadows‘ first Big Bad, a charming, dissolute, narcissistic, cowardly, lecherous wastrel. That Roger Collins was supposed to be killed off when Vicki exposed his crimes, but Louis Edmonds made him such a joy to watch that this was out of the question. Dark Shadows had not yet figured out that a villain could be a permanent part of the cast, so when they decided to keep Roger around they nerfed him into a basically harmless supporting character. He developed gradually from the functional sociopath who in #68 coldly manipulated his own nine year old son David into a murder attempt on Vicki to the stoutly virtuous family man who made his final exit in #979 with a fatherly hand on David’s shoulder.
The Quentin of the main continuity made his debut in #646 as a ghost bent on annihilating all of his surviving relatives. From #701 to #884, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in 1897, when we met Quentin as a living being. In those days, he was very much what Roger had been in 1966, only younger, sexier, and on a show that isn’t afraid to keep villains around indefinitely. He became a huge breakout hit, and a magic spell was cast that kept him from dying or aging. So when the show returned to contemporary dress at the end of 1969, Quentin was there, alive and intact.
Upon his arrival in 1969, Quentin found himself in the same position Roger had occupied two and a half years before. Everyone wanted him to be a big part of the show, but there was nothing for him to do. Unlike Roger, he was free to be evil, but also unlike him he had no connections to anyone who had anything he wanted to take. In some ways, Quentin is in an even worse position than Roger was. Even in his lovable gay uncle phase, Roger could admit to his sister Liz in #273 that he would have blackmailed her if he had had the chance, an admission that Quentin merrily echoed in #702 when he laughed at his sister Judith’s attempt to buy him off with $1500, boasting that he could blow through that much in a single night, even in a sleepy little place like Collinsport, and that he would shamelessly come back for more. He has no one to do anything like that with now.
Quentin can charm his way to an easy living. In December 1969, mad scientist Julia Hoffman and Broadway star Olivia Corey fought over which of them would get to pay Quentin’s hotel bill, a conflict that was motivated by some story points but that is the sort of thing that might happen to a man who looks like a young David Selby. On a fast-paced supernatural thriller, you have to be something a lot juicier than a mercenary Kept Man to count for much as a villain. No one in the Nixon era owes Quentin anything, so he can’t exploit anyone the way he did Judith and the rest of his immediate family. He has fallen into service as henchman to Julia and her best friend, his distant cousin vampire Barnabas Collins, but something big is going to have to change to find him another place at the center of the action.
Since that is the same problem that cost them Roger, it makes since that in this mirror universe Quentin’s counterpart and Roger’s are revisiting some stages of the development of the Roger from the main continuity. When Parallel Roger first appeared in #975 and #976, he seemed to be, if not the utterly depraved villain of the early days, at least the spineless, snobby, but amusingly sarcastic figure he was through most of 1967. Today he seems to be closer to the responsible family man he dead-ended into being.
This Roger is the first to articulate the reasons why it is inadvisable to reenact a ceremony that cost a life the last time it was attempted. Roger’s position recalls his role in #170, when he was the principal opponent of the first séance shown on Dark Shadows. In that, he was the unwitting stooge of his estranged wife, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, but the objections he came up with were all about the importance of social respectability and of refraining from doing the thing which is not done, fitting into the image of him as a shallow and unimaginative person. The fact of Angelique’s death gives his objections today a firmer footing and presents him as a representative of sober good sense, but does not make him seem any more dynamic than his counterpart in the main continuity did in #170.
Quentin learns of the proposed séance when Cyrus and Bruno enter the house. He is angry at the sight of Bruno, and reminds him he is not welcome there. Cyrus explains that Bruno is needed for the séance. This increases Quentin’s anger, and he tells Cyrus and Bruno to “go to another house and work your black magic, boys.” They insist on staying, and suggest that Alexis sit in Angelique’s place. After all, Bruno says, why shouldn’t she see exactly how her sister died, from her sister’s point of view. At this Quentin’s anger turns to total rage, and he has to be restrained from attacking Bruno physically. Alexis wants to hold the séance, though, and Quentin gives in. He refuses to participate, but allows the others to gather in the drawing room.
Roger was never given to violence that required his direct personal involvement. Quentin’s reaction to Cyrus and Bruno’s awful idea suggests that the writers are trying to find a way forward for his character. The well-justified repugnance he feels for Bruno, the grotesquely morbid nature of the proposed reenactment, and the breathtakingly irresponsible suggestion that Alexis do the very thing it killed her sister to do, all call for a forceful response. His lunge at Bruno is manful in the best sense, and leads us to wonder if they might try to develop Quentin’s vices into the basis of some kind of heroic action.
When he scornfully tells Bruno and Cyrus to go somewhere else with their “black magic, boys,” it is clear that the writers are thinking in terms of what is possible for Quentin. In 1897, the original Quentin and his fellow Satanist Evan Hanley would hang out in the cottage on the estate corresponding to the one where Bruno lives in this timeline and do all sorts of ill-intended mumbo-jumbo. They could easily have been called “The Black Magic Boys.” That Quentin stood at the opposite pole from this one. Perhaps as the story progresses, we will see these contraries fuse into something more sustainable.
Although we are in “Parallel Time,” a development like that might have good effects on the Quentin of the main continuity as well. Roger’s character changed massively after the flashbacks to 1795 and 1897, merging with the deeply flawed, yet sturdily upright family men whom Edmonds played in those periods. So if they can build a version of Quentin in this universe who is still narcissistic but also capable of saving the day, that might point the way to transforming the Quentin in the established “time-band” into a character who can carry the show as he did for so many months in 1969.
The séance goes forward. Cyrus conducts, and Sabrina goes into the trance. She shouts the word “murder” over and again, and breaks the circle of fingers to point at Alexis. Alexis passes out. That’s the closing cliffhanger. We can be sure Alexis is not dead- it wouldn’t leave the story anywhere to go. Besides, they commissioned a gorgeous full-sized portrait of Lara Parker as Angelique for this storyline. That thing must have cost at least $5000, maybe twice that, and they will never be able to use it again after they go back to the main continuity. There’s no way they are going to blow that much money on a set decoration unless they are planning to feature it in another couple of months of episodes.
Drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins and wealthy socialite Alexis Stokes enter the mausoleum where Angelique, Quentin’s late wife and Angelique’s identical twin sister, is entombed. They find a fancifully dressed man named Bruno Hess driving a chisel into the wall beside Angelique’s nameplate. When they demand to know what Bruno is doing, he explains that he is going to open the vault, show that Angelique’s body is not there, and thereby prove that Alexis is in reality Angelique come back to life.
Quentin says he will call the police if Bruno does not desist from his efforts. Bruno says that he does not believe that Quentin wants to involve the police, since that might raise questions that he would rather leave unasked. In response to this, Quentin looks down, and Alexis asks what on earth he is talking about. Quentin says it is an empty threat. He offers Bruno $25,000 to go away, rather a large amount of money to offer someone who has just made an empty threat. Bruno says he will go away without payment if he is allowed to open the vault and it turns out Angelique’s remains are there. Alexis is horrified by this idea, and she and Quentin manage to run Bruno off.
Returning viewers know that these characters are part of a story mashing up Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca with Edgar Allan Poe’s 1838 story Ligeia. Maxim de Winter put up with the presence of Jack Favell, his late wife Rebecca’s lover, on his estate because Maxim knew that Favell was willing to spread the rumor that Maxim had murdered Rebecca, and he feared that Favell might be able to prove that the rumor was true. Bruno was Angelique’s lover, and is ensconced on the estate of Collinwood. Quentin’s look down when Bruno scoffs at the idea of him calling the police suggests that he has the same exposure in regard to Angelique’s death that Maxim had in regard to Rebecca’s.
This part of the show is set in a universe parallel to the one where it spent its first 196 weeks. Angelique’s counterpart in the main continuity is a wicked witch who has returned from the dead many times. Poe’s Ligeia, like Du Maurier’s Rebecca and like the Angelique of the current continuity, was a great beauty who fascinated those who knew her and remained an inescapable presence in her husband’s house after her death and his remarriage. Unlike Rebecca, but like the Angelique of the main continuity, Ligeia was a woman of vast knowledge who could transcend death. At the end of Poe’s story, the unnamed narrator finds that his second wife, who has died, has come back to life, and that both her physical appearance and her personality have been transformed into those of Ligeia. Bruno, like other devotees of Angelique, is unshakably convinced that Alexis is lying when she says that she is not the resurrected Angelique.
Bruno is a subject in an experiment being conducted by aspiring mad scientist Cyrus Longworth. Cyrus was himself an admirer of Angelique’s. When he first saw Alexis, he too believed that she was Angelique risen from the dead. But he has accepted that she is who she says she is, and has immersed himself in his work, an attempt to create a potion that will turn whoever drinks it into a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde-like duality. Last week, we learned that this somewhat questionable project was Angelique’s idea.
We see Bruno in Cyrus’ laboratory, telling him about his activities in the mausoleum. Cyrus is amused by the story, and tells Bruno he wishes he had his daring. He makes fun of Bruno for getting caught, and turns back to his notes. Frustrated that he cannot enlist Cyrus in his attempt to prove that Alexis is Angelique redivivus, Bruno exits.
Bruno’s a pretty weird guy, but you’d think even he would hesitate before getting into that outfit. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Later, Bruno shows up in Angelique’s old bedroom at the great house of Collinwood, where Alexis is staying. She demands he leave, and he demands she admit to being Angelique. She says that if he refuses to go, she will resort to force. He invites her to do so.
The Angelique we know in the main continuity has vast magic powers, and would be hard put to keep herself from turning Bruno into a toadstool. We don’t know if the Angelique who once occupied this room is a match for her, but the widespread belief among people who knew her well that she will transcend death suggests that she does have some kind of extraordinary ability, and a moment yesterday when Bruno believed she had cast a spell to interfere with his breathing confirms that she shared at least some of our Angelique’s talents. Bruno believes he will expose her true identity by provoking her into using them. My wife, Mrs Acilius, says that she found herself torn at this point. Returning viewers have ample reasons to dislike Bruno, and his invasion of Alexis’ personal space reinforces all of them. At the same time, she is very much inclined to believe that Alexis is Angelique. So even while she roots against Bruno, she also hopes he will succeed in this attempt.
Alexis does not cast a spell. Instead, she goes to the drawing room and tells Quentin that Bruno has invaded her room. Our Angelique would probably find it galling to have to turn to some guy and report that a meanie was bothering her, so if Alexis is an impostor we can believe she is an exceptionally well-disciplined one.
Bruno follows her. He and Quentin confront each other. Bruno taunts Quentin, saying that he always knew Angelique better than he did. Quentin reminds Bruno that he is not allowed in the house and forbids him to pester Alexis. Bruno mentions that Angelique died during a séance; this piques Alexis’ interest, and after Bruno leaves she asks Quentin about it. He doesn’t want to answer, and she drops the subject.
Cyrus goes to his laboratory late at night and finds evidence of an intruder. He discovers that the man is still there. Cyrus tells him to come out of the shadows so he can see him face to face. It is Horace Gladstone, a chemist from Boston who formulated an extremely exotic compound Cyrus bought as an ingredient in his potion. Cyrus asks Gladstone if he satisfied his curiosity when he was reading through his notes. Gladstone said he didn’t, because Cyrus’ handwriting is so bad. Gladstone says that if Cyrus will tell him what he is working on, he can be of great assistance to him. Cyrus keeps refusing, and Gladstone warns him that he is about to take “a lonely and dangerous journey.”
When he is alone, Cyrus drinks the potion. He makes noises suggesting acute gastric distress and collapses.
Quentin Collins, master of the estate of Collinwood, is in an even grimmer mood than usual. His new wife, the former Maggie Evans, has left him after only a week in the great house. She had had all she was going to take of his patronizing attitude towards her and of everyone else’s preoccupation with his first wife, the late Angelique Stokes Collins. Maggie was particularly satiated with Quentin’s houseguest, Angelique’ unmarried identical twin sister, Alexis Stokes. Maggie had found Alexis in Angelique’s bedroom, wearing Angelique’s frilly nightgown, and reaching out to Quentin while suggesting in a soft voice that “Perhaps we can comfort each other.” When that sight moved Maggie to voice objections to the situation, Quentin responded by forbidding her, for her own good no less, from mentioning Angelique’s name ever again. He was amazed that this led Maggie to leave the house. Considering the provocation, it is indeed amazing that Quentin did not require medical attention to remove his brandy decanter from whatever part of his anatomy Maggie could reach.
We open today with Quentin and Alexis back in Angelique’s room. She is fully dressed this time, but they are sitting together on the piano bench. They move their heads together, and lock their lips in a passionate kiss.
Returning viewers know that we are visiting a universe parallel to the one in which the action was based for its first 196 weeks of the show. Angelique’s counterpart in the main continuity is a wicked witch who has returned from the dead quite a few times, so when we first crossed over here and heard her devotees saying that they were sure their Angelique would find a way to come back to life we did not doubt that they were right. Maggie wants nothing to do with Angelique or the cult she built up around herself, but she is among those who are convinced that Alexis is in fact Angelique redivivus. The show has done an excellent job keeping us guessing whether she is or isn’t, and we will still be guessing when we come to the end of today’s episode.
Alexis pulls away from Quentin and is visibly upset. He apologizes for kissing her. She says that she is disappointed in him- she had thought that he, of all people would know that she is not Angelique returned from the grave. He says he does not think that she is. We can believe him- his counterpart in the main continuity usually had two or three fiancées at a time, and they were rarely his only love interests. So he wouldn’t have to believe Alexis was Angelique, or indeed that she was anyone in particular, to start a make-out session with her. After they clear the air, she agrees to stay on in the house until she can meet Quentin and Angelique’s son, her nephew Daniel Collins, who is on a trip at the moment.
Bruno, Sabrina, Cyrus, Gladstone, and the Bunny
Quentin and Alexis aren’t the only ones dealing with frustrated sexual desire. We cut from them to a closeup of a bunny. This universally recognized symbol of amorous enthusiasm is alone in a cage.
The episode originally aired on the second Tuesday of Easter 1970, maybe the bunny was resting up after his big day.
The cage is in a laboratory. A young woman in a lab coat is trying to work on a large apparatus for chemical experimentation while a man wearing a purple suit, a low cut shirt, a large medallion, and a huge bouffant hairdo is pestering her with clumsy attempts at flirting. She keeps laughing off his verbal gambits and swatting away his physical approaches.
A tall young man in a lab coat enters and calls out a booming “Sabrina!” The lounge lizard and the experimenter stand up straighter and step away from each other. Returning viewers know the tall man as aspiring mad scientist Cyrus Longworth and the ill-clad masher as Bruno Hess, musician and hanger-on of the late Angelique. We have not seen the woman before, but we recognize the actress as Lisa Blake Richards, who played another woman named Sabrina in the main continuity. That Sabrina was trapped in a go-nowhere storyline. Before today is done we will have grounds to hope that this one will give Miss Richards a task more in keeping with her considerable talents.
Cyrus sends Sabrina upstairs to wait for a package. Bruno gets ready for his part in Cyrus’ experiment, which involves giving a blood sample. Bruno asks Cyrus why he was so calm when he saw him trying to put the moves on Sabrina. Cyrus replies that he trusts Sabrina too much to worry that Bruno could come between them. He then jabs the syringe into Bruno’s arm with great force and without even looking at the spot from which he is drawing the sample, causing Bruno to jump. He may trust Sabrina, but he wants Bruno to know who’s boss.
Bruno tries to interest Cyrus in his theory that Alexis is Angelique returned from the grave. He eventually manages to get Cyrus to give him a quizzical look, but stops at that point, saying that if Cyrus won’t explain his experiment, he won’t explain his.
Sabrina comes downstairs and says that the package has come and that its bearer insists on meeting Cyrus himself. Cyrus is annoyed by this, but when it develops that the man is Mr Horace Gladstone himself, the very chemist who devised the unusual compound he has brought, Cyrus sends Sabrina back upstairs and Bruno out the basement door so that he can meet with the man alone.
Friday, Cyrus explained to his friend Chris that he is trying to devise a process for separating a human being into two parts, one good and the other evil. His scenes with Chris hit all the obligatory mad scientist notes, right down to disparaging non-mad scientists as unimaginative dolts who may as well believe that the Earth is flat. He won’t tell Gladstone what he is trying to do, perhaps because he has the same last name as did the man who was prime minister of the UK when Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was first published and so he reminds him that he is a character in a derivative storyline. But Gladstone does warn Cyrus that the compound he has purchased is a potent and dangerous one. Gladstone hints at the nature of the hazard when he says that he stepped back from active research when he feared that, even within the bounds of chemistry, he was about to uncover truths best left unknown.
Gladstone is played by John Harkins, in his fourth role on Dark Shadows. As before, he is playing a stranger from far away. In #174, he played Lieutenant Costa of the Arizona State Police. We saw him in a scene set in Phoenix, the first time Dark Shadows took us outside the northeastern USA. We did not leave that region again until #877, when sorcerer Count Petofi thought back to an incident in England in 1885, when he first met his henchman Aristide. Like Bruno, Aristide was played by Michael Stroka. The incident in England involved a man named Garth Blackwood, whom Petofi would bring back from the dead to punish Aristide. Blackwood was played by Harkins.
Harkins’ third character came from even further away than Arizona or England. He was Mr Strak, the representative of the Leviathan People, a race of Elder Gods long confined to the underworld. Strak appeared to Paul Stoddard in #899 and #900, and tricked Paul into selling his daughter Carolyn to the Leviathans. So far as Paul was concerned, Strak came from nowhere and disappeared to nowhere, so that he could never hope to explain to anyone what he had done, still less find a way to challenge the terms of the deal.
Gladstone is from Boston. Dark Shadows is set near the real-world location of Bar Harbor, Maine. The characters often mention Boston, but we’ve never had a scene set there. In #363, the ghost of nine year old Sarah Collins was perfectly bland when her friend, strange and troubled boy David, said he had been to China. Sarah said that her father and his business associates were always sailing to China. When David told Sarah that he was joking and he had actually gone to Boston, Sarah was thrilled. She had been to Boston herself once, and considered it a far more exotic place than China could possibly be. Gordon Russell was credited with the script for #363, and Joe Caldwell, the freshly returned author of today’s script, had finished his first tour of duty on the show three weeks before it was taped. But Sarah’s excitement about Boston is so much the kind of character moment Caldwell specialized in that I suspect it was a leftover idea of his that Russell found a place for. Perhaps the casting of Harkins as a Hub man reflects Caldwell’s idea of what Boston would represent to people in a coastal village in central Maine.
Bruno and Alexis
We cut to Bruno, who is on the telephone. He is talking to a person in an office somewhere. He learns that no ships from Genoa have docked in New York in the last week. This information excites him, but his excitement soon gives way to terror as he feels himself choking.
Bruno runs into Angelique’s bedroom, where Alexis is back on the piano bench. He gasps and demands she stop obstructing his breathing. She appears to have no idea what he is talking about.
The Angelique we have known since late 1967 did specialize in casting spells that made her enemies choke. We saw her do that as recently as #955, when her husband tried to set fire to her and she stopped him by twisting a scarf around the neck of a statue. On the other hand, Alexis seems genuinely bewildered by the situation.
When Bruno starts breathing again, he confronts her with the fact that no registered passenger ships from Genoa arrived in New York harbor the week before. She asks him if he considered that she might have been a guest on the yacht of some wealthy friends. He is stumped by this. Again, this keeps the suspense about her true identity alive. Alexis has been established as the sort of person who would be found on someone else’s yacht, but she doesn’t actually say that that is how she got back to the States. She merely asks Bruno if he had thought of the possibility that she may have done so.
Cyrus and Sabrina
Back in the lab, we see Sabrina collecting some equipment while Cyrus tends to his notes. She finds a small box, and asks him if he put it there for her to find. When he says he did, she opens it and finds a ring. She asks if it is an engagement ring. He says he hopes it is. She throws her arms around him and tells him she loves him. He holds her and does not say that he loves her too. He merely says that she knows how he feels about her, an ill-omen if ever we saw one.
Cyrus tells Sabrina that she knows how completely his work consumes his energies, and she says that is one of the things she admires about him. She asks what exactly he is working on. He is reticent, and she tries to walk the question back. He goes into his mad scientist ravings, and she gives him a stunned look. He tries to reassure her, saying that when he gets carried away he talks in cliches. He says that no one has found good or evil in a test tube… “yet!” The crazed gleam comes back into his eyes.
Sabrina is shocked by Cyrus’ ravings
This scene gives Miss Richards more to work with than she had had in her whole time in the main continuity. The look Sabrina gives at the end of Cyrus’ gust of lunacy is the first time she has had a chance to get a laugh, and she makes the most of it. As for Christopher Pennock, he had just been getting the hang of his previous part, hugely overgrown infant Jeb Hawkes, when he was written out. With Cyrus, he can to some extent pick up where he left off. Pennock had begun to find a way to suggest that there was a real sweetness bottled up inside one-man wrecking crew Jeb, and in Cyrus’ love for Sabrina he can play a character who is Jeb’s mirror image- abundantly sweet, but so deep inside his own head that he is about to become a monster.
Bruno
On Dark Shadows, wedding days usually come and go without anyone actually getting married. Typically, the ceremony is interrupted and someone has to go off and dig up a grave, in which they find an empty coffin.
Bruno has no manners and does not observe any of the recognized customs. So even though today is Sabrina and Cyrus’ engagement day, not their wedding day, he jumps the gun and starts opening Angelique’s grave, in which he believes he will find an empty coffin. We end with him chiseling at the wall of the mausoleum. I suppose you could say that he might be planning to work slowly, so that he won’t finish until the day of the wedding, but even if that were true it would be an outright violation of the accepted norm, and an undeniable sign that he is not the sort of person who can be expected to fit in at Collinwood.
In #949, eleven year old Amy Jennings saw twenty-nine year old Quentin Collins. She reacted with terror, certain that he was the ghost of her great grandfather, the ghost who had persecuted her and everyone else at the great house of Collinwood from December 1968 to September 1969. Heiress Carolyn Collins laughed at Amy and told her that he was not a ghost, but was a cousin of theirs, another descendant of Quentin’s. In fact, Quentin was Amy’s great-grandfather and Carolyn’s great-great-uncle, but he wasn’t a ghost, and he meant no harm to Amy.
Amy refused to accept Carolyn and Quentin’s assurances that he was “not that Quentin Collins.” That refusal highlighted Quentin’s convoluted backstory. The show went back in time in March 1969 to the year 1897, and during an eight-month costume drama segment it introduced us to Quentin as he was before he died. He was a charming rascal who immediately became a huge breakout star. During the 1897 segment, they showed history being changed so that Quentin never died and was the beneficiary of a magic spell that immunized him against aging. Ever since early 1967, Dark Shadows has been operating on a model of the cosmos in which the usual laws of cause and effect are replaced with anniversaries. So in #839, we saw that Quentin’s haunting of Collinwood had gone on for ten months and had finally resulted in the death of strange and troubled boy David Collins. But that day was also the 72nd anniversary of the change in history which prevented Quentin’s death, so the haunting broke and David came back to life. When Quentin showed up in 1969 as a living being, everyone remembered the haunting. Most characters accepted Quentin’s claim to be his own great-grandson, but Amy saw the truth, that he and the ghost were two continuations of one man.
The show’s metaphysics probably didn’t bother anyone who watched it the first time it was broadcast. The characters just take them for granted, as in our world we take hard-to-explain phenomena like gravity and magnetism for granted, and the story keeps on going as if they somehow made sense. What the writers were worried about when Amy saw the living Quentin was not that their model of the universe lacked plausibility, but that they hadn’t found a way to keep Quentin at the center of the story. He’d made a hit in the 1897 segment because he was connected to everyone and was naturally involved in everything that was happening, but in 1969 and 1970 he is a visitor, a distant relative who has come wandering in from who knows where. When Amy tries to figure out in what sense he is “that Quentin Collins,” she is trying to solve a puzzle that the show has to solve to keep him generating heat in the ratings.
Now, Dark Shadows has crossed over to an alternate universe. Here, we have met yet another iteration of Quentin. This Quentin Collins is the Master of Collinwood. Amy lives in the house in this continuity as well, but she really is Quentin’s cousin, and her last name is Collins.
Parallel Quentin hasn’t thought to tell Amy that there is a houseguest staying at Collinwood. She is Alexis Stokes, identical twin sister of his late wife Angelique. Since there are a lot of people around the estate who keep saying that Angelique is going to come back to life, the sight of Alexis comes as quite a shock to everyone. Amy sees Alexis today, and reacts with terror, certain that she is the ghost of Angelique. She does not accept Quentin’s belated explanations, anymore than her counterpart accepted Carolyn’s. Amy Jennings had specialized in looking directly into the camera; as Amy Collins, Denise Nickerson has a moment after Quentin and Alexis have explained the situation to her when it looks like she is about to make this move, but she does not.
Amy has two more scenes today. She opens the front door and lets Angelique’s associate, sleazy musician Bruno Hess, into the house. Amy greets Bruno with “She’s upstairs.” He asks how she knows who he came to see, and she tells him he always came to see “her” before. She wonders if “they” will make Bruno call the woman “Alexis.” Perhaps she thinks all adults are in on this scam, pretending that the dead can be counted on to leave the living alone. Later, she gives Quentin a telegram. When he scolds her for having opened it, she is at once sincerely remorseful about what she has done and indignant about what is going on upstairs. She says that while opening other people’s mail is indeed bad, what “she” has done is even worse.
On Friday, the show hinted that Alexis might be Angelique. Today, Bruno starts an investigation to check up on Alexis’ report that she arrived in New York from Genoa a couple of days before. They spend enough time on Bruno’s activities that it would be surprising if her story simply held up, so that keeps the question alive.
Quentin’s new wife, the former Maggie Evans, left him and went to her sister Jennifer’s place in New York on Friday. She was fed up with Quentin’s high-handed attitude, with everyone’s preoccupation with Angelique, and with Alexis’ presence in the house. Quentin picks up a telephone today, says “Operator, this is a person to person call. Mrs Collins!” And they connect him to Jennifer’s place! In spite of this magical power, he still can’t persuade Maggie to come to the phone. By the end of the call, he and Jennifer are mad at each other, too.
When this episode was taped, principal photography was underway for the feature film House of Dark Shadows. Many of the best-known members of the cast are going to be in Tarrytown, New York for the next six weeks. When Quentin talks to Jennifer Evans, he offers to go to Maggie in New York- we might assume he means NYC, but I suppose Jennifer might live in Tarrytown, and Maggie’s real reason for staying with her is that she doesn’t want to be separated from Kathryn Leigh Scott.
As Quentin and Alexis, David Selby and Lara Parker are the biggest names currently on Dark Shadows, and they are playing characters quite different from those that made them famous. This Quentin intermittently displays the charm which the one from the main continuity exudes so effortlessly, but he is a downer at least half the time, and his position as Master of Collinwood keeps him from being the lovable rascal who has been a fixture on the cover of the fan magazines for a year now. And even if Alexis is Angelique, she is an Angelique who has not gone through any of the development that has held the fans’ attention for over two years. Angelique was a story dynamo from her introduction at the end of 1967, but what has made her indispensable in arc after arc is that she usually knows everything the audience knows about what is happening and has some crazy scheme that no one else would have thought of as to how she can make it all much worse. And over the last year, she has shown an ability to learn and grow that has made her a much more interesting character. A new Angelique, starting from scratch, won’t match the audience’s understanding of the situation, and won’t remember anything that gave her new depth in 1969 and early 1970.
You may wonder if these two can carry the show for a month and a half. The writers certainly did, as witness a conversation between Alexis and Quentin today. She goes on at length about how difficult it was to grow up in her sister’s shadow, saying that she tried to imitate Angelique but could never make it. The harder she tried to copy the habits that attracted everyone to Angelique, the more embarrassed their reactions were.
Not only does Alexis tell us explicitly that she isn’t as appealing as Angelique, Quentin couldn’t be less interested what she is saying. He is preoccupied with a dispute he is having with Bruno. That dispute, were Alexis aware of it, would probably interest her as little as what she is saying interests Quentin. In their scene together, Alexis does not give any sign that she recognizes Bruno. After he leaves, she looks at a picture of him on some sheet music he composed, as she would do if she never had seen him before. So, if she is Angelique returned from the grave, she would appear to have lost her memory of Bruno along the way. And whoever she is, her attitude towards him throughout is one of amused tolerance. We can’t imagine her being particularly invested in a conflict about whether Bruno has a right to live in the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of Collinwood. So the scene between Angelique and Quentin, in which neither has anything to say that is of concern to the other, seems to be something like the opposite of a programmatic statement. Rather than telling us what they plan to do, the writers are telling us what they are afraid we will think they have done.
Not that they have despaired of making it work. By the end, Quentin and Alexis have drawn each other’s attention sufficiently to do some pretty firm smooching. Maggie has been a fan favorite from episode #1, and many of the nine year old girls in the audience probably identify with her and are excited about the idea of her being married to Quentin. The image of him cheating on Maggie with the wicked witch will outrage them enough to keep them tuning in.
The prospect of an affair between Quentin and Alexis presents something of a puzzle in logic. If she really is who she says she is, he is cheating on Maggie with her. But if she is Angelique, he has been cheating on her with Maggie, albeit unknowingly. One way or another, it is far from gentlemanly behavior on his part. As for Alexis, what we know so far would tend to confirm our initial assumption that Angelique is an Evil Twin, but seeing her go after Maggie’s husband will keep regular viewers from labeling her the Good Twin.
When Dark Shadows premiered in June 1966, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) was obsessed with his absent mother and determined to get rid of his new governess, the well-meaning Victoria Winters. In #15, David had tampered with his father Roger’s car. As he stood at the window and watched Roger drive down the narrow, twisting mountain road away from the great house of Collinwood, he said “He’s going to die, mother, he’s going to die!” When Roger survived and it was discovered that someone had removed the bleeder valve from his braking system, David planted the valve in Vicki’s room in an attempt to frame her for the murder attempt. Later, Roger would come to fear that Vicki was about to expose a dark secret of his own, and would encourage David to try to kill her.
David eventually gave up on homicide, and dropped his hostility to Vicki. One of the more benevolent influences on him was his best friend, the ghost of the gracious Josette. In #102, we saw David in the Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, carrying on a conversation with the portrait of Josette that hung above the mantel. We could not hear Josette’s side of the conversation, but it certainly sounded like David could. We already knew at that point that Josette was real- we saw her emanate from the portrait, walk out of the house, and dance among the columns outside it in #70, when David first took Vicki to the Old House. In #126, we would see and hear Josette when she led the ghosts of Collinwood in rescuing Vicki from crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. That rescue was not only a good deed for Vicki, but also a favor to David, who had stumbled upon Vicki in the secret room where Matthew had her tied up and, in a panic, left her to her fate.
In #153, we learned that David’s mother, the former Laura Murdoch, was the one who chose his name, one which no previous Collins had borne. Roger had wanted to call David “Charles Andrew,” in honor of some Collins ancestors. In #181, Vicki and her allies learned that two previous women given the name Laura Murdoch at birth had died by fire, one in 1867 and the other in 1767, each accompanied by her young son, and that each of those boys was named David. It would eventually become clear that Laura was an undead fire witch, a humanoid Phoenix who went into a pyre with her sons at intervals of exactly 100 years, gaining immortality for herself, though not for the Davids. In #288, they had forgotten the lore about David’s name, and mentioned a previous David Collins, but in #685 and #767, it was back to being a first in the family. Between those two episodes, from #729 to #760, another iteration of Laura was on the show, suggesting that the writers brushed up on their knowledge of her original storyline.
By the time Vicki saved David from Laura, he had moved out of the villain category altogether. When his third cousin Amy Jennings (Denise Nickerson) moved into Collinwood at the end of 1968, David was as pleasant to her as one could expect. But his behavior towards her and others changed when the two of them stirred up the ghost of Quentin Collins, Amy’s great-grandfather and David’s great-great-uncle. As Quentin gathered strength, he intermittently possessed first one child and then the other. While David was under Quentin’s control in #679, he twisted Amy’s arm to force her to go to a secret room and join in their vengeful ancestor’s evil plans for their governess, Vicki’s successor Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott.) The camera lingered on that act of bullying, meant to shock us with evidence that Quentin’s dire influence had overwhelmed David’s kindly nature.
The arm-twisting incident made an impression on the viewers. In #813, set in the year 1897 when Quentin was alive, Henesy and Nickerson played brother and sister Jamison and Nora Collins, nephew and niece of Quentin, grandfather and great-aunt to David. Jamison, possessed by sorcerer Count Petofi, twisted Nora’s arm to force her to give him information, a reference which shows that the writers were confident that many viewers would see David Henesy’s character abusing Denise Nickerson’s in that way and read it as a sign that he is under the power of an outside force.
Now, it is 1970, but we are not in the main continuity at all. We have traveled to an alternate universe, which on Dark Shadows is known as “Parallel Time.” In this “time-band,” to use another bit of Collinsport English, Quentin is alive and the master of Collinwood. His first wife, the counterpart of wicked witch Angelique, has died, and he has remarried. The new Mrs Collins is the former Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott.) Quentin and Angelique’s son, strange and troubled boy Daniel (David Henesy,) is obsessed with his absent mother and determined to get rid of his new stepmother.
Apparently the writers still remember the connection between David’s name and the first Phoenix story, because Daniel is the only character we have yet seen in Parallel Time answering to a different first name than his counterpart in the main continuity. Angelique and Quentin gave him the name of the Collins ancestor whom Mr Henesy played in early 1968, when the show was set in the year 1796. We know that the timelines diverged in that period, so it follows that it was the counterpart of the eighteenth and nineteenth century Daniel who was this Daniel’s namesake.
When we first saw Daniel, he was carrying on a one-sided conversation with his mother’s portrait, which hangs in her old bedroom. Today, he devises a plan to use the portrait to frighten Maggie. The plan requires the cooperation of his cousin, Amy Collins (Denise Nickerson.) When Amy refuses, he twists her arm until she agrees to go to a secret room and sing, making Maggie think the portrait is coming to life. This attack is shown only for a few seconds, and Amy’s arm is out of frame. They have already established that Daniel is cruel, and do not need to dwell on the act of abuse.
Daniel claims that his father often goes to Angelique’s room to meditate and talk to the portrait. That lures Maggie to the room, where Daniel is waiting. They have a confrontation. When she says she wishes she could “make him understand-,” he interrupts her and asks if what she wants him to understand is that his mother is dead and is never coming back. She looks at him and answers with a flat “Yes.” He tells her she is wrong, and pleads with the portrait to sing to him. Maggie says she can’t stand to see him like this, and turns to go. Before she gets out of the room, we hear a woman’s voice singing a lullaby. Maggie and Daniel hear it too. She turns around, shocked, and runs from the room. Daniel laughs that his plan worked so well.
Amy comes rushing into the room. Daniel congratulates her on her performance, and asks how she got in from the secret room so quickly. She explains that she never went to the secret room- her brother Chris intercepted her before she could do so. It wasn’t her voice Daniel and Maggie heard. He absorbs her message, and looks at the portrait in wonderment.
The audience could tell it wasn’t Denise Nickerson singing- she had such a high-pitched voice when she was twelve that she had to work hard to keep it in a range that would sound good on television, while the pre-recorded voice we heard singing was definitely that of a grown woman. Angelique was played by Lara Parker; Parker did some very distinctive things with her voice on Dark Shadows, none of which shows up in the lullaby, so I’m sure it wasn’t her. Several fansites attribute the singing to Joan Bennett, who is in this episode, but I’ve heard Bennett sing and she didn’t get from one note to another the way this voice does. I think the singer must be Kathryn Leigh Scott.
Early in the episode, Daniel and Amy had a scene in his bedroom. David’s bedroom was a frequent set in the first 38 weeks of the show, and was occasionally seen thereafter. Daniel’s room is the same set, with the same furnishings and decorations, but they are arranged in the opposite direction from the pattern we see in David’s. His bed is at stage right rather than stage left, and everything else is also transposed. Seeing this mirror image, regular viewers will appreciate this reminder that we are in a Mirror Universe.
When Dark Shadows began, its most dangerous villain was high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Since the plan was to kill Roger off after his crimes were exposed, writer Art Wallace and actor Louis Edmonds were free to present him as gruesomely as they pleased. That turned out to be so much fun for all concerned that it soon became impossible to imagine the show without Roger, and the plan changed.
Once Roger was established as a permanent part of the ensemble, they toned his wickedness down. He still did and said awful things, but they would pull him back whenever he might risk alienating the audience. So, he at first openly expressed his hatred for his young son, strange and troubled boy David, and in #68 and #83 coldly exploited David’s mental health problems to manipulate him into trying to murder well-meaning governess Vicki. But when David got Vicki into a situation that might actually have resulted in her death, Roger rescued her. When Roger’s estranged wife Laura showed up and wanted to take David away with her, Roger was so delighted at the prospect of getting rid of the boy that he willfully ignored one sign after another that something was seriously wrong with Laura. But when Vicki finally proved to him that Laura was an undead fire witch who intended to incinerate David, Roger joined in the effort to save him, and was so shaken by the experience that he would never again be overtly hostile to David.
Nor was his attitude towards David the only sign of Roger’s pathological lack of family feeling. He had squandered his inheritance, selling his half of the family business to finance his extravagant lifestyle. His sister, reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, went deep into debt buying back what Roger had sold. When Roger ran out of money, Liz took him and David in at the great house of Collinwood. When in #41 Liz reproved Roger for the difficult position she had put him in, he proudly declared that he had “enjoyed” his inheritance, and twitted her for her dreary ways. Liz gave Roger a job in the business, but the only time we saw him visiting his office he answered his phone and told the caller that what he was asking was someone else’s job. When in #273 Roger found that seagoing con man Jason McGuire had tricked Liz into believing that she had a terrible secret that she could keep only by surrendering her whole fortune to him in blackmail payments, he admitted to his sister that if she had confided her troubles in him, he would probably have done the same thing.
When vampire Barnabas Collins succeeded Laura as Dark Shadows‘ supernatural Big Bad, Roger was pushed to the margins of the story. From that time on, he had two things to contribute. The first were sarcastic remarks, many of them very funny, that established him as the show’s sardonic gay uncle. The second, which gave him what little function he retained in the plot, were ostentatious refusals to believe the evidence piling up on all sides that the family was beset by a procession of bloodthirsty monsters. Since several other characters, Liz among them, also refused to face these facts, the show could go long periods of time without featuring Roger at all.
In November 1967, Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. From then until March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in that period. The segment was a hit in the ratings, and a triumph for Louis Edmonds, who was cast as haughty overlord Joshua Collins. Joshua was the opposite of Roger- as protective of the family’s position as Roger was careless of it, as committed to making money as Roger was thoughtless in spending it, as courageous in the face of physical danger as Roger was cowardly. The 1790s segment became The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, as we saw how Joshua’s best qualities led him to create the dark and twisted world in which his descendants would grow up to be weak, selfish men like Roger.
When the show came back from the 1790s, Roger was obsessed with a portrait painted in those days. The portrait’s subject was Angelique, the wicked witch who precipitated the disasters that annihilated Joshua’s family. Before long, Angelique herself returned, wearing a wig, using a false name, and married to Roger. The spell Angelique cast to win Roger occasionally caused him to think he was Joshua, and by the time that story ended Roger had become, if not the imperious tycoon Joshua was, certainly a hard-working, conscientious family man. He still had a languid manner and a way with a quip, but was otherwise unrecognizable as the show’s original Man You Love to Hate.
Evil spirits drove the Collinses out of the great house of Collinwood in #694. That episode marked the end of Roger’s function as one of the “There must be a logical explanation!” people. He was the last member of the family to insist that everyone else was being silly, but when he finally accepted the reality of the situation and was on his way out of the house, he turned to declare to the ghosts that the living would be back to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. From that moment on, Roger was no longer a narrative brake pad.
For most of 1969, Dark Shadows was set in 1897. In that year, we got to know Quentin Collins, who as a ghost would be chiefly responsible for the haunting that had driven the Collinses out of Collinwood. We saw that the living Quentin was a charming rogue, a spendthrift who cheerfully tells his sober-minded sister Judith that he can waste money faster than she can give it to him, inclined to violence when it serves his purposes and quick to run away when he is in danger of being called to account for his crimes. In short, he is what Roger originally was, only played by a younger, sexier actor, and with an unlimited future on a show that has discovered the characters won’t alienate the audience by being evil, only by being dull.
In the 1897 segment, Edmonds played Quentin’s brother Edward, who was not dull, but not evil either. Edward was stuffy and hypocritical. He was occasionally cruel, sometimes because of greed, sometimes because of prejudice, and sometimes because he flew into a panic in the face of an unexpected danger. But he was sincerely devoted to his children, and he had a sense of decency that would assert itself even after he had done awful things. For all his faults, Edward was ultimately one of the most lovable characters Dark Shadows ever created. If 1795 was The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, 1897 was largely the Comedy of Edward.
After 1897, Dark Shadows spent several months bogged down in an attempt to make a story out of some themes drawn from the tales of H. P. Lovecraft. Roger showed up in this part of the show just a few times. Quentin, brought into contemporary dress intact due to his great popularity in the 1897 segment, told Roger what was going on in #958. Rather than scoff as he would have in 1967 or 1968, Roger accepted Quentin’s account at once and helped him in the battle. Roger had by that point turned into Edward. His habit of denial was gone, and with it all of his languor and most of his wit.
Now the show is clearing out the last villains left over from the Lovecraft project and launching a story about a parallel universe that is occasionally visible through a doorway in the long-disused east wing of the great house. Roger is active in both of these plots today.
Even when he was a villain who cared nothing for his son, his sister, his family name, or Collinsport Enterprises, Roger very much enjoyed the company of his niece, Carolyn Collins Stoddard. On Friday, he was hugging Carolyn while she wept about the difficulties she was having in her new marriage; he called her “Kitten,” a term of endearment he has used with her since #4. In those early days, the show was heavy with hints that Roger and Carolyn’s relationship verged on incest. She often answered to “Kitten” in the moments when those hints were most insistent. But there was nothing unwholesome about Roger’s embrace of Carolyn on Friday, and he is irreproachably fatherly in his attitude towards her today.
At rise, Carolyn is in a trap. A man named Bruno, one of the leftover villains introduced while the show was dealing with the Lovecraft-derived material, has tricked her into entering a room where he has already imprisoned her old friend Chris Jennings. Bruno locked the door, and Carolyn saw that Chris was on the floor, writhing in pain. She asks him what is wrong, he won’t answer. Carolyn doesn’t know it, but Chris is a werewolf. The moon is rising, and his pains are the first stage of his transformation.
Bruno’s master wants Carolyn’s husband dead, and has decided that if the werewolf kills Carolyn he will lose the will to live. Since it would have been at least as easy to get the husband into the room as it was to get Carolyn there, and since one of the main things they have told us about the husband is that he is vulnerable to werewolf attacks, this scheme is unnecessarily complicated, marked for the audience as likely to fail. Indeed, since Bruno, his master, and Carolyn’s husband are all short-timers who don’t really need to be on the show anymore, while Carolyn has been a core member of the cast since #2, we can be quite sure it will fail, and if we have spent time over the weekend wondering about the cliffhanger, we’ve spent it wondering what will save Carolyn.
What saves Carolyn turns out to be well-timed intervention by her Uncle Roger. Roger was worried that she wouldn’t tell him why she was crying about her marriage, and followed her to Bruno’s place. He saw her enter, and after a few minutes let himself in. He confronted Bruno in his parlor, heard Carolyn and Chris in the back room, and found that the door to the back room was locked. When Bruno told him the door would stay locked, Roger hit him on the head with a candlestick, knocking him out. He took Bruno’s key, unlocked the door, and freed Carolyn. While Roger telephoned Collinwood to ask for permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, Chris jumped out of the back room’s window. Roger then decided that he and Carolyn should go home.
It may strike first-time viewers as odd that Roger calls Julia and not the police. Established fans will be unsurprised, knowing that the Collinsport Sheriff’s office is one of the world’s most useless organizations and that Julia is a mad scientist whose powers know few limits. Still, once Roger gets Carolyn home he does tell her they should call the sheriff. She refuses, and also forbids him to tell her mother Liz anything about what has happened.
Roger finds Liz moping in the drawing room. He strikes up a conversation about Carolyn’s troubles. He says that he and Liz both made unhappy marriages, and that it is disappointing to see that the next generation seems determined to repeat their mistakes. He says that he wishes Carolyn would confide in one of them. Liz says that all she knows is that someone or something is threatening Carolyn’s husband, and that she refuses to discuss it. The camera pulls back, and we see that Carolyn is right there. Director Henry Kaplan was pretty bad at moving the actors around and even worse at figuring out where to point the camera, but he deserves credit for this shot. When we suddenly see Carolyn standing there, we realize that Roger and Liz are so deep in their worries that they are oblivious to their surroundings.
Carolyn insists on going to the carriage house on the grounds of the estate to see her husband. Since Bruno is at large, Roger objects. He can’t mention Bruno in front of Liz, since Carolyn has decreed that her mother must not be told what happened earlier in the evening, so he is powerless to stop her going.
Bruno does catch up with Carolyn, and he tells her he is going to kill her. Before he can do so, the werewolf springs out, pushes Carolyn aside, and slashes Bruno. She goes home and tells Roger and Liz what happened. From Carolyn’s description, Liz recognizes the werewolf as the same creature they encountered in late 1968 and early 1969, and Roger rushes out.
Roger finds Bruno on the ground. He tells Bruno he will call a doctor. Bruno says it’s too late. He says a few words (“animal… not an animal…”) and loses consciousness.
Back in the great house, Roger says that the police are searching the grounds for the werewolf. He says it’s terrible that Carolyn should have met with such an incident on top of what has already happened to her. Liz asks what he means, and Carolyn glares at him, appalled at his indiscretion. He stammers out something about how she’s having marital problems, then announces he has to go because he promised to do something for Barnabas.
Roger and Liz never have figured out that Barnabas is a vampire, and though Carolyn was briefly his blood thrall she’s forgotten all about it. So far as the Collinses are concerned, their distant cousin Barnabas is just a night person. Several times now, Barnabas has looked into a room in the east wing and has seen, not the dark space, bare floor, and sparsely decorated walls that are there in his universe, but an alternative version of the room, brightly lit, fully furnished, and heavily decorated. He has seen people with the same looks, voices, and names as people he knows, but with different personalities and relationships. He has reported this to Julia and her friend, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, who have explained to him the many-worlds hypothesis.
On Friday, Barnabas told Roger about the room and about Julia and Stokes’ theory. The Roger of 1967 and 1968 would have jeered at Barnabas before he had spoken five words, but in 1970 he believed him readily enough. Barnabas expressed surprise at Roger’s openness to his outlandish account, and Roger acknowledges that “a year ago” he would have dismissed it. It was thirteen months ago that Roger turned and told the ghosts that the living would someday reconquer the great house; when he says “a year ago,” perhaps Roger is rounding down. Roger agreed then to come back and check the room.
When Barnabas showed Roger the room on Friday, it was bare. When Roger goes there himself today, he finds that the parallel universe is there. He cannot pass the invisible barrier in the doorway to enter it, nor can he communicate with the people there, but he can see them and hear them.
The first resident of the parallel universe Roger sees is Bruno’s counterpart. Astonished, he exclaims “I just saw him die!” Parallel Bruno is looking at the portrait of Parallel Angelique that dominates the room and telling it that the music he wrote for her will make her immortal. Roger does not appear to recognize the portrait’s resemblance to his second wife, much less to remember that he himself used to carry on similarly one-sided conversations with her eighteenth century portrait.
Parallel Liz enters and demands to know what Parallel Bruno is doing in the room. He says he belongs there. She tells him he is the only one who thinks so. She tells him that the master of the house, who is Quentin’s counterpart, will be coming home soon, and that he will never tolerate Bruno’s presence. Bruno says that he has heard that Quentin has remarried. When Liz says this is so, Bruno declares that Angelique will never allow another woman in the house. Liz is exasperated that people keep talking about Angelique as if she were still alive. Bruno exits.
Stunned by what he has seen, Roger looks away for a moment. He thinks of going to fetch Barnabas. His attention returns when he hears a conversation between Liz’ counterpart and his own.
Barnabas saw Parallel Roger on Friday; he was talking to the portrait in a way that suggested an obsession not so different from the one which the eighteenth century portrait had inspired in the Roger we knew. Today, Parallel Roger talks to Parallel Liz about Parallel Bruno in an airy, superior manner quite out of keeping with what we have had from our Roger today, but which sounds exactly like him as he was in 1967 and 1968.
PARALLEL ROGER: Was that Bruno, the terrible-tempered boy wonder I saw just now?
PARALLEL LIZ: Yes, he’s come back.
PARALLEL ROGER: Back to compose more of his morbid music and bore us with his tiresome memories of her? Well… It’ll be worth seeing the look on Quentin’s face when he finds out, won’t it?
Alliterative series such as “terrible-tempered” and “more morbid music” were characteristic of the old Roger’s verbal cleverness, as sarcastic expressions like “boy wonder” and complaints of boredom were typical of his habit of advertising his contempt for everyone and everything. Even Parallel Roger’s closing hope of “seeing the look on Quentin’s face,” as opposed to any thought of action he might himself take, is of a piece with the old Roger’s cowardice and laziness. Our Roger is horrified by the sight of his double.
Evidently the makers of the show have decided that Roger’s development has brought him to a dead end, and they are going to use the journey into “Parallel Time” to reintroduce the original villain. That Parallel Roger shares a scene with Parallel Liz suggests that we will again see the dynamic that their counterparts in the main “time-band” pioneered on the show, the conflict between Bratty Little Brother and Bossy Big Sister. This type of conflict is still one of Dark Shadows‘ signature elements, represented most prominently by Barnabas and Julia. The 1897 segment benefited from a similar conflict between Quentin and Judith; the 1795 segment lacked such a conflict, and in its absence they had to lean pretty hard on stories that put individual characters into isolation from the rest of the cast, burning them up one by one. Perhaps they plan to use the old standoff between Bratty Roger and Bossy Liz to keep the Parallel Time story spinning if the overall narrative hits some rough patches.
This episode marks the final appearance of the main “time-band” version of Bruno; the werewolf really did kill him. It is also the last time we will see the werewolf. Alex Stevens was billed as “Stunt Coordinator” when he played the werewolf. He will stay with the show as a stuntman, but won’t get his name in the credits again.
In which I wonder how Bruno could have expected to use Alexis’ piano technique to test her identity, since all the piano playing in this part of the series is represented by the same recording.
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