david collins – Page 2 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 893: We serve him now

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard is sitting at a table in the Blue Whale, a tavern. A man who refused to give his name when she caught him trespassing on her property invites himself to sit down with her. She objects to this. He identifies himself as her father, the long-missing Paul Stoddard. She objects far more strenuously to that. Not only did Paul leave the family when Carolyn was an infant, he and his friend Jason McGuire faked his death. Jason convinced Carolyn’s mother, Liz, that she had killed Paul and he had buried the corpse in the basement. In response, Liz immured herself in the house for nineteen years. Only after Jason came back and was blackmailing Liz into marrying him did the truth come out and Liz break free of her reclusive ways.

Paul tells Carolyn that he didn’t know Jason told Liz that she had killed him. Longtime viewers may suspect this is a lie, not least because Paul and Jason are both played by Dennis Patrick. Nonetheless, Carolyn falls for it. Soon she is agreeing to sound Liz out to see how she might react were she to hear that Paul had returned. He walks her home to the great house on the estate of Collinwood. He can’t go in, but gives her a goodnight kiss on the forehead.

Carolyn’s young cousin, strange and troubled boy David Collins, sees Paul kissing her. When she goes inside, he asks who her new boyfriend is. Carolyn is vexed. She refuses to tell David anything, and sends him to bed.

Carolyn’s friend Philip Todd comes to the door. He tells her that he and his wife Megan want Carolyn to work at their antique shop in the village. It may seem rather odd for the keeper of a little shop to go to a vast mansion and ask the daughter of its proprietor to take a job as his assistant, but Carolyn loves the shop and was volunteering there yesterday. She agrees happily, and mentions that a man might be leaving messages for her there.

In the shop the next morning, Carolyn sees that Megan has a baby. Megan says it is her sister’s son. Carolyn asks his name. Megan thinks for quite a while before coming up with “Joseph!”

Carolyn is alone in the shop when David comes in with his friend and fellow resident of Collinwood, Amy Jennings. We haven’t seen Amy since #835; that in turn was her first appearance since #700. For eight months, from #701 to #884, Dark Shadows was set in the year 1897, with only a few brief glimpses of the 1960s. In the 1897 segment, Denise Nickerson played Nora Collins, whose own final appearance was in #859. Both Nora and Amy had long absences from the cast, and were usually unmentioned while they were away. So we’ve been afraid that we wouldn’t see Amy or any other Nickerson character again. It’s good to have her back. She even pulls her signature move and gives a meaningful look directly into the camera at one point.

Amy and David see a doll that longtime viewers will recognize as Samantha, favorite plaything of the late Sarah Collins both when we saw her as a living being in the 1790s from November 1967 to March 1968 and before that, when she was a ghost haunting Collinwood and its environs in 1967. There are also a couple of toy soldiers from “The Regiment,” which Sarah’s brother Barnabas played with when he was a young boy and which Sarah gave to people in 1967 as protection against Barnabas, who was at that time a vampire. Barnabas did sell a bunch of things to Megan and Philip the other day, but neither Samantha nor the members of The Regiment were in Barnabas’ possession when last we saw them. Presumably the camera lingers on the toys, not because we are supposed to know how Philip and Megan got them, but because we are supposed to be pleased with ourselves for recognizing them.

Paul comes into the shop. David recognizes him as the man he saw kissing Carolyn. Carolyn addresses Paul as “Mr Prescott,” sends him into a back room, and hustles the children out of the shop. She tells Paul who David is, and explains that he saw them together, complicating their plans.

When Carolyn was minding the shop yesterday, her friend Maggie noticed an old book on a table. Neither of them knew what it was, but viewers knew it was an object of great importance to a cult into which Philip and Megan have been inducted. It seemed inexplicable that they would leave it on a table in their shop, as if it were for sale. We get a hint today as to what they may have been thinking. In his room at Collinwood, David shows Amy that he has stolen the book. She asks why he would want it. He explains that Carolyn said that if they damaged anything in the shop, his father, Roger, would have to pay for it, and he creased a page in the book. David’s fear that his father would punish him drove several stories in the early months of the show. Roger has mellowed enormously since then, but evidently David is still so afraid of him that he will make a bad situation worse rather than face his wrath.

Indeed, many major storylines have begun with David. The 1897 flashback started because Barnabas was trying to keep a ghost from killing David, as the 1790s segment started when David’s governess Vicki participated in a séance meant to solve a mystery concerning him. For that matter, the whole show started when Vicki was summoned to Collinwood to take charge of David’s education. David doesn’t always have a lot to do in the stories, and when they are over it is often as not forgotten that he was in peril when they began. But he is so often the catalyst that we can suppose that David was supposed to find the book so that the current story could move into its major phase.

If that was the intention, Megan and Philip didn’t know about it. When they discover that the book is gone from the shop, they fly into a panic and declare that whoever took it must be killed. It may turn out that the mysterious forces behind the cult want David to become involved and that they created a situation in which he would find the book and take it with him, but if so, those forces are operating outside the cognizance of anyone in today’s episode.

Episode 839: Second chance

Twenty-eight weeks ago, the ghost of Quentin Collins had made life intolerable on the great estate of Collinwood. Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, in an attempt to contact Quentin and persuade him to make peace before his haunting killed his twelve year old great-great-nephew David Collins, accidentally traveled back in time to 1897, where he met and befriended the living Quentin.

In that time, he learned that Quentin was a werewolf. In 1969, Barnabas and his friend Julia Hoffman, MD, had been trying to cure a man named Chris Jennings of lycanthropy. Now, Barnabas has figured out that Chris inherited his curse from Quentin, whose infant daughter Lenore will grow up to be Chris’ grandmother.

Julia herself has now traveled back in time. The journey left her dazed and, astonishing to behold, unable to speak. Today, Barnabas and Quentin at her bedside in the hiding place Barnabas has found, and she started talking. She has a vision of 1969. She sees David lying dead and his father Roger mourning him. Suddenly David comes back to life and announces that Quentin’s ghost and that of maidservant Beth are no longer haunting the house. When Julia regains her senses, she tells Barnabas that this means that they should both go back to 1969- their mission in the past is complete.

Barnabas declares that they cannot leave, because Chris is still a werewolf. He doesn’t actually know this. Chris wasn’t in Julia’s vision. His transformations became more frequent and longer lasting as Quentin’s ghost gained power; when Quentin achieved total control over the great house at Collinwood, Chris took on wolf form permanently. For all Barnabas knows, the end of Quentin’s obsession of Collinwood might mean Chris’ return to normal. He also knows that Quentin himself remained human the last time the Moon was full, suggesting that something has happened to the curse. Perhaps if they return to their own time, he and Julia will find that Chris is not a werewolf and never was one.

Barnabas tells Julia that, while she and a fellow mad scientist had managed to free him of the effects of vampirism in the 1960s, he is fully subject to them in 1897. Moreover, everyone knows that he is a vampire, and he is being hunted. And there is an evil sorcerer in the area, Count Petofi, who is closely connected with Quentin and who has malign intentions towards Barnabas. Julia points out that all of these are reasons to return to 1969 at once.

Barnabas demands that Julia develop a treatment that will once more put his vampirism into remission. Julia calls this impossible. The drugs and devices she used to accomplish this in the 1960s have not yet been invented, and even in that time she was just barely able to make the treatments work. In the story we actually saw in 1968, treatments of the kind Julia is talking about worked only for a little while, and the lasting cure came only when Barnabas was hooked up to a Frankenstein’s monster. There clearly is no time to create an abomination of that kind.

But there is no reasoning with Barnabas. Julia concedes this- “I always lose with you, don’t I?” She agrees to stay and to do her best.

Barnabas suspects that Quentin is working for Petofi. This is true. Not only did Petofi save Quentin’s life yesterday, but he also arranged the painting of a portrait which, like the one in Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, changes while Quentin remains the same. When Quentin realizes that Petofi has the power to make him human or return him to lycanthropy, he caves in to his demand that he act as his spy in his dealings with Barnabas.

Julia has managed to concoct an injection for Barnabas and is planning to give him another when he insists on rushing out. She says this will ruin the treatment; he says he will be back before dawn.

Julia gives Barnabas a shot. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas goes to see Quentin. He finds the portrait, puts two and two together, and confronts Quentin about his relationship with Petofi. Quentin lies, and Barnabas goes back to the hiding place. It has been ransacked, and Julia is gone.

Episode 836: The grownup world

It is 8 September 1969, and the ghost of Quentin Collins has rendered the great house of Collinwood uninhabitable. The family, including permanent house guest Julia Hoffman, have been staying at the Old House on the estate while recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is on a trip back in time to 1897, when Quentin was killed and the trouble started. But Julia has received a letter Barnabas wrote to her in September 1897 indicating that, as of that date, his mission was about to end in total failure, and so she decides to take matters into her own hands. First, she must learn exactly how and when Quentin died.

Julia goes to the great house and follows the sound of Quentin’s theme song to the tower room. There, she finds the ghost of maidservant Beth, who was one of Quentin’s many lovers. When Beth is in a shadowy corner, she puts on a ghostly voice and tells Julia that her name would mean nothing to her. As soon as she comes into the light, Julia says that they’ve met several times, and soon she is calling her by name. Along with the fact that, as Beth, Terrayne Crawford is just standing there in the same light as Grayson Hall, with no practical effect whatsoever to suggest ghostliness, this deflates whatever feeling we are supposed to have that we are witnessing an encounter with the supernatural.

Julia insists Beth tell her how Quentin died. When the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah Collins was on the show from June to November 1967, she would often insist on the Ghost Rules and vanish if people put direct questions to her. But Beth just wanders around a little, moans to Quentin that she has no choice but to tell Julia what she wants to know, and starts dishing. Again, they aren’t making ghosts like they used to.

Beth tells Julia that on 10 September 1897, she found out Quentin was going to marry a woman named Angelique. Quentin did not tell her this news himself; he left it to Angelique to do so, making the blow fall all the more heavily. This will remind longtime viewers of #392, when Barnabas could not bring himself to tell his ex-fiancée Josette that he was engaged to Angelique, leaving Angelique to tell Josette herself in #393. Josette waited until #425 to leap to her death from the cliff at Widows’ Hill, but things move faster now. Beth went straight from her conversation with Angelique to her room, where she had a bottle labeled “Poison.”

Sensible shopper that she is, Beth buys her poison in the Generic section of the murder weapon store. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Before she could do away with herself, Beth was interrupted by a knock on the door from twelve year old Jamison Collins. Jamison came in to show her a puzzle he had solved, then saw the bottle. He demanded to know what was going on, and she admitted that she was planning to kill herself because Quentin was going to marry Angelique. He stopped her doing that, but after he left to confront Quentin she took a loaded revolver out of her dresser.

Jamison found Quentin in the drawing room, in Angelique’s arms. Angelique at first dismissed Jamison, saying that his uncle was too busy to speak with him, but Jamison held his ground and insisted on seeing Quentin alone. Quentin obliged, but would answer Jamison’s questions only with airy assertions that he is too young to understand the situation. Jamison is so composed and forceful, and Quentin’s behavior is so flagrantly irresponsible, that we might expect Jamison to ask to be spared lectures on maturity from a man so much more childish than he. Instead, Jamison simply becomes angry and tells Quentin that after what he has done to Beth, he wants nothing more to do with him.

In #767, Jamison had a dream in which Quentin’s ghost said that his death was preceded by three events. The first two events happened shortly after. The third event was that Jamison rejected him. This has now happened, and in the dream Quentin said that once that took place “There was almost no time left for Quentin Collins.” Indeed, shortly after Jamison stalks off Beth shows up with her revolver and shoots Quentin. He staggers from the drawing room and goes upstairs. Since the staircase is made of eleven steps and is eight feet tall, that’s some pretty fancy staggering for a man who has just taken a round to the midsection. Quentin keeps staggering all the way to the tower room, where Beth shoots him a few more times.

We cut back to 1969, where Beth tells Julia she killed herself the day after she killed Quentin. She doesn’t seem to be done talking when Julia excuses herself. Say what you will about Sarah, she always left them wanting more.

Julia finds twelve year old David Collins, Jamison’s grandson, in the drawing room with Quentin’s ghost. Since Barnabas took us back in time with him in #701, we’ve got to know the living Quentin quite well, and he is a charming rascal who has very little in common with the silent, family-annihilating ghost we saw late in 1968. Beth’s story does very little to explain how the one turned into the other. The ghost has been draining the life from David; Julia orders David to come away from him, and he does. David lies down on the couch, and Julia examines him. She finds that he is weak, but resting comfortably.

Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes enters. Quentin’s ghost has vanished. Stokes calls Julia by her first name, something he had not done prior to this episode, and asks after David. She at first says he will be all right, then checks on him again. She cannot find a pulse, and declares him dead. Julia has performed wonders in her work as a medical doctor, but her death pronouncements are so often wrong that this does not give much grounds for alarm. However, we then hear Quentin’s voice laughing maniacally, darkening David’s prospects.

Terrayne Crawford seems to be such a nice person that it distresses me to point out that she was not a very good actress. But in this one, Beth’s lack of supernatural quality and Julia’s bland reaction to her make it seem like writer Gordon Russell and director Lela Swift were conspiring to vent their exasperation with Miss Crawford’s limits. She can play one emotion at a time, so that when Beth is shocked to learn that Quentin is going to marry someone else she is only and entirely Shocked. When Beth is suicidal, she is only and entirely Sad; when she decides to take Quentin’s life instead of her own, she is only and entirely Gleeful; when she tells Julia that her vengeance did not relieve her sorrow over Quentin, we can see that’s true, because she is only and entirely Sorrowful. The result is like looking at a series of wood block cuts illustrating various emotions. It’s all very clear and quite vivid, but there’s no sense of development from one scene to the next. Had Miss Crawford been able to lay one emotion over another and play two or more of them at a time, the grin on Beth’s face when she kills Quentin would have shown us that all the layers of complexity of feeling had finally been stripped away and only hatred was left. That would have been a tremendous climax for the character. But since there was never any such complexity to start with, it’s just another block cut.

Often when I see disappointing performances on Dark Shadows, I think of other actors in the cast and try to imagine what they would have done with the part. Gail Strickland, like Miss Crawford, is a tall, thin woman whose chin juts out on a horizontal line, and she was on the show as doomed schoolteacher Dorcas Trilling for a couple of episodes in May. Dorcas’ role would have been well within Miss Crawford’s competence, and in her long and distinguished career Miss Strickland proved she could do just about anything. So on a day like this, I envision a different, much more nuanced Beth. The episode in my imagination is really stellar, I wish you could see it.

Today, David Henesy plays both his 1897 character Jamison Collins and his 1960s character David Collins. He is not credited for either of those roles, but for Daniel Collins, whom he played when the show was set in the 1790s back in late 1967 and early 1968.

Episode 816: David Collins, who lives in the year 1969

From December 1968 to through February 1969, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) and his friend Amy Jennings (Denise Nickerson) were falling under the power of the malign ghost of Quentin Collins. Occasionally the children were possessed by the spirits of David’s grandfather Jamison and great-aunt Nora; at other times they were possessed by Quentin’s own spirit and that of Quentin’s sometime lover, maidservant Beth. In those same days, Amy’s brother Chris (Don Briscoe) was suffering from a curse that made him a werewolf.

As Quentin’s power over David and Amy grew, so did the frequency and duration of Chris’ spells in lupine form. By #700, Quentin so dominated the great house on the estate of Collinwood that its residents fled to the Old House on the estate, home of their distant cousin Barnabas Collins. David, entirely possessed by Jamison, was close to death. For his part, Chris was stuck in wolf form, apparently permanently, and Barnabas had locked him in a secret room in the old Collins family mausoleum.

Desperate to remedy the situation, Barnabas and his associate, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes (Thayer David,) searched Quentin’s old room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house. They found some I Ching wands there. Under Stokes’ direction, Barnabas threw the wands, meditated on them, and found himself transported back in time to 1897. In that year, Quentin, Beth, Jamison, and Nora are alive, and Barnabas is a vampire.

Barnabas had no idea what led Quentin to become a malevolent ghost or what first brought the werewolf curse on Chris, but he had reason to believe that 1897 was an important year in the events leading up to both of those unhappy circumstances. So once he arrived in that period, he spent his nights meddling in all the affairs of the Collins family he found there. Vampires are not problem-solvers; their function in a story is to create problems that other characters will have to solve. So all of Barnabas’ well-intentioned interventions backfired badly. Even disregarding the many murders he committed for his own selfish ends, including the murder of Quentin’s brother Carl Collins, his trip would by any standard have to be considered a disaster.

Now, evil sorcerer Count Petofi (Thayer David) has found that Barnabas is a visitor from the future and is determined to go with him when he returns to 1969. When he demanded Barnabas tell him his secret, Barnabas quite truthfully told him he had no idea what was going on when he found himself transported from one period to another. Petofi did not believe him, and is trying to extort the information he wants by summoning the spirit of David to come from 1969 and possess Jamison (David Henesy) in 1897.

Not only is this an intriguing reversal of the 1968-1969 story in which the ghost of Quentin caused Jamison’s spirit to possess David, it also picks up on some recent hints that they might retcon the whole “Haunting of Collinwood” story to put Quentin’s ghost under the control of Petofi. Even if he can’t hitch a ride with Barnabas, perhaps Petofi will find a way to use Quentin to go back to 1969 with us.

Nora (Denise Nickerson) is with her brother Jamison when the possession takes hold. She is puzzled that he insists on calling her “Amy” and himself “David” and that he tells her to call Quentin on the telephone, even though he is in the house. When Quentin shows up, he recognizes the name David Collins from something Barnabas has told him about the future. But Barnabas has not told Quentin that he is fated to become a family-annihilating ghost, and so Quentin cannot understand how David knows who he is.

Meanwhile, a man named Tim Shaw (Don Briscoe) comes to the house and visits Nora in her room. Tim is Amy’s former teacher, and she considers him a friend. She does not know that since she first knew him, he has lost his moral compass, found the severed Hand of Count Petofi, stolen it, and used its magical powers to make a small fortune in New York City. Evidently all working-class Collinsport boys get rich quick when they go to NYC. In 1961, ex-fisherman Burke Devlin got out of prison and went to that city. By the time he returned to Collinsport in 1966, Burke was a big-time corporate raider who had to think for a moment when David Collins asked him if he’d already made his first $100,000,000. He answered “Not yet.” If he’d had the Hand, no doubt he would have passed that milestone long before.

A couple of days ago, Tim asked Nora to hide a box for him. Unknown to her, the box contained the Hand. Tim asks Nora to return the box to him. She tells him Jamison has it, and he flies into a rage. He gets very rough with her. Briscoe and Nickerson were both good actors, and we’ve seen them share tender moments both as Nora and Tim and as Amy and Chris, so the resulting scene is as uncomfortable as it needs to be to show us that Tim is no longer the long-suffering nice guy we once knew. Moreover, longtime viewers who recognize Tim’s echo of Burke and remember that Burke, though sometimes villainous, was always good with David, will be shocked that Tim does not mirror the earlier character’s consistent soft spot for children.

Tim roughs Nora up. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Tim goes downstairs and sees Quentin coming out of the drawing room. He demands to see Jamison. Quentin tells him that Jamison is ill, and it will be impossible for anyone to talk to him. Tim starts to get ugly about it, and Quentin cuts him off, saying that Jamison doesn’t have the Hand. Tim is shocked that Quentin knows about the Hand, but recovers sufficiently to ask who does. Quentin cheerfully tells Tim that if he goes to the abandoned mill at the end of the North Road, he will find his onetime acquaintance Aristide, and that Aristide will direct him to the man who has the Hand.

Tim knows Aristide only slightly, but he has a grudge against him. Aristide attacked Tim’s girlfriend Amanda and demanded she tell him where the Hand was. Even after he realized Amanda did not know what he was talking about, he beat her and threatened to kill her, forcing her to tell him whatever she did know that would help him retrace Tim’s steps. When Tim found Amanda, Aristide had left her unconscious, and Tim feared at first she might be dead.

We cut to the hideout in the mill, where Tim is waiting with a pistol and thinking that he would be justified in killing Aristide for what he did to Amanda. When Aristide comes, Tim holds him at gunpoint and demands the Hand be returned to him. Aristide tells him that is not possible. They quarrel until another man enters. It is Petofi, who shows Tim that the Hand has resumed its place at the end of his right arm.

That suffices to show Tim that the Hand is no longer available to him. Petofi tells him he should consider himself lucky that the Hand, which followed no one’s commands, chose to make him rich and happy. Tim says he is not happy, and will not be until he can take revenge on the hypocritical Rev’d Gregory Trask and lawyer/ Satanist Evan Hanley. This again reminds longtime viewers of Burke, whose original goal in returning to Collinsport was to wreak vengeance on Roger Collins. As Trask and Evan involved Tim in a homicide when he was not in his right mind and tried to make him alone pay the legal penalty for it, so Roger killed someone with Burke’s car while Burke was passed out drunk in the back seat and saw to it that the court concluded that Burke was driving.

Petofi laughs and congratulates Tim on his choice of enemies. Tim brightens and asks if Petofi will join with him in bringing Trask and Evan down. Petofi explains that he does nothing without a price. Tim says he has a lot of money, and Petofi says he doesn’t have any use for money. Petofi brings up Amanda, only to say that he doesn’t have a use for her either, at least not at the moment. He sends Tim along his way.

Aristide is talking when Petofi dismisses him. He tells him that two visitors are coming, and that he wants to be alone when they arrive. He will not explain further, and so Aristide is in rather a huff when he leaves.

The visitors are Quentin and Jamison/ David. Quentin is carrying his nephew/ great-great-nephew. He demands that Petofi cure Jamison of the possession, which seems to be killing him. Petofi refuses. When Jamison/ David calls Quentin by name, Petofi asks him how a boy who lives in 1969 knows who he is. Quentin’s bewildered reaction leaves us wondering how he will respond if Barnabas ever tells him just why he went to the past.

In the opening teaser, Petofi stood over the coffin in which he has trapped Barnabas. He told Aristide that he and Barnabas have been at war for what even he, at his immense age, considers to be a very long time. He says that they are now engaged in the final battle of that war.

Petofi’s remarks make absolutely no sense whatever in the context of what we have seen. It has been clear so far that Petofi’s presence at Collinwood is an accident, that Barnabas never heard of him before, and that Petofi only just learned that Barnabas has traveled through time. Many of the oddest dead ends on the show were left over from advance plans that hadn’t worked out; so when they were drawing up broad outlines six months before taping, or when they were writing episode summaries (called “flimsies”) thirteen weeks before, they would often include ideas that depended on story points that they never got around to making happen or characters who never worked out. Once in a while, the writers tasked with filling in the flimsies wouldn’t be able to make up a complete 22 minute script without incorporating some of this irrelevant material. So perhaps at some point in the planning process they meant to have stories about Barnabas going back to the eighteenth century and fighting Petofi there. They may still have been kicking that idea around when they shot this installment.

Danny Horn closes his post about this episode at Dark Shadows Every Day with this little poem, which he attributes to Petofi (though it may remind some of Puck from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream):

If Dark Shadows has offended,
Think but this, and all is mended —
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And now, a word from All Temperature Cheer.

Danny Horn, “Episode 816: Midsummer,” posted 1 February 2016 at Dark Shadows Every Day.

Episode 815: The gentleman he appears to be

One night in 1797, nine Rroma men trapped sorcerer Count Petofi in the forest of Ojden. They amputated his right hand, and with it took most of his magical powers. Some time after, Petofi learned that he had exactly one hundred years to reattach the hand. If he managed it within that time, he would become immortal. Otherwise, he would die on the anniversary of the amputation.

Now that anniversary has come, and Petofi has succeeded in regaining his hand with only minutes to spare. Time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins and his distant cousin, desperately handsome werewolf Quentin, have decided that because Petofi’s spirit is in possession of Quentin’s twelve year old nephew Jamison and Jamison is as close to death as is Petofi himself, only by surrendering the hand to Petofi can they save the boy. Barnabas did get Petofi’s servant Aristide to promise to free Quentin of lycanthropy once he has the hand back, but he put little faith in that promise.

Now Petofi is jubilant and Jamison is still sick. Barnabas tells Petofi about the deal Aristide made, and also says that he wants Jamison and the rest of the Collinses to be freed from the ill effects Petofi has had on them. Petofi could not be less interested. Instead, he wants Barnabas to tell him how he traveled in time from 1969 and how he will travel back there.

Petofi lets slip that he is anxious to go to another period of history because he is afraid of the Rroma people who are still after him. We know, not only that it was Rroma who cut off his hand, but that when Petofi saw a young Rroma woman in a tavern in #794 he couldn’t get out fast enough. While it may have taken nine Rroma men to take his hand, evidently a single Rroma woman, and a tiny one at that, is capable of doing him considerable harm. Barnabas has a Rroma friend, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, who has considerable magic powers of her own, and he knows of a Romany band currently camped near Boston. So Petofi’s apparently well-founded ziganophobia is a sign that Barnabas may be able to defeat him, even though Petofi’s powers were formidable even before he was reunited with his hand.

Petofi says that he will cure Jamison only if Barnabas explains how he traveled to 1897 from 1969. Barnabas tells Petofi he has no idea how he made that journey. This is so. He meditated on some I Ching wands, a process which he was told might have any of an infinite number of effects, and found himself in 1897. Nor does he have any idea how to get back. He might have enlarged on the theme of his complete lack of useful knowledge in this area. In 1968, Barnabas traveled back to his original era, the 1790s, by going to the grave of a man named Peter Bradford on the anniversary of Bradford’s death. Bradford’s ghost had been haunting him, and Barnabas called for Bradford to take him back to the year 1796. After he did so, Barnabas found that he could return to the 1960s only by having himself sealed in his coffin and waiting inside it for 172 years until friends let him out. He doesn’t tell Petofi about that incident, but it does not seem likely to be of any more help to him than the story about the I Ching would be.

Petofi does not believe that Barnabas is so hapless. First he squeezes Barnabas’ hand, depriving him of the power to dematerialize. Then he opens a cupboard and tells Barnabas to look in it. It takes a while to warm up, but eventually it gets an ABC affiliate showing Dark Shadows. Barnabas sees the parlor of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood in 1969. His best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD, is sitting there reading a book. We haven’t seen Julia since #700, but she might be on our minds today. At one point Aristide lights his cigar on a candle burning in a large candelabra. In #296, Julia very memorably did the same thing with her cigarette.

Barnabas sees strange and troubled boy David Collins come staggering downstairs, raving deliriously about Quentin. Julia tells him to reject Quentin, who in 1969 is a ghost haunting Collinwood and draining the life from David. David passes out, and Julia injects him with a powerful sedative, as you do with unconscious children.

The cupboard loses the channel, and Barnabas asks Petofi what else is happening in 1969. Petofi cannot answer any questions; it quickly becomes clear that he couldn’t see or hear the scene. Barnabas is intrigued to learn of another of Petofi’s weaknesses, and walks out.

Aristide then speculates that Barnabas might be telling the truth. Petofi rejects this at once, reveals more of his cupboard’s limitations:

No, he’s not a fool, Aristide. He thinks he can win, accomplish whatever he wants to do here, and disappear without me…

Had Petofi ever seen even one episode of Dark Shadows, it would not occur to him to say that Barnabas is “not a fool.” Nor would he surmise that Barnabas is pursuing a plan that includes a plausible method of escape. If Barnabas had a plan of any kind, Petofi would know all about it, since it would have failed spectacularly the moment he took the first step towards putting it into effect.

Petofi and Aristide then go to the Old House. They find Magda there. At the moment, she is under Petofi’s power. Like Julia, Magda is played by Grayson Hall. We may have thought the glimpse into 1969 was a videotaped insert, but evidently it was done live, because Magda is not wearing her usual heavy brownface makeup. She may have a bit of an artificial tan, but Julia’s blue eyeshadow is clearly visible through it.

Magda, looking more like an actual Rroma woman than she ever has before.

Petofi forces Magda to lead her to Barnabas’ hiding place. He has a cross and Aristide has a chain and a padlock. Petofi puts the cross inside the coffin, and orders Aristide to chain the coffin closed. Petofi declares that Barnabas is in for a long journey.

Episode 770: We must give him a vampire

Vampire Barnabas Collins first appeared on Dark Shadows in #210 and quickly became the show’s main character and star attraction, but the word “vampire” was not uttered on-screen until #410, and thereafter was used quite sparingly for a long while. Those days are definitely behind us now; the characters say “vampire” eight times in this one.

Barnabas has traveled back in time to the year 1897, and is embroiled in a great many storylines, none of which he fully understands or has any idea of changing for the better. Yesterday, crazed groundskeeper Dirk Wilkins told twelve year old Jamison Collins (David Henesy) that Barnabas was a vampire, and Jamison, checking on his story, found an empty coffin in Barnabas’ basement. Today, Jamison tells his father, the stuffy Edward (Louis Edmonds,) what Dirk said and what he saw.

Edward comes to Barnabas’ house, repeats Jamison’s story, and asks to see the basement. Barnabas has hidden the coffin, but Edward tells him that he cannot dismiss the story so easily. A few weeks before, Edward discovered that Jamison’s mother Laura was an undead blonde fire witch bent on incinerating her children to renew her own existence; since that experience, he can no longer disregard claims about the supernatural. There have been a number of attacks on the estate of Collinwood and in the village of Collinsport which have left victims drained of blood and showing bite marks on their necks; he must take Jamison’s claims seriously. He is alone with Barnabas in his basement while explaining this to him, rather a foolhardy position in which to lay out to a man one’s grounds for suspecting that he is a vampire.

Edward, unfrightened. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Edward leaves. Barnabas is in a bind. Jamison’s children will be the adults at Collinwood in the 1960s, and they are the ones who accept Barnabas’ story that he is their distant cousin from England and give him the Old House on the estate to live in. If Jamison knows about him, it will hardly be likely that his children will be so welcoming. Even if he can reverse his journey through time, there will be no future for him to go back to. So he tells his blood thrall, maidservant Beth, that they must provide a vampire to take the blame for his earlier deeds and allay Jamison and Edward’s suspicions.

Barnabas thinks that he has already arranged a solution to this problem. He bit Dirk in order to shut him up and bring him under control, but apparently he over-ate. Dirk is not going to live through the night. When he dies, he will rise as a vampire. Barnabas and Beth will see to it that Dirk is caught and that he takes the fall for Barnabas’ crimes.

Barnabas has stashed Dirk in a secret room off the parlor of the Old House, a space behind the bookcase in the front parlor. Barnabas opens this space, intending to sit by Beth until they see Dirk die, only to find that it is too late- Dirk has wandered off.

Longtime viewers will find satisfactions in the reflections of earlier characters that run throughout this episode. The secret chamber in which Barnabas tried to keep Dirk is not a place which he has used before, but it first appeared on the show long before he did. In #115, another crazed servant, handyman Matthew Morgan, locked well-meaning governess Vicki up in the chamber, eventually attempting to kill her there. When Barnabas suddenly thinks of that chamber, he is emphasizing the echo of Matthew in Dirk’s rampage.

Edward’s fearlessness in standing alone before Barnabas in his basement and telling him that he suspects he may be a vampire is also something we have seen before. From November 1967 to March 1968, when Dark Shadows was set in the 1790s, Louis Edmonds played haughty overlord Joshua Collins. In #446, Joshua found his son Barnabas rising from his coffin in this same basement and confronted him about his bad behavior. When Barnabas moved to kill him, Joshua glared at him and Barnabas slunk away in shame. Edward is quite different from Joshua; on the one hand he lacks the earlier man’s sense of enterprise and drive for power, while on the other he is far more loving towards his children and quicker to set aside his individual pride for the sake of family unity. But we can see that he does share his kinsman’s ability to fend off vampire attacks by insisting on good manners.

The most fully developed echo is of #333. In that episode, set in contemporary times, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy,) had seen a coffin in Barnabas’ basement. Connecting that with an abundance of other readily available evidence, David concluded that Barnabas was a vampire. David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds,) refused to consider such a notion. When local men Burke and Dave went to Barnabas’ house and demanded to search the basement, he initially resisted. At length he led them downstairs. The coffin was not there. Burke and Dave went back to the great house of Collinwood, and Roger crowed with triumph that they had been so silly as to take David’s story seriously. Embarrassed, Burke and Dave asked David if he might have made the whole thing up.

Barnabas may have had this incident in mind, and with it a hope that by showing Edward the empty basement he would embarrass him as he had embarrassed Burke and Dave, perhaps turning him into the same kind of ally that Roger was in 1967. But Edward is made of sterner stuff, and he sheds light on what was in the minds of the makers of the show.

Laura was another iteration of the show’s first supernatural menace. From December 1966 to March 1967, we learned that David’s mother, Laura Murdoch Collins, was a humanoid Phoenix who had returned from the dead to incinerate him along with herself and thereby renew her existence. Roger eventually came face to face with that fact and made himself marginally useful in the effort to stop her. Afterward, he was shocked out of his habit of openly expressing hatred for David, and eventually even showed a modicum of affection and concern for the boy. But he quickly snapped back into the Collins family’s traditional attitude of denial that the supernatural could have any role in human events, and he would not be budged from this denial.

The Laura we saw in 1897 was a violent retcon of many of the most important features of the story we saw in 1966 to 1967, and as Jamison’s mother she implies that Roger married his own grandmother. So it seemed inexplicable that the makers of the show would choose to introduce her. It is when Edward explains that his experience with Laura has opened his mind to the possibility of dangers intruding from the world of the supernatural, that we understand why they did it. They are showing us that Edward is on a continuum about halfway between Joshua and Roger.

Joshua was in a way too strong for his world to support, so that he defeated his own aims and produced tragedies for all those he meant to elevate. By contrast, Roger is like one of Nietzsche’s “Last Men,” what nowadays some call “cage-stage,” a person who is so degenerated he cannot exist on his own or create anything lasting but can be happy in captivity. Edward does not have Joshua’s anomalous strength; like Roger, he lives in his sister’s house as her guest and works for her business as an employee. But neither does he have Roger’s cowardly inability to face facts or his vicious glee in the humiliation of others. He is brave enough and strong enough and fair-minded enough to represent a grave threat to Barnabas.

Episode 767: Birthdays are for people who get older

For the first several months of Dark Shadows, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard made no attempt to conceal her loathing of her young cousin, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy.) That changed at the beginning of 1967, during the storyline centered on David’s mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Laura cast a spell that caused Carolyn’s mother, reclusive matriarch Liz (Joan Bennett,) to enter a catatonic state. When that happened, Carolyn assumed responsibility for the family’s properties and enterprises. In that position, Carolyn took on a new maturity, and the capricious and often thoughtlessly cruel character we knew in the early days was gone forever.

Laura went up in smoke in March 1967, and the next month vampire Barnabas Collins succeeded her as the show’s supernatural menace. The adults in the great house of Collinwood- Liz, Carolyn, David’s father Roger, and well-meaning governess Vicki- were all taken with Barnabas. Liz gave him the Old House on the estate to live in, and none of them could see the abundant evidence that their distant cousin was a bloodsucking ghoul from beyond the grave. But the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah appeared to David and led him to suspect that something was off about the new arrival. By late September, David had all but solved the puzzle, and was trying to get the grownups to see the obvious.

In #335, broadcast in October 1967, a psychiatrist named Dr Fisher came from Boston to examine David. Dr Fisher explained Sarah as an imaginary friend David had created in his attempt to control the fear of death he had developed after seeing his mother burn up, and his claim that Barnabas was an undead monster as that fear reasserting itself. We know that this is entirely wrong as far as David goes, but it does go a long way towards explaining the appeal Dark Shadows has for its audience.

In November 1967, Vicki came unstuck in time and Dark Shadows turned into a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. When she came home and the show returned to contemporary dress in March 1968, David’s understanding of Barnabas and the resulting danger Barnabas would kill David, which had been the chief driving force of the action when she left, had been forgotten. Later that month Barnabas was freed from the effects of the vampire curse, and he set about fighting other uncanny monsters.

Now we are in the fourteenth week of the show’s second major costume drama segment. In late 1968 and early 1969, the malign ghost of Quentin Collins ruined things for everyone. David was under his possession and on the point of death when Barnabas decided the time had come to sit in his basement, throw some I Ching wands, and meditate on them. As a result, he found himself in the year 1897, when Quentin was a living being.

Barnabas has again managed to install himself as master of the Old House, though the Collinses of 1897 are a much less trusting lot than are their descendants in the 1960s. Barnabas and Quentin are becoming friends, but Quentin is increasingly irritated with Barnabas’ refusal to tell him anything about himself beyond the cover story that he concocted when he arrived. The owner of the house, spinster Judith Collins (Joan Bennett,) is more or less satisfied with that story, but her nephew and presumptive heir, twelve year old Jamison Collins (David Henesy,) has come to share Quentin’s belief that there is far more to Barnabas than meets the eye.

Today, Judith approaches Barnabas with a question. She says that Jamison has awoken from a terrible nightmare, and that while he was thrashing about in bed he called out “David Collins is dead!” This comes as a shock to Barnabas, suggesting a message from the future that he has already failed in his weird mission.

Judith has never heard of anyone named “David Collins” and can find no record of such a person, and asks Barnabas if he, who seems to know so much about the family history, has ever heard of an ancestor with that name. This will be of interest to longtime viewers. In #153, it was established that David was the first of his name in the Collins family, and that his mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura, had insisted on calling him that. This would eventually become evidence that Laura’s evil plans for David were in place long before he was born. But in #288, David would see a portrait of a long-forgotten ancestor named “David Collins” in an old volume, and would wonder if he was named for him. The name “David” had such a profound significance in the Laura story that it seemed like a major retcon when David delivered the line, but nothing came of it. Another iteration of Laura was on the show recently, and it seems we are back to the original understanding of how David got his name.

Shaken, Barnabas says that “David Collins is no one who exists!” Judith reacts to his obvious shock and his odd phraseology with the suspicion you would expect it to elicit, but still urges Barnabas to talk with Jamison. By the time she gets the boy to the drawing room, Quentin has joined Barnabas there and is sniping at him about his interest in the family. When Barnabas asks Judith and Quentin to leave him alone with Jamison, Quentin resists, demanding to know why they can’t stay. Barnabas doesn’t give much of an explanation, and it seems to be only Judith’s unwillingness to let Quentin win any argument that leads her to insist that Barnabas get his way.

As it turns out, the reason Judith and Quentin had to leave is that the dream will be played for us as a flashback, and Joan Bennett and David Selby feature in it. We have seen a great many dream sequences on Dark Shadows, but this is the first time one has been presented in retrospect while the dreamer is telling us about it. All previous dream sequences have begun with a character in bed and have shared that character’s experience with us. Several times, including the countless sequences during the “Dream Curse” storyline of April to July 1968, there was a vague possibility that the person would either die during the dream or wake from it irreversibly changed. So even longtime viewers might be surprised when Jamison sits down with Barnabas, starts talking, and we find ourselves in his dream.

Jamison doesn’t know it, but his dream is set in 1969. After Quentin’s ghost made the great house uninhabitable, the family took refuge in the Old House. Jamison goes to its basement, where he sees Barnabas immobilized before the I Ching wands. Unable to get his attention, he goes upstairs to the front parlor, where Carolyn, Liz, and Roger are preparing a birthday party for David. Carolyn is opposed to the exercise. She manipulates a hand puppet while making unpleasant remarks in a high-pitched voice, and says that “Birthdays are for people who get older!” Evidently time is passing in 1969 while Barnabas is struggling with his mission in 1897.

When Vicki was in the 1790s from November 1967 to March 1968, we did not catch any glimpses of the period she had left. Only for a few minutes immediately after she vanished and a few more immediately before she reappeared did we see the drawing room at the great house, and those minutes represented the whole passage of time the contemporary characters experienced during the four months of Vicki’s absence. We’ve already been in 1897 longer than we were in 1795-1796 then, and Jamison’s dream suggests that contemporary time is passing more rapidly now. Since David was within hours of death when Barnabas departed so many weeks ago, his prognosis would seem grim.

The dream is one longtime viewers can imagine David having. Carolyn has been friendly to her little cousin since early 1967, but she was so nasty to him in 1966 that he might well imagine her being impatient with his failure to finish dying sooner. Roger was even more openly hostile to David in those days, and only began to show normal fatherly feeling for him after he realized that he had narrowly escaped death at Laura’s hands. But even though David returned Roger’s open hatred and tried to kill him, he did after all retain a wish for a healthier relationship with him, and so it is not surprising that Roger would appear in a dream of his as someone wishing him well.

David wonders where Barnabas and Quentin are. The adults say that Barnabas is away, but do not recognize Quentin’s name. Roger looks Quentin up in a volume of family history, and finds that there is no entry for him. He declares that this means that there can never have been any such person. Again, if we think of this as a dream of David’s that has intruded itself onto Jamison’s consciousness, it makes sense that Roger, and for that matter Liz and Carolyn, are clueless about what is really going on around them.

Roger can find no reference to Quentin in the family history. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin appears, at first as the unspeaking ghost he was in when we first saw him from December 1968 to March 1969. Roger, Liz, and Carolyn vanish, and David talks with Quentin. Quentin says that the Roger, Liz, and Carolyn could not see him because he is dead, and that David can see him because he will soon be dead.

Quentin tells David that his own death was preceded by three events, and that if he had understood the significance of any of those events at the time he might have survived. The first event was the discovery of a silver bullet at Collinwood. The second was the murder of someone who might have been able to help him. The third was the turning of the one person he truly loved against Quentin; when that happened “there was almost no time left for Quentin Collins.”

Jamison asks Barnabas what the dream means. Barnabas claims not to know. Jamison replies that he thinks Barnabas knows exactly what it means, and is very upset with him for refusing to share his knowledge. In #660, David had said that “Barnabas knows lots of things he doesn’t tell anyone”; Jamison has already caught on to this same fact.

One of the people with whom Barnabas will not share his knowledge is Quentin. Even though Quentin’s ghost explicitly said in Jamison’s dream that his own demise could have been prevented, and Barnabas’ mission therefore completed, had he known about the three upcoming events, Barnabas flatly refuses to tell Quentin about them. Even when the silver bullet is discovered at Collinwood at the end of the episode, Barnabas still will not pass the dream’s warning on to Quentin.

Instead, Barnabas reenacts Dr Fisher’s part from #335. He seizes in Jamison’s description of the 1960s wardrobe he saw David, Roger, Liz, and Carolyn wearing, and says that it is the key- it shows that the whole scene is a masquerade. As Dr Fisher had said that Sarah Collins was an imaginary figure David had fabricated to contain the fear of death that had afflicted him since he saw his mother Laura die, so Barnabas claims that David Collins is a figure Jamison has fabricated to contain the fear of death that had afflicted him since he saw his mother Laura die. As Dr Fisher’s interpretation was all wrong in-universe but was quite plausible as an explanation of the audience’s responses to the show, so Barnabas’ interpretation is a grotesque lie in-universe but is quite plausible as writer Violet Welles’ description of the creative process that led to the decision to reuse Laura in the 1897 segment of the show. It allows them to pair David with Jamison and Roger with Edward, comparing and contrasting their personalities.

Episode 731: Your greatest weakness

One of the first “Big Bads” on Dark Shadows was crazed handyman Matthew Morgan, played by Thayer David. Matthew was the most devoted employee of reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett.) Matthew took his devotion to Liz to such an extreme that he was a menace to everyone else. In November and December of 1966, we learned that Matthew had decided that Liz’ second most dedicated employee, plant manager Bill Malloy, was a threat to her. Matthew had tried to put a stop to Bill’s doings. Not knowing his own strength, Matthew accidentally killed Bill. When well-meaning governess Victoria Winters discovered what had happened, Matthew abducted Victoria, held her prisoner in the long-deserted Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, and was about to murder her when a bunch of ghosts emanated from the show’s supernatural back-world and scared him to death.

In those days, Dark Shadows was a slow-paced “Gothic” drama set in contemporary times. From November 1967 to March 1968, it was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and its plot often moved at a breakneck speed. Among the characters then was much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes, who like Matthew was played by Thayer David. At first Ben made a stark contrast with Matthew. He was as relaxed, friendly, and reasonable as Matthew was tense, forbidding, and paranoid. But when his one ally among the Collins family, scion Barnabas, was cursed to become a vampire, Ben’s devotion made him resemble Matthew ever more closely. In his development, we saw a retrospective reimagining of Matthew. The curses that were placed on Barnabas and the rest of the Collinses from the 1790s on had burdened the village of Collinsport, and people who grew up there labored under the consequences of those curses and of the Collinses’ attempts to conceal them. Ben was what Matthew might have been had he not been warped by the evil that began when black magic was first practiced in the area so many generations before.

In January 1969, the show briefly returned to 1796, to a time coinciding with the last days of the earlier flashback. We saw that by that point, the curses had already transformed life on and around the great estate. In that period, Ben’s efforts to protect Barnabas led him inadvertently to kill a man, not knowing his own strength, and then to cover that crime up by killing a woman, not at all inadvertently. He had become Matthew. The curse placed on Barnabas had become the curse of all those who work for the Collinses and all of those who live in the shadow of their wealth and power.

Before Matthew, Dark Shadows‘ chief villain was high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds); after, it was Roger’s estranged wife, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins (Diana Millay.) In this episode, the makers of the show take a page from its 1790s flashbacks. They have Edmonds and Millay reconceive the Roger and Laura of that atmospheric, sometimes almost action-free soap as characters appropriate to the fast-paced supernatural thriller it now is.

Since #701, Dark Shadows has been set in the year 1897. Louis Edmonds plays Roger’s grandfather Edward; Diana Millay plays Edward’s estranged wife, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. In his days as a villain, Roger’s defining characteristic was his unnatural lack of family feeling. He had squandered his entire inheritance, a fact which did not bother him in the least. When his sister Liz confronted him in #41 about the difficulties he had created by putting his half of the family business up for sale, he airily replied that he had enjoyed his inheritance. When in #273 Liz and Roger discussed a blackmail plot of which she had been the victim, Roger admitted that had he known her terrible secret, he probably would have used it to force her to give him her half of the estate so that he could squander that, as well.

It wasn’t only the family’s material possessions and Liz’ right to them to which Roger was indifferent. He openly hated his son, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy.) He continually insulted David, badgered Liz to send David away, and in #83 coldly manipulated David’s fears to lead him to try to murder Victoria.

In the 1897 segment, Edward is as stuffily serious about the family business as Roger was in 1966 nihilistically apathetic about it. Edward loves his children, twelve year old Jamison (David Henesy) and nine year old Nora, but his rage at Laura has come between himself and them. Laura left Edward the year before to run after Edward’s brother, breezy libertine Quentin (David Selby.) Edward tried to conceal the fact that his brother cuckolded him. He has repeatedly declared that Laura “No longer exists!” and has forbidden her name to be mentioned in the house.

Edward trapped between the enigmatic Laura and the exuberant Quentin. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For his part, Quentin bears a striking similarity to the early, wicked Roger. He wants money only to spend it, a fact which he cheerfully admits. He tried to forge a will in his grandmother Edith’s name to cheat his sister Judith (Joan Bennett) out of her inheritance, having previously threatened to kill Edith. He does have great affection for Jamison, but since he often uses the boy as a pawn in Satanic ceremonies, his fondness for his nephew is not much of an improvement over Roger’s hatred for his son. Indeed, Quentin’s resemblance to Roger connects the 1897 segment not only to the early months of the show, but also to the weeks immediately preceding it. Early in 1969, Quentin’s ghost had taken possession of David Collins and was causing him to die. When we see that Quentin is now what Roger was originally, David’s ordeal takes on a new dimension. He is dying for the sins of his father.

In this episode, Laura has returned. Edward has offered her a great deal of money to go away and never come back; she refuses. She threatens to tell the world about her relationship with Quentin if Edward does not let her stay at Collinwood. Edward buckles to this blackmail. Laura tells him that “Family pride is your greatest weakness,” making him Roger’s exact opposite.

When Laura was at Collinwood from December 1966 to March 1967, her old boyfriend Burke Devlin kept pestering her with his suspicion that he, not Roger, was David Collins’ father. Burke was not the first character to bring this idea up. Roger had mentioned it to Liz in #32, when they were talking about an attempt David had made to kill Roger. At that time, Liz was horrified that Roger seemed to want to believe that David was Burke’s natural son.

It seems unlikely that Quentin is Jamison’s father. They have been firm about 1870 as Quentin’s date of birth, and in 1897 Jamison is quite plainly twelve. Laura may have gone on to marry her own grandson, but it would be a bit of a stretch for her to have started sleeping with her brother-in-law when he was fifteen, even if he did look like David Selby.

But Roger’s anger and jealousy about Burke and Laura do mirror Edward’s about Quentin and Laura. It was abundantly clear that Roger and Burke’s deepest pain regarding Laura was that their intense attachment to each other was disrupted when she left Burke for Roger; Diana Millay used her gift for dry comedy to make this explicit in a scene the three of them played in the groundskeeper’s cottage in #139. Likewise, Edward’s frustration with and disappointment in his brother is at least as deep a source of anguish to him as is his loss of Laura’s love.

Laura, too, is quite different this time around. The first Laura story took shape gradually over a period of weeks, as Laura herself emerged from the mist. Now Laura is a forceful presence from her first appearance. Originally we heard that Laura had married into several of the leading families of the Collinsport region; now they have given up on the idea of developing other leading families, and Laura just keeps coming back to the Collinses. In the first story, they laid great emphasis on the interval of precisely one hundred years between her appearances; now, the number of years doesn’t seem to have any particular significance. As we go, we will see an even more important difference. When we first met Laura, she was utterly determined to make her way into a pyre so that she could rise as a humanoid Phoenix; now she is unhappy about the whole thing, and angry with people who have helped her on her fiery way.

Edward lets Laura live in the cottage where Roger and Liz would put her in 1966. In the final scene, she goes there and finds Quentin, drunk and trying to conjure up an evil spirit. Quentin keeps telling Laura that she is dead. Frustrated with her persistent refusal to concur with this statement, Quentin puts his hands around her neck and announces that whether or not she is dead now, she will be by the time he gets through with her.

Roger was uncharacteristically sober at the beginning of his three-scene in the cottage with Burke and Laura in #139, but he did enter brandishing a fire-arm. So Quentin’s homicidal intentions on this set further cement his affiliation with his great-nephew in the eyes of longtime viewers.

Millay and Edmonds are not the only actors whose screen iconography the show turns to advantage today. We first saw Kathryn Leigh Scott and Don Briscoe together in #638, when she was playing ex-waitress Maggie Evans and he was playing mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. They met in the foyer at Collinwood. Maggie was angry with Chris, and Chris was guilt-ridden. Today, Miss Scott plays governess Rachel Drummond and Briscoe plays teacher Tim Shaw. They meet in the foyer at Collinwood. Rachel is angry with Tim, and Tim is guilt-ridden.

Though the same actors are playing the same basic emotions on the same set, the situations are different, and the characters are very different. Maggie is Dark Shadows‘ principal representative of the working class of the village of Collinsport. She speaks directly and bluntly, using the plainest language she can to dare Chris to try to excuse his inexcusable behavior. Chris occupies a lowly and unsettled place in the world, and he dodges her gaze and evades her questions, saying as little as he can, almost mumbling.

But Rachel is a neurotic intellectual, and she expresses her anger in complex sentences featuring vocabulary that only a very well-read person would have used in 1897 (for example, the word “sadist.”) Tim retreats from her anger into a defense of his job that quickly devolves into the tiredest platitudes imaginable. At one point he actually intones “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” Miss Scott makes Rachel’s highly literate onslaught on Tim as forceful as was Maggie’s unvarnished challenge to Chris, and Briscoe makes Tim’s pompous posturing as pitiable as was Chris’ broken burbling. Writer Gordon Russell must have been delighted that the actors did such good work with his ambitious pages.

Episode 726: A boy’s dislike

When Dark Shadows began in June 1966, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) was frantically afraid that he would be sent away from the great house of Collinwood. In #10, David overheard his father Roger (Louis Edmonds) telling his aunt Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett) that they ought to do just that. As the owner of the house and holder of all the family’s wealth, it is up to Liz to make the decision. Hearing his father press to send him away, David responded by sabotaging the brakes on Roger’s car, nearly killing him.

Roger told Liz that David belonged in an “institution,” but David was just as terrified when it was suggested that he might go to an ordinary school. It was not entirely clear why he had this attitude. David and Roger had only lived in the vast gloomy house for a few weeks when the show started. Roger openly hated David, as did Liz’ daughter Carolyn. Liz loved him, but as a recluse and an aging grande dame had little in common with a young boy. Moreover, David hated his governess, the well-meaning Vicki, as much as he could hate any school. His mother, who did not live in the house and whose name was in those days was never to be mentioned there, was the only person for whom David expressed fondness; when in #15 David watched Roger drive off in the car whose brakes he had sabotaged, we saw him standing by himself, saying “He’s going to die, mother. He’s going to die!” So it is difficult to see why David was so intensely committed to staying at Collinwood.

Today, we see a suggestion that David may have been influenced by an ancestral memory of bad times at a boarding school. It is 1897, and David’s grandfather Jamison Collins (David Henesy) is twelve. Jamison’s father Edward (Louis Edmonds) has asked the Rev’d Mr Gregory Trask to come to Collinwood to urge his sister, Judith Collins (Joan Bennett,) to send Jamison and his nine-year old sister Nora to be students at Worthington Hall, a boarding school Trask runs. As the house’s owner and holder of all the family’s wealth, it is up to Judith to make the decision.

Trask wins Judith’s confidence by performing a ceremony after which Jamison and her brother, Jamison’s uncle Quentin, are restored to themselves after a spell that had made Quentin a zombie and put his spirit in possession of Jamison. Recently arrived, thoroughly mysterious distant cousin Barnabas Collins sputters with rage at the very sight of Trask, and exasperates Judith with his insistence that Trask is evil. Judith does not trust Barnabas, and Barnabas’ inability to either explain or contain his hostility only confirms her favorable judgment of Trask.

Once Quentin and Jamison are themselves again, Trask sends Barnabas and Quentin out of the drawing room. Quentin raises his eyebrows in response to Trask’s order and asks his sister “Are you sure you’re still in charge of this house, Judith?” She does not respond.

Judith makes a remark about Quentin’s influence on Jamison, saying that “He’s been like this ever since [Quentin] came home.” Since Jamison was just freed from possession a few minutes before, it is unclear what she could mean, and Jamison objects “That’s not true!” Trask unctuously replies “Now, your aunt does not tell lies, Jamison.” Returning viewers know that Judith lies constantly. Nor is Trask unaware that Judith is less than perfectly truthful. When he first arrived in Friday’s episode, Judith and Barnabas tried to conceal the situation with Quentin and Jamison from him, and she told a series of lies in pursuit of that objective.

When Jamison continues his attempts to tell the truth, Trask silences him with “Now, there is only one who is constantly right, Jamison, and He is not on this earth, but above. Now, I want you to go out into the hall and consider all the wonderful things your aunt has done for you recently. I am sure you will have much to think about.” Jerry Lacy brings such an inflexible authority to Trask’s personality that we cannot imagine a rebuttal to this sanctimonious little speech. We share Jamison’s helplessness and frustration.

Alone with Trask, Judith agrees to let him take Jamison and Nora to Worthington Hall. Jamison barges back in and declares that he will not go. Trask assures him that he will not take him unless he is willing to go. He then obtains Judith’s permission to talk with Jamison alone in his room.

While Jamison is taking Trask upstairs, we cut to the study. Quentin and Barnabas are alone there. Quentin asks Barnabas if Trask really was his “savior.” Barnabas replies “Apparently.” Quentin asks Barnabas what he thinks really happened; he sidesteps the question. Quentin keeps probing for Barnabas’ interpretation of his recent experience; Barnabas alludes to Quentin’s adventures in Satanism, saying “You dabble in odd things, perhaps one of your interests resulted in this.” Quentin observes that this is “Delicately put,” and goes on to remark on “what an interesting life” he has had.

Barnabas then takes his turn as the questioner. He asks Quentin about his wife, a tall, beautiful, homicidally crazed woman named Jenny who is being held prisoner somewhere in the house. Quentin grows tense, and does not give direct answers. He explodes at Barnabas, saying that he has no interest in making a friend of him. Barnabas observes that he has in fact made an effort to turn him into an enemy; Quentin interjects “Your fault!” Barnabas says they could be useful to each other; Quentin exclaims “Wrong!” When he thinks of Barnabas, Quentin says, only one question comes to mind- “What does he want from me?”

Jonathan Frid said that his favorite scene in Dark Shadows was one he had with Anthony George in #301. Barnabas tells local man Burke Devlin that their relationship to each other is like that of “two superb swordsmen with highly sharpened blades. You thrust, and I parry. I thrust, you parry.” That scene has never impressed me. The Barnabas/ Burke conflict did not have enough grounding in the story to come to life, and having the characters tell the audience that they were like “superb swordsmen” does not make it so. But this showdown really does pay off. Barnabas and Quentin are the show’s two great breakout stars, and we are in the middle of a long run of episodes where everything works. This scene brings out all the values they might have hoped that Burke and Barnabas’ confrontation would put on screen when they planned it.

We return to Jamison’s room, the same bedroom David Collins occupied in the 1960s. Trask is still being friendly. When Jamison says that he would miss his pony if he had to go away to Worthington Hall, Trask says “You must bring him with you!” When Jamison refuses to tell Trask his pony’s name, the friendliness vanishes. Trask darkens, tells him “You’re going to have to learn to answer questions, boy,” and insists they pray together. When Jamison resists, Trask tells him that he must change his ways lest he go on being a disappointment to his father. Jamison protests that his father loves him, and Trask asks incredulously “Does he?” He asks Jamison if he wants his soul to be saved. Jamison can’t very well say anything but yes to that, and so Trask says “Then I think I can help you.” Jamison is trapped.

After a scene in the drawing room where Quentin demands Judith tell him where Jenny is locked up, we return to Jamison’s room. The scene begins with a closeup of the rope belt of Jamison’s robe. Jamison is retying it. He keeps fiddling with it, perhaps a nervous habit, but it is the first thing we see and they hold the shot for a long time. We cannot but wonder whether the belt was untied at some point while Jamison and Trask were alone off camera.

Trask orders Jamison to tell Judith that he wants to go to Worthington Hall; Jamison says he will not. The dialogue does not explain how Jamison’s robe came undone, and neither he nor Trask seems concerned with the matter. Their blasé attitude turns an uncomfortable image into a lingering mystery.

In the drawing room, Trask announces to Judith that Jamison has something to say. Jamison says that Trask threatened him and tried to make him lie. Trask says that Judith will have to find another school for him, and she declares that she will not. Jamison will go to Worthington Hall.

Trask exits. Jamison finds Quentin and asks him to help him escape the grim fate in store for him. Quentin promises to do so, and by the end of the episode Jamison will be safely hidden somewhere in the house. Meanwhile, Barnabas throws a fit before Judith, saying that he cannot understand why “You would believe that maniac before you believe Jamison.” Judith scolds him and tells him to treat Trask with respect.

Trask returns. Barnabas asks him if his family is from Salem, Massachusetts. Trask affirms that it is so. Barnabas claims to have seen ink drawings of a Rev’d Trask who was at Collinwood in the 1790s; Trask says that he was his ancestor. He says that the earlier Rev’d Trask disappeared shortly after leaving Collinwood, and that his disappearance was never explained.

Longtime viewers know that Barnabas is a vampire who lived in the 1790s, and that the original Trask is one of those he blames for the many misfortunes that befell the family in those days, including his own transformation into a bloodsucking abomination. We remember the first Trask as a case study of a type much on people’s minds in the 1960s, Eric Hoffer’s “True Believer.” That Trask was so deeply and unshakably convinced of his own understanding of the situation around him that when he set out on a witch hunt, the real witch was easily able to manipulate him into doing her work for her. Barnabas murdered the original Trask in #442 by bricking him up in an alcove, one of the most famous moments in all of Dark Shadows. He seems pleased to hear that people are still wondering what became of the late witchfinder.

Gregory Trask seems to be a different sort. He can change his tune in a way that his forebear never could, putting on a friendly mask when it serves his interests to do so. While the original Trask was single-mindedly trying to live up to his own twisted idea of virtue, the second sometimes responds to bad news with a delighted grin, suggesting that he sees an opportunity to profit from it. The first Trask’s fanaticism sometimes led him to hypocrisy, when he thought that his ends were so good that they justified dishonest means, but this Trask seems to be a hypocrite who has kidded himself into acting like a fanatic. Mr Lacy’s performance makes him a formidable presence; the writers have made him a powerful adversary.

Episode 691: Too late to be afraid

Throughout its first 73 weeks, Dark Shadows was usually very slow-paced, even by the standards of a 1960s daytime soap. Major characters like matriarch Liz and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, often seemed to exist solely for the purpose of refusing to accept the facts in front of their faces and thereby slowing down the progression of the plot. Even characters who did face facts would often as not have the memory of goldfish, so that weeks of character development would evaporate with a sudden display of inexplicable ignorance.

That changed when well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time in #365. For the next few months, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and events came thick and fast. When Vicki returned to the present and Dark Shadows returned to contemporary dress in March 1968, the show was a genuine hit. They tried to sustain the breakneck pace of the 1790s segment throughout 1968, with mixed success. That period was a Monster Mash, featuring multiple witches, vampires, mad scientists, Frankensteins, ghosts, and the Devil himself, or perhaps one of his middle managers. That attracted a new audience of preteen viewers, but all too often left the characters spinning their wheels as they tried to make room for each other within one small fishing village near Bangor, Maine.

A few months ago, they dumped all of those larger than life but ultimately unproductive figures and started concentrating on two storylines. The A story so far has been that of werewolf Chris and the efforts old world gentleman Barnabas and mad scientist Julia have made to keep him from killing quite so many people. That one has been moving along at a steady clip.

The B story has not progressed nearly as fast. At times, it has matched the leisurely pace of the show’s early days. Today is dedicated to that story, and in today’s pre-title teaser it appears that it has brought narrative progression to a total halt.

Maggie is the new governess in the great house of Collinwood, charged with the education of Chris’ nine year old sister Amy and of strange and troubled boy David. As usual, we open with a reprise of the previous episode. This time, the reprise is 5 minutes and 45 seconds of Maggie wandering around the house looking for the children and hearing voices, while doors open themselves. That was OK at the end of Friday’s installment, but on its own it is stupefying.

The story is that the evil spirit of the late Quentin is taking possession of David and Amy in order to destroy the Collins family and have the house to itself. It made sense that that story would start slow. Quentin was at first very weak. He existed only in a sealed chamber the children stumbled upon while exploring the long deserted west wing, and could influence events outside that chamber only by persuading them to do his bidding. He gradually gained the power to control one child at a time, and to manifest himself outside his little room. A while ago he was able to put strychnine into Chris’ drink; by the end of Friday’s episode he had Amy and David under his power simultaneously.

Once the action finally gets underway in today’s episode, Quentin is about to strangle Maggie and the children are screaming at him to stop. Housekeeper Mrs Johnson and Liz enter the room. Mrs Johnson sees Quentin, Liz does not. Maggie is unconscious and the children are in a state. By the end of the episode, Liz, Maggie, and Mrs Johnson know Quentin’s name, his plan, and his power. He has managed to create some kind of bubble around the house so that the people inside it cannot hear the rain. The children pass out. David comes to, and announces that it is too late to be afraid. He laughs maniacally, and in the background we also hear Quentin’s laughter.

Quentin no longer needs to hide from Liz and Mrs Johnson. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

With this slam-bang ending, the Haunting of Collinwood takes over as the A story and Liz forever sheds her role as a blocking figure. This phase of the show is approaching its climax, and there is a chance that what comes next will be exciting.