Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins receives a visitor in his home, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes agrees to lend Barnabas a twelfth century Sicilian talisman to ward off the power of a witch, and makes it clear he will not rest until he finds out why Barnabas needs it.
This scene is a tour de force for Thayer David as Stokes. I’ve already quoted Danny Horn’s remark in his post about it that David “plays to the balcony. Not this balcony, naturally; I mean the balcony in the theater next door.” David’s style works brilliantly in this context.
The rest of the episode is marred by some bad writing. When wicked witch Angelique, pretending her name is Cassandra, comes to call on Barnabas, he immediately calls her by her right name and tells her everything she could want to know in her campaign to restore his vampirism. This is a pattern of Barnabas’; he withholds information from people who would use it to help him, and blabs without inhibition to his deadliest enemies.
Barnabas takes the talisman to Dr Eric Lang, the mad scientist who has freed him of the symptoms of Angelique’s curse. Lang knows that Barnabas has been a vampire and knows that a curse made him one, but scoffs at the idea of witchcraft and refuses to touch the talisman. Jonathan Frid is a good enough actor that we can wonder if Barnabas has a reason for disclosing all his secrets to Angelique, but Addison Powell plays Lang so ineptly that there is nowhere to hide the fact that his skepticism makes no sense.
Angelique shows up in Lang’s office and casts a spell on him that is about to cause his heart to burst. He staggers to the desk, touches the talisman, and quickly recovers. He will not let her take it from him.
Barnabas comes back and asks Lang if he now believes that he must carry the talisman to protect himself from Angelique. He says he does not want to believe, and again walks off leaving the talisman on his desk.
Barnabas presses Lang for information on the final stage of the treatment that is supposed to end the curse once and for all. Lang takes him to the secret laboratory in his home. There, amid a lot of flashy equipment, is a partially assembled Frankenstein’s monster. Lang says that he will drain the “life-force” from Barnabas’ body and use it to animate the creature once it is completed. Barnabas’ old body will be dead, and Angelique will presumably believe that he no longer exists. But he will live in the new body.
Wicked witch Angelique (Lara Parker,) pretending to be named Cassandra, met sarcastic dandy Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds) one day and married him the next. Roger’s sister, matriarch Liz (Joan Bennett,) confronts Angelique/ Cassandra. Liz tells her that Roger has not been well and urges her to annul their marriage.
In the course of her confrontation with Liz, Angelique/ Cassandra reveals that she is not all-knowing. She thinks that Roger owns the great estate of Collinwood and the family’s business. Liz quickly explains that Roger owns nothing. He lives as a guest in her house and works as an employee of her company. Angelique/ Cassandra takes this in stride, and stands up to Liz’ insistence that the marriage must end. The only sign that Liz’ words are having an effect on anyone at all comes in the very last syllable of the scene. Unfortunately for Liz, it is not Angelique/ Cassandra who is intimidated by her, but Lara Parker who is intimidated by Joan Bennett. Angelique/ Cassandra’s mid-Atlantic accent vanishes and the purest musical note of Parker’s native Tennessee sounds as the word “you” emerges as “yeww.” If there had been another page or two of dialogue, she might have ended with a honeyed smile and a lethal “Bless your heart!”
From #395 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late 1790s. In that segment, Angelique came to Collinwood as a servant girl and used her magical powers to manipulate scion Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) into marrying her. Barnabas’ parents, Joshua (Louis Edmonds) and Naomi (Joan Bennett) were unhappy about the marriage. Joshua demanded that it be annulled, as Liz today demands Roger and Angelique/ Cassandra’s marriage be annulled. Naomi took a more conciliatory approach. Advocating Joshua’s position and but showing Naomi’s temperament, Liz combines two challenges Angelique has already shown herself able to overcome easily. Returning viewers will therefore have little hope that Liz will be able to stave off the disasters Angelique has in mind for the Collinses.
Angelique/ Cassandra is eager to get to work on the evil plans she has for the people at Collinwood, and so she is trying to stop Roger taking her on a honeymoon. She contrives to injure her ankle. We see permanent houseguest/ medical doctor/ mad scientist Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) in the bedroom Angelique/ Cassandra will be sharing with Roger, bandaging her ankle. Angelique/ Cassandra asks a series of questions about old world gentleman Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid,) making Julia visibly uncomfortable.
Barnabas is the same man Angelique married in the 1790s. He is here in 1968 because she turned him into a vampire then. He was relieved of the symptoms of vampirism only a couple of weeks ago. He and Julia are becoming fast friends, and on Tuesday he told her all about Angelique. He identified her as the woman in a portrait that has obsessed Roger, and expressed his belief that Roger’s obsession was a sign that Angelique herself was returning to Collinwood. Julia can see how strongly Cassandra resembles the portrait, and knows that Roger’s obsession led directly to his marrying her, so she really ought to have figured out by now that she is Angelique.
Like the scene between Angelique/ Cassandra and Liz, the scene between her and Julia makes an instructive comparison with the parts the same actresses played in the 1790s segment. Angelique was originally lady’s maid to the Countess DuPrés. We saw her helping the Countess put herself together in a bedroom that was a different dressing of the set on which Julia is now attending to her foot. This apparent reversal of roles illuminates the extent to which Angelique’s command of black magic always made her a mightier figure than her nominal mistress. As a mad scientist, Julia is far more formidable than was the countess, but this scene leaves us wondering if she will be able to stand up to Angelique for any longer than could her counterpart.
Well-meaning governess Vicki (Alexandra Moltke Isles) had traveled back in time and was at Collinwood through the 1790s segment. She recognizes Angelique, knows well how dangerous she is, and is desperate to stop her. She tries to tell Liz about the situation, but Liz has a very limited tolerance for information about the supernatural. Vicki later meets Julia at the gazebo on the grounds of the estate and shares her information with her. Julia knows as much as anyone about the strange goings-on, and what Vicki tells her confirms what she already has reason to suspect. However, Julia pretends to have trouble believing Vicki.
This pretense enables Julia to probe the limits of Vicki’s own knowledge. Barnabas and Julia do not want Vicki to know any of Barnabas’ secrets. Julia incredulously asks Vicki if she thinks the Barnabas Collins of 1968 is the same person she knew in the eighteenth century. Vicki turns away from Julia, looks troubled, and says that she does not believe this. Vicki has encountered plenty of evidence to that effect, not least when Barnabas bit her and sucked her blood, and the audience wonders what she knows. We see Julia studying her, trying to find the answer to the same question. In the first year of Dark Shadows, Vicki represented the audience’s point of view, the resolutely normal outsider getting to know the Collinwood crazies. In this moment, we see Vicki through Julia’s eyes. We identify, not with any sane person from the world of sunlight and natural laws, but with a mad scientist who has cast her lot with a vampire.
Vicki thinking about Barnabas, with a facial expression straight out of MAD magazine. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Angelique/ Cassandra and Roger chat in their bedroom. He seems utterly delighted to be married to her, until she slips something into his drink. Suddenly he starts having doubts. Nothing we have seen leads us to expect she would want him to feel this way. The scene leaves us scratching our heads.
We end with Angelique/ Cassandra alone in the foyer of the great house, looking at the portrait of Barnabas that hangs there and vowing to restore the curse that had made him a vampire. We know that she is Angelique and that such is her goal, so her speech doesn’t set up any new story points.
It does give us some world-building information. Angelique says that the only way she knew that Barnabas was walking among the living in the 1960s was that Vicki had traveled back in time to the 1790s and told her. That explodes a theory some fans like that Angelique herself called Vicki back in time. When Vicki left the 1960s in #365, it was quite clear that the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah was sending her on the journey. Sarah has been fading steadily from our awareness, not least because child actress Sharon Smyth aged out of the part, and so it is not surprising that people expect a retcon to attribute the time travel story to a different force. But not only does Angelique rule herself out with this line, Sarah’s name comes up in the conversation between Julia and Vicki, reminding regular viewers of the original explanation.
More importantly, it confirms that once one person has made a wrong-way journey through time, a gate opens through which other unexpected things may come. To some extent we saw this when Barnabas himself was released from his coffin and Sarah’s ghost began showing up around the estate. The cosmological point will become extremely important for the rest of Dark Shadows, as one time-travel story keeps leading to another. Dark Shadows is often described as the story of the house, and so I can’t resist an inelegant metaphor from the building trades. It’s as if Vicki wrecked the plumbing of the universe when she went through the pipes backwards and then abruptly forward. Time will never flow the right way again.
Dark Shadows‘ first supernatural menace was undead blonde witch Laura Murdoch Collins, estranged wife of sarcastic dandy Roger. Laura was on the show from December 1966 to March of 1967. During that time, Laura tried to rebuild her relationship with her son by Roger, strange and troubled boy David. David’s well-meaning governess Vicki at first encouraged her charge to go to his mother, but eventually figured out that Laura posed a deadly threat to him. Vicki formed a coalition of characters to help her fight Laura, and eventually rescued David from his mother’s clutches at the last minute.
Now, Roger has come home to the great house of Collinwood after an unexplained absence that had Vicki, his sister Liz, and his distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas, terribly worried. Roger happily announces that he has taken a new wife, and presents her to the family.
As it turns out, Roger has a definite type. His new bride is also an undead blonde witch, though at the moment she is wearing a black wig that doubles as a physical representation of the concept “1968.” Her name is Angelique, although she pretends it is Cassandra.
Some critics say that the film 2001: A Space Odyssey would more aptly have been titled 1968: A Bad Year for Hats. As you can see, however, headwear in general was passing through a time of trial in that period. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Vicki and Barnabas recognize Angelique immediately. Vicki came unstuck in time in #365, finding herself in the year 1795, and didn’t make it back to the 1960s until #461. During her nineteen weeks in the late 1790s, Vicki got to know the people who lived at Collinwood in those days, among them Barnabas and Angelique. She saw many horrible things happen to them, and only after being blamed for those catastrophes herself would she realize that they were the consequences of spells cast by Angelique. Due to Angelique’s curse, Barnabas would be a vampire from 1796 until the week after Vicki came back to 1968. Vicki has decided to believe that Barnabas is not the same person she knew in that period, but rather that he is the descendant of that Barnabas Collins. He does not want her to know that he ever was a vampire, and she has resolved not to know that either, even though he used to bite her on the neck and suck her blood.
The battle against Laura was a fairly exciting story, at least in its latter stages. Angelique is a far more dynamic adversary than Laura, and Dark Shadows is much faster-paced and better written than it was then, so a reprise of the structure of that conflict in this new setting would likely be very exciting indeed.
To wage such a battle, Vicki and Barnabas can have no secrets from each other. Many who have been with Dark Shadows from the beginning have been hoping that its original protagonist will eventually become aware of the principal storylines, and this is one of the obvious ways to do it. Vicki can learn that Barnabas was a vampire, can find out that he was the one responsible for all the terrible crimes committed against the women and men and cows of Collinsport in 1967, and can still align herself with him, because she needs his support against Angelique, a more urgent threat. By the time they have vanquished her, not only will the idea of handing Barnabas over to the authorities have lost its salience, but Vicki will doubtless be facing another urgent threat requiring Barnabas’ assistance.
Nothing we see today suggests that such a development is on the horizon. The episode began with Vicki, Barnabas, and Liz worrying about Roger. A couple of weeks ago, Vicki brought a portrait home from an antique store and it had bizarre effects on Roger. The other day, he took the portrait and disappeared.
We can tell that today is not going to be a win for the female characters when Barnabas reacts to Liz’ expression of concern by dismissing her from his presence and she leaves, even though he is in her house. Vicki can tell Barnabas knows more about the situation than she does, and each time he condescends to mete out a little information in response to one of her questions he ends by turning his back to her and explicitly refusing to share anything more.
When Liz first leaves him alone with Vicki, Barnabas sourly remarks “I try to remember… that I must not reproach you for the reasons you’ve given not to marry me.” As Danny Horn shows in a series of screenshots in his post on Dark Shadows Every Day, their body language does not at any point support the idea that Barnabas wants to be with Vicki and she does not want to be with him. Quite the contrary; he withdraws from her, turns from her, and puts physical objects as barriers before her, while she looks at him, follows him, and leans towards him.
This has been Barnabas and Vicki’s dynamic for a long time. By #285, she went so far as to invite herself to a sleepover at his house. Barnabas was a vampire then; he entered the bedroom while she slept and bared his fangs, but couldn’t bring himself to bite her. Time and again, Vicki would all but draw a circle on her neck with the words “Mr Vampire, Bite Here!,” and Barnabas would tremblingly open his mouth, then recoil at the last moment. In #462, he finally sampled her bloodstream. By the end of #466, Barnabas’ vampirism had gone into remission, and that little storyline had evaporated. Now Vicki is vague and confused about what happened between her and Barnabas, and he is afraid he will relapse and bite her again.
Vicki is trapped between two blank walls. On one side Barnabas is excluding her from his life and therefore from active participation in the A story. On the other, she keeps having scenes with her old boyfriend from the 1790s, an unpleasant man named Peter who keeps demanding, for no apparent reason, that she call him Jeff. That habit of his was dead on arrival as a story point, and now that Angelique will be trying our patience by insisting her name is Cassandra, it will become impossibly tedious to have a second character doing the same pointless schtick. As long as she is in this position, Vicki’s prospects for contributing interesting material to Dark Shadows belong to a very low order of probability.
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