Tag: carrie stokes

Episode 1085: What’s happened to my freedom?

If you’re telling a fictional story and your audience is with you, they will treat whatever you don’t explain as something that does not need to be explained. So if the story takes place in and around a village on the Atlantic coast about 50 miles from Bangor, Maine, you don’t need to explain why Bar Harbor doesn’t exist in the world you are describing. They will take it for granted that your village is on that spot instead.

When you introduce fantastic elements and don’t explain them, you have “fantasy fiction.” That’s the category Dark Shadows has belonged to since undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins joined the cast of characters late in 1966 and her arc absorbed all of the unresolved narrative threads that were still generating interest. So in March 1970, it turned out that an alternate universe could sometimes be glimpsed in a room in the long-disused east wing of the great house of Collinwood, and that people who entered the room at the right time could cross over into that universe. The aperture between the universes was not induced by any process, either natural or artificial; it was just there, and it was marked by an ordinary door. The handful of throwaway lines we heard about the many-worlds hypothesis were not explanatory in any way; they were simply a description of one way the show might use the alternate universe to develop characters. Because the practicalities were not explained, we accepted them as something that needed no explanation.

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman and her friend, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, crossed over into the other universe. They escaped from it in July, while the alternate version of Collinwood was on fire. Evidently the flames disturbed the aperture, because they found themselves, not in the summer of 1970, but in 1995. In that far-off future year, Collinwood was in ruins and everyone who had lived there was either dead, missing, or insane. Julia and Barnabas learned that this sad state of affairs resulted from a mysterious disaster that took place at some point in 1970. They had gathered only a little information as to what this disaster might have been when they had to flee for their lives. A ghost led them to a magic doorway behind which a staircase appeared. They followed this staircase to another doorway. They passed through that, and found themselves back in the Collinwood of their own native universe in 1970, sometime before the disaster is due to strike.

Passing from 1995 to 1970 by means of a stairway is as fantastic as passing from one universe to another by means of a door, but it was not explained, and has barely been mentioned these last three weeks as Julia, Barnabas, and those they have told of their experiences have been trying to figure out what the disaster is going to be and how they might prevent it. So we have accepted it as readily as we accepted the “Parallel Time room.”

That changes today. Julia knows that the ghosts represent people who lived in 1840, and has started looking for information about the staircase in documents from that year. Quentin Collins has been giving her a hand with this project. She finds a plan for a “Proposed Stairway into Time” signed by another Quentin Collins and dated 1840.

Plan. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The ghost of governess Daphne Harridge seemed friendly to Julia and Barnabas in 1995, but in 1970 she has ensorcelled Quentin and kept him from being as helpful to Julia as he might. Today, Daphne oversees the destruction of a notebook in which teens David Collins and Hallie Stokes have written an account of their experiences with her and the other ghosts. But later it seems Daphne might be coming back around. She gives Quentin another journal, which he hands over to Julia. In it, Julia finds that Quentin’s namesake from 1840 had written about the thoughts that led him to design his “Proposed Stairway into Time”:

There is no such thing as time. There’s only space, physical space, and it is space that measures the distance between those points which we, in our ignorance and folly, insist are points in time. All time is one point, one moment. It is ever existent and it is ever accessible, and it is physical space that can be used to make all time easily accessible.

This describes the show’s method of jumping backward, forward, and sideways in time accurately enough. They cut from a set in one part of the studio to a set in another, and in so doing they have defeated chronology. Since Julia has found the note as part of an investigation that has kept her busy for so long, we are led to expect that we will be hearing more of this kind of talk, perhaps arranged in a pattern that will create the impression that we are being presented with an explanation of something.

Dark Shadows has been desperately short of story since Julia and Barnabas returned to 1970, and spinning out explanations is one way of introducing new story points. When these explanations resemble theories that researchers are actually using to look into natural phenomena, they turn fantastic fiction into science fiction. At no point has Dark Shadows come anywhere near this genre, and it does not seem like the “Proposed Stairway into Time” will lead them there. But who knows. Before Laura came on the show, it was a Gothic romance that included hints that ghosts and other unearthly forces were at work in an uncanny back-world behind the action. If Laura could transform it from that into the supernatural thriller it has been ever since, perhaps Quentin’s namesake from 1840 will be able to transform it into a science-fiction show.

If they are going to take that route, a time-travel gimmick would seem to be the logical way to merge onto it. Ghosts and vampires and zombies and other revenants, like time travel and alternate universes, are ways of making believe that options which events have foreclosed are still at least partly open to us. So if we say that the 1840 Quentin built a time machine, we can subsume more or less everything else we have seen under the idea that he created a rupture in space-time through which all of the other weird phenomena have been cascading.

Episode 1084: A living man no bigger than a doll

Julia Hoffman and her friend Barnabas Collins recently returned to 1970 after a cosmic journey that ended with two weeks in 1995. In that far-off future year, they found the great house of Collinwood in ruins and everyone who had lived there either dead, missing, or hopelessly insane. This was the result of a mysterious disaster that occurred before 1970 was out. Since they returned, they have been trying to find out what this disaster will be and to prevent it.

Julia’s friend Timothy Eliot Stokes tells her she and Barnabas have accomplished nothing since they came back to 1970. He says that the time has come to enlist the aid of a strangely dressed man named Sebastian Shaw. Sebastian has psychic powers, and may be able to use them to figure out what’s going on.

Sebastian comes to the great house. Julia tells him of her experience in the future. He has a vision which he says he cannot interpret. It is presented to us in an unfocused shot, so that we can believe Sebastian does not know what he is seeing. But we recognize it. It is The Playroom, a room that intermittently exists behind a door in a little-used part of the great house. Most of the time that door opens on a linen closet, but teenagers Hallie Stokes and David Collins have found that occasionally the same door admits them to a much larger space stocked with antique toys and ruled by the ghosts of several people who died in 1841. Julia knows The Playroom well; she and Barnabas visited it several times in 1995, and met the same ghosts there who are now taking control of David and Hallie. Julia and Barnabas also went to The Playroom in 1995 with two living people, Carolyn Fredericks (née Carolyn Collins Stoddard) and the Sheriff of Collinsport. But in 1970, only the linen closet has so far been visible to anyone other than Hallie, David, or the ghosts.

After Sebastian has his vision, Stokes and Julia decide to bring David and Hallie to him. Stokes goes upstairs to fetch them, and Julia goes to get some tea. When she returns to the drawing room, Julia finds Sebastian at the piano. He is playing the melody that often sounds in The Playroom, and that Julia heard echoing through the house in 1995. She asks him where he heard it. When he says he was just making it up as he went along, she flatly declares that he is lying. He must have heard it in his vision, because it is the very tune that is associated with the phenomenon they are investigating. He will not admit to this, and she will not soften her tone. On the contrary, she says that she had suspected that he was a fraud, but that she now believes he is something far worse- a man with genuine psychic gifts who uses them dishonestly. We learned yesterday that this is precisely what Sebastian is, but Julia can hardly expect him to agree with her. He says that he is being insulted, and leaves the house before Hallie and David can get downstairs.

Julia has been given to counterproductively harsh behavior of this sort since returning to 1970. Perhaps this is the consequence of a trauma she suffered in 1995, when a blatantly evil ghost known as Gerard Stiles took possession of her. Or perhaps it is the influence of someone she encountered on the first leg of her journey, when she was in an alternate universe. There, she met her own Doppelgänger. She greeted this other Julia Hoffman by beating her to death, stealing her clothes, and assuming her identity. A deed like that might leave a mark on its doer. Besides, that other Hoffman was herself inclined to be tactless, so perhaps Julia picked that habit up in the course of her imposture.

Unknown to Julia and Stokes, David and Hallie are busy in The Playroom today. Yesterday they learned that the ghosts plan to reduce them to the status of the dolls that are in a dollhouse there. In particular, the ghost of a teenage boy named Tad wants to take possession of David, and that of a teenage girl named Carrie wants to take possession of Hallie. Tad and Carrie will then live their lives while David and Hallie are in storage as inanimate things in a miniature case. Hallie and David took the dolls to the fireplace in the drawing room and burned them there, hoping this would break the power of the ghosts. Once they had seen the flames consume the dolls, they returned to The Playroom, hoping to find that it had vanished and the linen closet had resumed its place. To their dismay, they found that The Playroom was still there and the dolls had reappeared in their places in the dollhouse.

While David and Hallie are processing this fact, they see lights come on inside the dollhouse. The dollhouse has no electricity, so this puzzles them. David looks inside the dollhouse and sees a man in it. He is the size of the dolls, but is moving around as if he is alive. By the time Hallie comes around to look, the tiny man has vanished. She believes that David saw him, though.

David then tells Hallie that they ought to write up everything that has happened to them since they first encountered The Playroom. When Hallie asks what good that would do, David says it is the only way people will know what happened to them after they are gone.

They go to David’s room and write the whole story in a notebook. When Stokes comes to get them, they hide the notebook. They return to the room after Sebastian’s abrupt departure, and find that the notebook is gone.

Hallie and David decide that one of the ghosts must have taken the notebook. They go to The Playroom to look for it. They open the door, and see Carrie and Tad reading the notebook.

David and Hallie see Carrie and Tad. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

David’s vision of a little man moving around inside the dollhouse now reminds me of the moment in part 6 of the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks when a tiny version of the supernatural figure known as “Mike” appears to the near-catatonic Special Agent Dale Cooper and urges him to “Wake up! Wake up! Don’t die! Don’t die!” “Mike” is a resident of The Red Room, a space that is as mysterious in its nature and as intermittent in its presence as is The Playroom. We can assume that the tiny man David sees is Gerard, whose plans for him are just the opposite of “Mike’s” wish that Cooper should regain his true identity and once more function as an action hero.

At the time, the idea of living figures small enough to make their homes in a dollhouse and of people from the outside world shrunken and enclosed with them might have reminded viewers of the 1963 Twilight Zone episode “Miniature,” featuring the young Robert Duvall as a lonely man who encounters such a situation. “Mike” himself is a reference to 1960s cult television; he is a mysterious one-armed man who sometimes goes by the name Philip Gerard, evoking the two antagonists Dr Richard Kimble faced on The Fugitive. So it is not unlikely that “Miniature” was a common source for that installment of Twin Peaks and this installment of Dark Shadows. It isn’t even impossible that David Lynch or Mark Frost saw this episode of Dark Shadows and were on some level influenced by it as they wrote the script for Twin Peaks, though of course that would be a far less probable source than The Twilight Zone, which has long been one of the most heavily rerun of all TV shows.

At any rate, I think the similarity is intriguing even beyond the question of influences and sources. A soundstage looks a lot like a dollhouse, and when a drama isn’t connecting with the audience the actors may as well be dolls the director is playing a private game with. So the premise of characters ending up in a dollhouse plays to a fear that must prey on the minds of the writers.

Moreover, all three of these shows share a theme of stunted sexual development. Robert Duvall’s character in “Miniature” is a solitary man who cannot achieve any form of intimacy with another person. The stupefied Agent Cooper lives with a woman who has mistaken him for her husband and enjoys sex with her, but that is strictly a matter of mechanics. He has no idea what is going on during their encounters.

For their part, David and Hallie seem to be developing on the usual timetable. Certainly the dialogue between them when they were first introduced acknowledged that they were old enough to be interested in each other sexually, though David made it very clear to Hallie that she was not the partner he would choose. But Tad and Carrie seem to be quite alarmingly immature. Tad first possessed David in #1081, on Monday. That day, Hallie found David in The Playroom. Speaking as Tad, David took her to be Carrie. Tad was shocked by Hallie’s 1970 clothing and advised her to take it off immediately. It doesn’t seem to occur to Tad that there is anything untoward about demanding Carrie disrobe in front of him. Tad also said that he would be sad when he was too old to play with the toys in The Playroom. But he is very obviously much too old to be enthusiastic about a rocking horse, a dollhouse, a miniature carousel, and a bunch of stuffed animals. So his and Carrie’s attachment to those things shows that even when they were alive they were relics of a dead past. They never grew up, and their ghosts are determined to freeze Hallie and David in place, immobilized and on display in a small, unchanging world.

Danny Horn’s post under the title Episode 1084 on his great Dark Shadows Every Day doesn’t have all that much to do with the episode, but it is a magnificent production in its own right. Its subtitle is “100 Things That I Would Like David and Hallie to See When They Open the Playroom Door, in No Particular Order.” The 100 things he lists range from chuckleworthy to hilarious. Best of all, it ends with a video the post inspired Cody Schell to put together with alternate endings for the episode.

Episode 1082: I haven’t been wrong very often when it comes to judgment of people

Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman have returned to 1970 from a cosmic journey that took them first to a parallel universe, then to the future year 1995. In the parallel universe, they met a comatose woman named Roxanne Drew. Barnabas was immediately smitten with Roxanne, and was still attracted to her even after she gained the ability to open her eyes and move around. By the time she was able to speak, he was in love. Roxanne couldn’t come along when they left her universe, and he’s been down in the dumps about that. Barnabas could always go to the hospital and look for another comatose woman, but I suppose that might not be quite the same, somehow.

Now, Barnabas has met Roxanne’s counterpart in his own universe. She is attached to astrologer Sebastian Shaw, whom Barnabas had been pestering for reasons having to do with the efforts he and Julia have been making to prevent a mysterious disaster they learned about during their stay in 1995. Sebastian was so fed up with Barnabas that he walked out of his own living room, leaving Barnabas alone there. Then the door opened, and a Roxanne Drew entered, carrying a brown paper grocery bag. Barnabas greeted her by name, to her puzzlement.

When Barnabas explains that he knew another Roxanne Drew who looked exactly like her “in another time,” Roxanne assumes he means many years ago. He allows her to proceed under this assumption, which does seem less likely to prompt a call to the police than introducing yourself to a stranger with a story about how you’ve been traveling between parallel universes and back and forth in time. Roxanne comes out with a theory that two people with the same name born on the same day in different parts of the USA might become “astral twins” and look just alike. This idea may not be less plausible than what Julia and Barnabas have actually done, but it does seem considerably less likely to be useful in making up interesting stories. So it comes as a great relief when Roxanne stops talking about it.

Barnabas asks Roxanne to meet him for dinner at 10 PM. This is an odd invitation, since Barnabas is a vampire. Where is he going to take her, the blood bank? She hesitates, but at length agrees to meet him “there.” They haven’t named a place.

Later, Roxanne calls the great house of Collinwood. Julia answers. Roxanne identifies herself, and Julia reacts with amazement. Roxanne says she must be thinking of “that other Roxanne Drew.” She says that she won’t be able to meet Barnabas for dinner “there” after all.

Barnabas enters. He is excited to tell Julia about Roxanne. She tells him she already knows about her, and gives him Roxanne’s message. Julia reminds him that some people in the parallel universe were radically different from their counterparts in this universe, giving herself and her counterpart as an example. Barnabas refuses to admit that this Roxanne Drew is not the same person as the one whose immobility and silence so charmed him in the other continuity. Julia keeps warning him, and he declares that “I haven’t been wrong very often when it comes to judgment of people.” This remark will astound regular viewers. Barnabas is a worse judge of character than any figure in all human history. I myself can’t claim to be all that perspicacious, but neither I nor anyone else I know has ever misjudged a person so desperately we were turned into vampires as a result. That has happened to Barnabas twice. Julia is so stunned by Barnabas’ bizarre remark that all she can do is humor him and say that she agrees with his assessment of himself.

Barnabas goes back to Sebastian’s apartment and speaks to Roxanne. She says he must not have received her message. He says he did, but asks to come in anyway. She allows it, and he gets strangely aggressive with his insistence that they will eventually go out together. He’s usually a lot more pleasant with people, unless he’s been feeding on their blood or threatening to kill them. He wants to charm Roxanne, so we may wonder why he gets in her face, adopts a sullen tone, and vows that she will someday date him. The other Roxanne had an obnoxious ex-boyfriend named Claude North. In his sulky and petulant refusal to take no for an answer, or even for an indication that he has to change tactics, Barnabas sounds a lot like Claude.

Meanwhile, Julia has been trying to find out which house in the area was known as “Rose Cottage” in 1840. During their sojourn in 1995, she and Barnabas received some cryptic clues about the disaster that will befall the great house of Collinwood and everyone in it later in 1970, one of which was the phrase “the night Rose Cottage was destroyed.” Also during that trip they saw the ghosts of some people who lived in 1840, and since returning have found a document from that year that mentions a house called Rose Cottage, but does not say which house it was.

Teenagers Hallie Stokes and David Collins had died in the version of 1995 Barnabas and Julia visited. They saw ghosts who looked just like them, but were in fact those of figures from 1840 named Carrie and Tad. Julia suspects that David and Hallie are withholding information from her about paranormal occurrences in the house, as she and Barnabas are withholding information from them. Rather than leveling with Hallie and David about what they learned in 1995 and asking them to reciprocate, Julia has decided to be as inexplicably harsh and aggressive with Hallie as Barnabas is with Roxanne.

Hallie finds Julia going through some old tax records today. When Julia says that she is trying to figure out what house in the area used to be known as “Rose Cottage,” Hallie mentions that Julia had previously asked her if she’d ever heard of such a place. Julia takes that remark as an opportunity to fix Hallie with an unwavering stare and drill her with question after question. During this bizarre interrogation, the ghost of Tad and Carrie’s governess Daphne Harridge appears to Hallie, reminding her not to answer. Julia loses interest in Hallie and turns back to the tax records. Hallie excuses herself and follows Daphne out of the room.

David has a dream in which he finds Hallie in an unfamiliar corridor. He asks her where they are. She says they are in Rose Cottage. She tells him to follow her to a birthday party. He is unhappy that he has not brought a present; she laughs a little at this. They go into a small room and see two dummies sitting opposite each other at a table. Hallie says that they will sit in the other two places at the table. There are placecards identifying them as Carrie and Tad. They sit down, and Daphne’s gigantic face appears at the window. Daphne has been silent in all her appearances so far. She breaks her silence in this dream, laughing maniacally at the sight of David and Hallie sitting with the dummies.

Happy Dappy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

David wakes up. He goes to a little-used part of the house. He finds Hallie in front of a door behind which there is usually a linen closet. Sometimes, however, the space transforms into a larger room stocked with antique toys. Hallie and David refer to that room as “The Playroom.” They have seen Daphne there several times and have sensed the presence of another, more blatantly hostile spirit, one which Julia and Barnabas came to know in 1995 as Gerard Stiles. Hallie asks David why he has joined her. He tells her about his dream. It turns out she had the same dream. They resign themselves to entering The Playroom. Inside, they see a dollhouse that has previously been set up with its facade towards them is now set on a lower table with its interior on display. There is a room that looks just like the one in their dream, complete with dolls sitting at the table.

Barnabas and Julia visited The Playroom several times in the future, and the dollhouse was there then. It always seemed likely that the dollhouse was a model of Rose Cottage. Now, it is confirmed that it is not merely a model of it, but is in some sense identical with it. Perhaps it is a ghostly survival of a house that no longer exists, or perhaps it is a mystical reflection of a haunted house that stands somewhere else in the area. One way or another, it seems that Hallie and David are fated to lose their independent existence and become inert playthings confined to an inaccessible space.

David, Hallie, Daphne, and Gerard are part of a recycled story. In late 1968 and early 1969, Dark Shadows adapted Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw with David and his friend Amy in the roles of the children Miles and Flora and the ghosts of Quentin Collins and Beth Chavez as the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. The whole point of the novella is that it is an open question whether the ghosts are real and the new governess is heroically trying to save the children from them or the ghosts are figments of the imagination of the governess, a crazy woman who is a mortal threat to her charges. Benjamin Britten’s opera preserves that ambiguity to some extent, but screen adaptations tend to come down firmly in favor of the ghosts being real. The first “Haunting of Collinwood” left no room for doubt on that score, and the current Re-Haunting of Collinwood is just as emphatic.

The ghosts of Quentin and Beth were silent when we first saw them in 1968, as Daphne’s ghost has been silent until she laughs maniacally today. They made their first appearance in #646, but neither of them made a sound until Quentin laughed maniacally in #689. Gerard has yet to make himself heard, though actor James Storm read the opening voiceover narration in #1066.

Episode 1076: The addition of the letter O

Grouchy New England teen David Collins and his live-in girlfriend Hallie Stokes go to a playroom for small children that intermittently manifests itself in a space otherwise occupied by a linen closet in the west wing of the great house of Collinwood. Hallie is possessed by the spirit of a girl named Carrie, who died in 1841. David hasn’t caught on that Hallie isn’t herself, and in his exasperation he asks her to “stop acting like the world’s number-one weirdo.” Carrie is puzzled by the word “weirdo.” She recognizes it as a derivative of “weird,” but claims that “the addition of the letter O makes it completely incomprehensible.” Evidently Carrie wasn’t all that quick on the uptake. If someone called me a “peculiar-Z,” I might not know why the letter Z was added, but it would be perfectly clear to me what they were saying. Historians of American English often say that the 1830s and 1840s were the single busiest period for the invention of new slang terms the USA has ever seen, so that if Carrie were as stumped by the “O” on “weirdo” as she claims to be, she would likely have been unable to conduct a conversation with many of her contemporaries.

David’s realistic 1970 dialogue and Carrie’s antiquated verbiage bounce off each other to produce some intentional comedy; my wife, Mrs Acilius, thought the scene was really funny. It is certainly more appealing than the rest of the episode, which is yet another series of events that take place only because the characters cannot bring themselves to tell each other what’s going on. Because the ghosts won’t let them, yes yes yes, we’ve been through all that many times before. The fansites seem bored enough by the whole thing that one of biggest points of discussion is whether it is reasonable to say that, because a bit of Grayson Hall’s slip is visible under her skirt at one point, we can say that we see her “underwear.” I guess the slip is “underwear” in the sense that she is wearing it under something else, and it probably wasn’t supposed to be visible, but you’d have to be a very specific kind of person to get excited about it.

Feast your eyes, pervs.

Hall plays Julia Hoffman, MD. Julia is a psychiatrist, among other things. She tells Quentin Collins that the ghost of Daphne Harridge, a governess who like her charge Carrie died in 1841, fills the room with the scent of lilacs when she is near. Quentin is so obviously lying when he tells Julia that he has not smelled that scent that we are probably supposed to assume that Julia is onto him.

Episode 1073: I don’t have to imagine things

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and his friend, Dr Julia Hoffman, MD, have returned to 1970 after an inexplicable journey through time. During a sojourn in 1995, they learned that a mysterious disaster is about to befall the great house of Collinwood. They have told several people about this disaster and withheld the information from several others.

Among those Julia and Barnabas have told is matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. We see Liz in the drawing room discussing the matter with governess Maggie Evans. Maggie is hurt that Barnabas hasn’t seen her since he returned. When Barnabas departed, there was a story brewing about a possible romance between him and Maggie; we might have thought the show would have forgotten this narrative thread, and some fans would prefer it had done so. But evidently it isn’t quite gone yet.

Among those Barnabas and Julia have not told is grouchy New England teen David Collins. David enters the room as Liz and Maggie are talking about the idea that something might happen. He says that something is happening, all right. Liz asks what it is and he says he will tell them what he knows if they tell him what they know. Liz huffily declares that the matter at hand has to do with a theory he could not possibly understand, and that she knows he could not understand it because she doesn’t understand it, either. Unimpressed by this logic, David stands his ground. He says it’s time they stop treating him like he is four and a half years old. Liz tells him that if he knows something they ought to know, he should tell them about it. How he is supposed to know what they ought to know when they won’t tell him anything is unclear. The exchange ends in a stalemate.

Julia and Barnabas have also tried to keep the relevant information from the other teen in the house, Hallie Stokes. Hallie eavesdropped on a conversation yesterday and picked up some ominous-sounding remarks with no context. David had a dream that night in which he saw Hallie wearing an old-fashioned long orange dress with puffy sleeves. Later, the same dress materialized on Hallie’s bed.

What neither Hallie nor David knew was that Barnabas and Julia saw that dress in 1995. The girl wearing it looked exactly like Hallie, but was named Carrie. She danced a minuet at the gazebo on the grounds of Collinwood with a boy who looked exactly like David but was named Tad.

When Hallie sees the dress at the beginning of today’s episode, she wonders how it got there. Maggie knocks on the door and Hallie hides it under her bedclothes. After Maggie goes, Hallie wonders why she didn’t just ask her about it. Longtime viewers have seen enough supernatural storylines start on Dark Shadows to know that a compulsion to withhold information is often the first step towards doom. It is frustrating that Liz, who has been central to the show since episode 1 premiered on 27 June 1966, hasn’t learned that lesson yet and applied it to her dealings with David.

David goes to Hallie’s room and tells her about his dream. She says that lots of boys dream about her; he says that unlike the others, he tried to go back to sleep afterward. David doesn’t specify what the other boys are doing with the image of Hallie in the middle of the night, but he lets her draw the conclusion that she isn’t up to his standards in that wise. When he tells her about the dress, she freaks out and accuses him of playing tricks on her. He doesn’t know what she’s talking about and doesn’t care enough about her to stick around until she clarifies it. He grumbles that he’ll never understand women and stalks off.

Later, David gets a note telling him to go to the gazebo at midnight. He sees Hallie emerge from the bushes, wearing the dress. He suddenly realizes that she is not Hallie at all. Carrie has made her appearance.

Carrie and David by the armillary sphere. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The gazebo set is decorated with an armillary sphere that is prominently featured today. From the first appearance of this doodad in #737, we might have wondered if the show was going to incorporate astrology into its stories. Two of the cryptic phrases Julia and Barnabas collected as clues during their visit to 1995 were “the night of the sun and the moon” and “the unfinished horoscope,” indicating that the time is coming for this to occur.

Liz is in a strange quiet mood today; Joan Bennett plays her very deep. She speaks softly, rarely makes eye contact, and often gives little signs of deep, somber thought. She mutters to Maggie that no one can know the future, “unless…” When Maggie asks unless what, she refuses to answer.

Liz telephones a man named Sebastian Shaw, who is wearing a piece of clothing that was ridiculous even by the standards of 1970. Actor Chris Pennock would later say that he retained absolutely no memory of ever having played a character named Sebastian; if I had worn that garment on national television, I think I would have blocked out the recollection as well.

Sebastian gets very prickly when people do not accept him as a serious professional. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Sebastian is an astrologer. He agrees to cast a full horoscope for the rest of 1970 for Liz. Since Barnabas and Julia told Liz that an unfinished horoscope is one of the signs that doom is near, it would seem rather bold of her to start an astrologer casting an elaborate chart.

Episode 1070: Never without you

The sun has set, and vampire Barnabas Collins is opening the lid of his coffin in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Suddenly a cross is thrust in his face. He recoils from it, crying in pain and becoming immobile. The cross is wielded by the sheriff of Collinsport, who announces “I know all about you, Barnabas Collins!”

Before the sheriff can take matters any further, a teenage girl appears nearby. Shocked to see her, he reels away from the coffin. He jabbers at her, saying that he recognizes her and pleading with her not to come closer. Barnabas grabs him from behind and strangles him to death.

Barnabas didn’t have anything against the sheriff, but can’t deny that it feels good to use the old strangling muscles again. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas goes upstairs and finds his best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. He tells Julia that the sheriff’s gun was loaded with silver bullets, and that only the manifestation of the ghost of Carrie prevented his destruction. The police know about him, and more officers will be coming any time. Julia admits that she told the sheriff about Barnabas. Shocked, he says “You betrayed me?” He has said these words many times, always as a prelude to extreme violence. Julia braces herself, expecting the same. But to her amazement, Barnabas is gentle and understanding. He realizes she is under the sway of an evil ghost named Gerard. She says that she will betray Barnabas again and again, and urges him to leave without her. He says he will never do that. She embraces him, weeping, and he comforts her. For most people, a day that begins with the murder of a policeman is a day when nothing goes well, but Barnabas is not like most people. This is far and away the most mature behavior we have ever seen on his part.

The year is 1995; Barnabas and Julia have come unstuck in time and found themselves at Collinwood 25 years after a mysterious disaster wrecked the great house on the estate, ruined its inhabitants, and left Gerard in charge. They believe they can travel back to 1970 and prevent the disaster from ever occurring, if only they can find out what it was. Barnabas’ distant cousin Carolyn left him a note yesterday consisting of six cryptic phrases which he took to be clues, but Gerard killed Carolyn before Barnabas could ask her to explain them.

Barnabas has brought occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes to the Old House. We find Stokes exclaiming to Barnabas “You killed the sheriff?” Barnabas confirms, “Yes, I killed him.” Stokes replies, “Everyone’s going mad. It’s the effect of this place. I’m not surprised at your terrible story. Horrified, not surprised.” One wonders what the story was that Julia and Barnabas told. Stokes’ role in the parts of the show set in contemporary times was always limited, because he is too decent and law-abiding to be a party to the continued existence of a vampire. He could never be allowed to learn the truth about Barnabas. He stays in the room, chatting amiably with Barnabas and Julia, so clearly they haven’t told him now, either. Perhaps they just told him that the sheriff was going to shoot Barnabas, and let him assume that the reason was that Gerard was making him do it.

Be that as it may, Stokes is still aware of the situation. “Do you realize that I will be implicated in all this if the police come here?” he asks. They say that they do, but that they desperately need him to make a third for a séance. He dismisses as hopelessly naive the idea that Gerard would allow a séance to succeed, but Barnabas says that Gerard may not have the power to prevent Carolyn’s spirit coming through and telling them what her note meant. The idea of one spirit trying to block another from emerging out of the supernatural back-world and speaking at a séance harks back to the very first séance on Dark Shadows, in #170 and #171, when undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins used her powers to impede the spirit of the gracious Josette from warning the company about her. Stokes gives in and agrees to participate; Julia, self-conscious because of her compromised position, is reluctant, but Barnabas proclaims that if Carolyn is to speak it will be through her.*

The séance begins. Julia goes into the trance, and starts speaking in what appears to be Carolyn’s voice. If this is Grayson Hall’s Nancy Barrett imitation, it is terrible. Mrs Acilius and I laughed out loud at it. But the voice does not give any useful information, and Julia is under Gerard’s power, so it is also possible she is faking the trance to throw Barnabas off. In that case, it is Julia’s Carolyn imitation, and it reminds us of the ups and downs in the relationship between those two characters.

When the séance is over, Stokes says he feels a presence. He rises from the table, drifts towards the window, and sees Gerard watching him from outside. Gerard touches the pane. Stokes staggers back, descends into a chair, and becomes still. Barnabas finds that he is dead. He looks up and realizes that Julia has fled the house.

Julia has gone to the great house. She is in a mysterious playroom with Gerard. Gerard gives her a dagger. She asks if she “must.” She is reluctant, but finally works herself up to joy as she says that she always knew it would come to this, that now she will be with Gerard as he wants her. She lifts the dagger to stab herself in the heart.

Barnabas enters. He confronts Gerard. As the two beings from beyond the grave stare each other down, Julia drops the dagger. Barnabas tells Gerard he cannot stop them leaving. Gerard looks offended at this. He touches Julia, who collapses. She is not dead, but she and Barnabas fear she is dying. Gerard leaves the room and takes his time locking the door from the outside.

Carrie’s ghost materializes to Julia and Barnabas. She beckons to them, then walks out through the wall. They stare at the wall, and a door appears. They pass through the door, and find themselves on a staircase. They follow the staircase, and come to another door. They exit in the same corridor outside the playroom; they have gone in a circle. In space, anyway- the time appears to be different. The corridor is in severe decay in 1995, but is in good repair now. And they see a girl who looks exactly like Carrie, but is alive. She asks them who they are.

This is the final episode set in 1995. It is also the last we will see of Don Crabtree. Previous sheriffs of Collinsport have been ridiculously ineffective. Crabtree’s sheriff doesn’t chalk up many successes either, but no one else meets with anything but failure in these two weeks. Every death and defeat we see reinforces the sense that the evil which Gerard represents is overwhelming. As the penultimate victim of the 1995 curse, the sheriff is second only to Stokes as someone who would have been able to make a positive difference, if anyone could have, and Crabtree makes us believe that he belongs in that position.

*In the main continuity of Dark Shadows, spirits at séances always speak through a medium of the same sex as themselves. In the séance in #990, when the show was set in a mirror universe, the spirit chose a medium of the opposite sex.

Episode 1066: And all that

For many months starting in late 1968, the estate of Collinwood was haunted by the ghost of Quentin Collins. Quentin’s presence became steadily more intolerable until the living members of the Collins family had to abandon the great house in #694. At the end of that episode, we saw Quentin standing on the walkway at the top of the foyer stairs, laughing in triumph.

Vampire Barnabas Collins traveled back in time in #701 and blundered around until history was changed. In #838, set in September 1897, Quentin’s death was prevented. On the anniversary of that event in September 1969, the haunting broke, though the people who lived through it remembered Quentin’s ghost and the events of the haunting. A magic spell was cast on Quentin keeping him forever young, and late in 1969 he took his place among the Collinses whom he had once driven from the family home.

Now, Barnabas and his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, have come unstuck in time again. They find themselves in Collinwood in the year 1995. The house is in ruins, the members of the family either dead, missing, or insane, and the village of Collinsport full of people who won’t answer any of their questions. Quentin is around, having escaped from a psychiatric facility and come back to the estate. Today, Barnabas and Julia have taken him to the great house to try to get him to tell them something useful.

Julia and Barnabas want Quentin to see an upstairs room that is in much better shape than the rest of the house. They open the door, and see a ghost which appears to be strange and troubled teen David Collins. Quentin flees in terror and makes his way to the foyer while Barnabas and Julia watch the ghost vanish.

Quentin finds that he cannot open the front doors. He sees the ghost of a young man staring at him from the walkway at the top of the stairs. Like Quentin during “The Haunting of Collinwood,” this ghost has lots of curly black hair, does not speak, and wears a dark suit from the nineteenth century. Since David Selby is very tall and James Storm is rather the other thing, I can’t help but think of him as Mini-Quentin. The credits tell us that his name is Gerard.

Quentin cannot abide the sight of Mini-Quentin. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin rolls around on the floor, terrified of Gerard. Barnabas and Julia come and try to calm him down. Quentin says the doors won’t open; Barnabas opens them. Quentin runs out. Julia says she senses an evil presence, which, considering that every character we’ve seen so far is a murderer, is not too surprising. She and Barnabas leave.

Two ghosts dance a minuet by the gazebo. Julia and Barnabas think that one of the ghosts is David; the other is a blonde girl whom they do not recognize. The ghosts kiss each other. They walk towards the woods and vanish.

Barnabas and Julia go to the Old House on the estate. They find Quentin, and overhear him talking in an anguished voice to someone named “Daphne.” He tells them that the ghost they saw was not David Collins, but was named Tad. Julia remembers that they found a birthday card addressed to “Tad” and signed “Carrie.” If the ghost who looks like David is actually Tad, one might assume that the blonde girl is Carrie, though she could be Daphne or some other personage.

The next afternoon, Quentin finds Julia sleeping in an armchair in the parlor of the Old House. He asks to see Barnabas. Julia reacts with puzzlement. She says Quentin knows perfectly well that Barnabas cannot rise until the sun sets. He says he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Julia is shocked. Once you’ve learned that a fellow is a vampire, that information doesn’t usually slip your mind. But he seems quite sincere. He wanders off.

The blonde girl appears at the window and beckons to Julia. Julia follows her, silently. It seems at first that Julia is in a trance, since she does not call to the girl by the names “Carrie” or “Daphne.” But when the girl leads her into the great house, Julia keeps moving her head around as she watches her step, making it clear she is wide awake. The girl leads her into the strangely intact room, where Gerard is waiting for her.

Danny Horn’s post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day is full of remarks about how cleverly they blur the line between soundtrack music that the characters can’t hear and atmospheric sounds that they can, disorienting us in a way that adds greatly to the effect of the scares and confusion. It is indeed powerful, and there is a lot of other good stuff in this one.

But this is the first episode of the 1995 segment I wouldn’t show to someone new to Dark Shadows to entice them into watching the show. The pacing is just too slow for the material. We have time to start asking questions that take us out of the story. For example, Julia and Barnabas lament that they have no idea what is going on and are desperate for Quentin to tell them what he knows. But as soon as he volunteers a piece of information, telling him that they saw Tad’s ghost rather than David’s they flatly contradict him. Also, Julia gives Quentin a sedative. We wonder where she got it, since her prescription pad is 25 years out of date and any samples she had in her bag have been sitting out, unrefrigerated and exposed to dry rot, for that same period. Those and other incongruities are the sorts of things we could easily overlook if we were moving as fast as we moved in all five episodes last week, but when events move as leisurely as they do today they mean trouble.

Episode 1065: How long will it be before they all come back?

Vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have come unstuck in time and found themselves in 1995, 25 years ahead of their proper period. The great house on the estate of Collinwood is in ruins. Some of the people they knew are missing, some are dead, and the rest are determined not to help them find out what happened when disaster struck in 1970.

In his post about the episode on his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn writes that “if this is July 1995, then Barnabas and Julia are on completely the wrong track. They want to know where Elizabeth and Roger and Maggie are, and the answer is obvious — they’re watching the O.J. trial. Where else would they be?”

Barnabas’ distant cousin Carolyn owns Collinwood now, and she doesn’t have cable. So she is in the great house, a demon-haunted wreck which most people avoid. Julia and Barnabas have followed her there. They hear Carolyn talking and laughing inside an upstairs room that didn’t exist in 1970. They let themselves in. Unlike the rest of the great house and every other structure on the estate, the room is in perfect repair, well-lit and full of luxury items. Carolyn has repeatedly told Barnabas and Julia to stay off her property, even sending the sheriff to arrest them on one of their previous trespassing expeditions to the great house, and she is outraged at this latest intrusion. She demands how dare they follow her into the room, and they respond by praising themselves for their good intentions.

Julia and Barnabas finally leave the room, and Carolyn relaxes. She turns and starts talking to someone who, to her surprise, is not there. She is all the more furious that Barnabas and Julia have driven this person away.

Not content with one home invasion, Julia and Barnabas go to the apartment of their former friend Timothy Eliot Stokes. Before they pushed past him into his parlor, Stokes had been reading a letter from a psychiatric facility where Barnabas and Carolyn’s distant cousin Quentin is a patient. His interior monologue read the part to us about Quentin having taken a turn for the worse. While Barnabas hectors Stokes, Julia leans way down and reads the letter. It turns out Quentin has escaped from the facility. At length, Stokes tells them that he was out of town when the disaster occurred in 1970 and that he doesn’t know much about it. He agrees to help them.

Julia keeps it classy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Later in the episode, two scenes take place between Stokes and Carolyn. Carolyn enters Stokes’ apartment and reproves him for collaborating with the enemy. She laments that Julia and Barnabas ruined the birthday party, and that there won’t be another birthday party for a year. He has no idea what she is talking about and tries to reason with her. He finally takes her home. These, like every scene with Carolyn in the 1995 segment, are spectacularly good. Nancy Barrett is an excellent actress, Dark Shadows suited her strengths perfectly, and crazy lady Carolyn Fredericks was as good a part as any performer could wish for. Thayer David was terrific also, and the two of them are unforgettable together today.

Barnabas and Julia return to the playroom, since they haven’t been arrested yet tonight. They find a brand new birthday card addressed to “Tad” and signed “Carrie.” Barnabas has never heard those names in connection with Collinwood and wonder who they could be.

Barnabas says that he wants to question Quentin. Julia responds “Barnabas, If Quentin has been in a mental institution, he can’t help us.” It’s true that it takes special training and considerable experience to gain useful information by questioning severely disturbed people, but Julia has those qualifications. She is a psychiatrist who, when we first saw her in #265, was conducting an examination of a barely verbal patient. Over the last three years, everything that Julia had in those days has been stripped from her, a theme the show has been exploring heavily for the last six weeks. This line seems like a throwaway, but it underlines the transformation we have seen.

Quentin’s existence depends on a magical portrait painted in the year 1897. In an upstairs room at the Old House, Julia and Barnabas find this portrait intact. At that very moment, Quentin himself rushes in with a knife and tries to slash it. Barnabas thwarts him.

Quentin won’t believe that Barnabas and Julia are who they appear to be. He babbles as if he were still in the psychiatric facility. He claims never to have heard of the playroom, then insists the playroom was always there. They take him to the playroom, their third trip there today. Quentin looks in the room and flees in terror. Barnabas and Julia stay, and see the ghost of strange and troubled teen David Collins. The appearance of David’s ghost is one of the most forceful week-ending images in the series, up there with Barnabas’ hand darting out of its coffin in #210 or the Old House in sunlight in #365.

Episode 1147: The Strain

I say that David Henesy and Alexandra Moltke Isles, as David and Vicki in the first 42 weeks of Dark Shadows, used nonverbal communication to triumph over poor writing to present an interesting story of a troubled boy and a young woman learning to trust each other. I then try to explain why Henesy was unable to repeat that success as Tad in the “Meet Gerard” segment of the series. 

Episode 1147: The Strain