dream sequence – Dark Shadows Commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Dappy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

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

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

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

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

Episode 1072: Who do you think is watching you?

Teen orphan Hallie Stokes has gone to stay in the great house of Collinwood, a logical place for her since an ancestor of hers was an indentured servant there 174 years ago. I’m not sure where my ancestors were indentured servants 174 years ago, but now that I know the information comes with free room and board in mansions you can bet I’ll be looking into it.

Hallie was eavesdropping on a conversation among some adults in the drawing room. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins recently returned from an inexplicable journey through time and space with warnings of an undefined disaster that will be happening later in this year, 1970. Hallie has gone to visit the other teenager in the house, grouchy New Englander David Collins. David greets her with a warning that if his governess catches them alone in his bedroom after dark, “I’m in for it.” David has been on the show from week one, and this indication that there are rules against him having sleepovers with girls is the first acknowledgment that he is not a small child.

Hallie reports on the conversation she heard, much to David’s irritation. She then says she can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching her. At that, Barnabas’ voice comes from the door asking who she thinks is watching her. She is afraid of Barnabas and wants to get back to her own room as quickly as possible. That’s a sign of healthy instincts, since Barnabas is a vampire, but he really did find evidence that a disaster is coming and he really is trying to save everyone by preventing it. He lets Hallie go, and bids a relaxed good night to David.

I wonder what could possibly be making Hallie nervous. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Barnabas and his friend, Dr Julia Hoffman, returned from the distant future year of 1995, the first people they met were matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and roguishly handsome anomaly Quentin Collins. They told Liz and Quentin everything they knew right away, and today Barnabas gives another complete debriefing to Hallie’s uncle, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. So we might think that the characters have finally learned that keeping secrets unnecessarily just prevents people working together to solve their problems and we are finally going to let the story flow. But no such luck. Liz’ daughter Carolyn was a pivotal figure in 1995, but for no reason they bother to specify Barnabas decides to withhold all information from her today.

They do give a reason for Barnabas’ failure to tell Hallie anything about what he saw in 1995. Quentin told Barnabas yesterday that Hallie is psychologically fragile and couldn’t take any disturbing news. But since she just winds up eavesdropping and getting some alarming facts with no context and no indication that there is anything she can do to help the situation, this backfires. What is more, it was predictable it would happen. David scolds Hallie for eavesdropping, prompting her to point out that he is an inveterate eavesdropper himself. Everyone in the house has known this about David for four years, so there is simply no excuse for expecting that the adolescents will stay in the dark about what is being discussed in the drawing room.

Perhaps the oddest moment of the episode comes when Barnabas is talking to Stokes. He tells him that he and Julia saw Hallie’s ghost in 1995, looking exactly as she does now, suggesting that her death is imminent if she remains at Collinwood. Stokes, who seems remarkably cheerful about the whole thing, says with a bright smile “Perhaps I should take her away!” Barnabas says that no, “I wouldn’t do that.” He explains that it might upset Liz if they did so. Since he just told Liz the whole horrible story yesterday, it seems a bit late to make shielding her from distressing news one’s top priority, but Stokes goes along with it.

David has a dream in which Hallie is wearing an old-fashioned long orange dress with puffy sleeves. He does not know it, but this was the dress Julia and Barnabas saw a girl wearing in 1995. This girl was a ghost who looked exactly like Hallie but was named Carrie, and who danced a minuet with a boy who looked exactly like David but was named Tad. Later, Hallie finds Carrie’s dress laid out on her bed.

In late 1968 and early 1969, Quentin was an evil ghost who took control of David and his friend Amy Jennings as the first step towards driving everyone out of the house. In the course of that, there was a lot of monkey business about moving clothes in and out of closets. The original “Haunting of Collinwood” segment had its strengths and led to the trip back in time to 1897 that turned out to be Dark Shadows‘ greatest triumph. But the time spent worrying about where various items of clothing were being kept and why did not make for gripping television, and longtime viewers will wince to see that the incipient Re-Haunting of Collinwood is going to recapitulate that element.

Episode 1057: Not even a memory

Wicked witch Angelique has died, again. While she still dwelt among the living, Angelique locked Julia Hoffman up in a dungeon and left her to die of thirst. Julia’s buddy Barnabas Collins and a dimwitted policeman called Inspector Hamilton are looking for her. She is struggling to stay awake. The episode devotes so much time to a go-nowhere story about a non-character named Roxanne that we can sympathize with this struggle.

Julia nods off just as Barnabas and the inspector pass by the hidden wall of her dungeon. She does not hear them, and by the time she wakes up and starts calling out they are gone.

While asleep, Julia has a dream in which Barnabas and Roxanne decide that she must be dead. They are going to leave for the alternate universe from which Julia and Barnabas originally came. Julia has given up everything in her life to help Barnabas, and she has an unrequited love for him. For his part, Barnabas has conceived a mad passion for Roxanne, who is young and pretty but has no personality. Roxanne’s short red hair, pale complexion, and strong chin make her look like she could be Julia’s daughter. Indeed, when first we saw her it seemed likely she would be revealed to be the daughter of Julia’s counterpart in this universe. Barnabas is so thoughtless about throwing other women in Julia’s face that it would be like him to cast her aside for the daughter she might have had, Grayson Hall would have done a great job playing the anguish this would have inflicted on Julia, and it would have given Donna Wandrey something to work with as Roxanne. It’s a shame they didn’t run with it.

This is Colin Hamilton’s final appearance as Inspector Hamilton. It is always a bad sign when writers give a character the actor’s name; it suggests they don’t trust him to answer to anything else. They may have been right about Colin Hamilton. He will be back as a doctor in #1219. That is the only episode of Dark Shadows of which no video survives. There is an audio recording, so we can hear that Hamilton delivered the doctor’s dialogue in the same bored, impatient tone he used for the inspector.

Inspector Hamilton in his office. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 1051: Maggie’s rough night

Maggie Collins is unnerved because people keep getting murdered in and around the great house of Collinwood. Her husband Quentin was arrested for one of those murders and is the prime suspect in another. He escaped from jail, just in time to be unable to account for his whereabouts during yet another. Maggie goes downstairs and finds old world gentleman Barnabas Collins in the foyer.

Maggie mentions that Alexis Stokes, identical twin sister of Quentin’s late wife Angelique, has suddenly taken ill and is asking her to call her father, evil barfly Tim Stokes. Maggie does not understand what Stokes can do that a doctor can’t, but this has happened before and Stokes was able to fix the problem. Barnabas excuses himself, saying he has urgent business to attend to at the Old House on the other side of the estate. He promises to be back soon.

Maggie hears footsteps outside her bedroom, which she thinks might be Quentin’s. The only friend she has in the great house at the moment is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, who is under sedation following the murder of her daughter. So she rushes to the Old House to look for Barnabas. He is not in; she finds a strange man in the parlor. She asks him who he is and what he is doing there. He insists that he will ask the questions. He asks what Barnabas has done with “her.” Maggie has no idea what he is talking about. He demands that she look into his eyes; as soon as she does, he realizes she is telling the truth. He orders her to tell Barnabas that he will be back, but refuses to give his name.

Maggie runs back to the great house. She finds Barnabas in the foyer, and gives him a full report. Barnabas urges Maggie to believe in Quentin’s innocence. That is something she can no longer do. She says that she is afraid that Quentin has lost his mind and that he will kill everyone in the house, one by one. We pan out and see Quentin lurking at the top of the stairs, listening.

Maggie has a dream. Quentin comes home smiling, with a spring in his step, after chairing a meeting of the board of directors of Collinsport Enterprises. He takes her in his arms and tells her he’s neglected her long enough. She says she doesn’t feel neglected. He says he is taking six months off work, and that the two of them will be leaving tomorrow for a trip around the world.

Quentin finds a bouquet of flowers. He instantly becomes extremely hostile. He accuses Maggie of receiving the flowers as a gift from her lover. She is baffled and denies his allegations. He strangles her. She wakes up, and finds Quentin standing over her, his hands on either side of her neck.

Quentin’s home. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We’ve never seen Quentin and Maggie as happy as they are in the opening part of her dream, but we have several times seen his mood abruptly flip from cheerful to violent. He is not entirely guilty of any of the murders, but he does sometimes choke people, and was in fact choking the person he is charged with strangling immediately before a witch cast a spell to complete the killing.

Moreover, we have seen a dream very much like this one before. For its first 196 weeks, Dark Shadows was set in another universe. In that continuity, Maggie’s counterpart dreamed of Quentin’s ghost in #682. That dream began with Quentin taking a delighted Maggie in his arms and dancing with her; all of a sudden, for no discernible reason, he interrupted the dance to strangle her.

That Quentin did not confine his strangulations to dreams. He murdered his wife Jenny by strangulation in #748. Wife-strangling is a pastime the two Quentins have in common. This Quentin is suspected of killing Angelique. His defense against that charge is that he could not have driven the pin into the back of her head that killed her, because he was using both hands to choke her at the time. So it would seem that Maggie’s fears are well-founded.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode in his great Dark Shadows Every Day is one of several he wrote as if the show had been set in the current universe from the beginning. It’s hilarious, much recommended.

Episode 1033: You’ll miss me whether I go or stay

Sabrina Stuart has been having a rough few weeks. Her fiancé, mild mannered scientist Cyrus Longworth, has been spending less and less time with her and is entangled with a strange, violent man named John Yaeger. The other day, she was with Cyrus in his laboratory and saw him transform into Yaeger. He confirmed that he had devised a potion to alter his appearance, and that Yaeger is merely a disguise he assumes to carry out crimes. The transformation Sabrina saw took place spontaneously, without a dose of the potion. Cyrus poured the potion down the drain a while ago, when he was feeling guilty about a rape he had committed as Yaeger, and we have seen him re-Jekyllize himself only by drinking another dose. So for all we know he will never resume his normal appearance. Sabrina pledged to stand by Cyrus no matter what; in response, he jeered and said he had no further use for her.

Tonight, Sabrina went out with her friend Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Liz took her to a concert. The two women come to Cyrus’ laboratory, where Sabrina has left her wallet. Sabrina apologizes and calls herself stupid for forgetting it, as she keeps apologizing and calling herself stupid throughout the episode. She is very nervous, as witness not only her forgetfulness but also her physical awkwardness, shown most strikingly in the frequent mismatch between her facial expressions and her circumstances.

In his post about this episode on his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn makes several complaints about Lisa Blake Richards as an actress, saying that “I don’t understand what Sabrina does with her face most of the time. She acts like she just got it recently, and she hasn’t figured out how to use it yet.” I think Danny is unfair to Miss Richards generally, and that this is a case in point. As Danny documents, the episode is full of flubs and goofs of various kinds, so it is natural to write off any kind of awkwardness as just another mistake. But considering how distracted and anxiety-ridden Sabrina must be given what she knows about Cyrus, her disconcerting facial expressions suit her perfectly, and are an intelligent acting choice on Miss Richards’ part. That we first see her in a scene with Liz helps to underline this intelligence, since Joan Bennett is the only other member of the cast who seems to know her lines today. Her smooth performance gives Miss Richards something to play off of and spotlights Sabrina’s barely controlled panic.

Sabrina and Liz haven’t been in the lab very long when Cyrus enters, as Yaeger. He introduces himself to Liz as a close associate of Cyrus’, and asks Sabrina to stay and help him analyze some data. Sabrina agrees to do so, and Liz excuses herself.

Cyrus, as “Yaeger,” listens while Liz and Sabrina talk in the laboratory. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Cyrus tells Sabrina to mail some of his clothes and all of his money to New York. She asks if he is moving to New York permanently. In response, he rambles on about how big the world is and how little of it he knew before he assumed his current appearance. Apparently Cyrus retains his ignorance of geography when disguised as Yaeger. He simply tells Sabrina to send his belongings to New York, addressed to John Yaeger at General Delivery. Apparently he thinks there is only one post office location in the state of New York.

We next see Sabrina in the basement of an old farmhouse. Returning viewers know that Cyrus obtained this farmhouse last week by murdering the man who was about to sell it to him. Evidently, Sabrina has followed him there. She sees and hears him in a dungeon, tormenting Maggie Evans Collins, the wife of Liz’ brother Quentin. When Cyrus emerges from the dungeon, Sabrina runs away. He does not see her, but he finds the check he gave her to send to some post office randomly chosen from among the 1720 in New York State in 1970. It fell out of the pocket in her skirt* onto a stair.

We cut to Liz’ home, the great house on the estate of Collinwood. We hear a car screeching to a halt. Sabrina comes running in the foyer, calling the names of the residents of the house. Cyrus follows her. He marches her into the drawing room and asks a series of questions. When she tells him she put the check in a safe place, he produces it. She blurts out that she dropped it. She pleads with him to let Maggie go. He says it would be foolish to let someone go who knows what Maggie knows about him. Sabrina knows even more about Cyrus than Maggie does, and asks what he is going to do to her. He tells her she knows what he is going to do. He strangles her.

Liz enters and screams. Startled, Cyrus lets go of Sabrina’s neck. She falls to the floor, her eyes closed. Tomorrow it will be confirmed that she is dead.

Liz had a dream earlier. She and Sabrina entered Cyrus’ lab and found it a shambles. Sabrina started cleaning the place up, only to find Maggie’s dead body sprawled on a table. Liz told this dream to a person named Barnabas Collins, who introduced himself to her family a few weeks ago as a distant cousin from South America. While the rest of the Collinses believe that Maggie left of her own accord, Barnabas is convinced that she is being held prisoner. The dream convinces Liz that Barnabas is right. When she told him about the dream, she also told him she had met Yaeger. Barnabas knows how cruel and dangerous Yaeger is, and has since #1021 been trying to find out exactly what the connection is between Cyrus and Yaeger. He announced to Liz that there is only one way to find out whether Yaeger has abducted Maggie, and when we last saw him in this episode he was in Cyrus’ lab, looking at the wardrobe he keeps there to wear when he is disguised as Yaeger.

Sabrina’s death marks Lisa Blake Richards’ final appearance on Dark Shadows. Her quiet competence as an actress allowed her scene partners to dial the vehemence essential to the Dark Shadows house style of acting down to bearable levels, and it highlighted Sabrina’s clumsiness under the severe pressures to which the story subjected her. I was glad when, during a 2020 reunion of Dark Shadows cast members on Zoom, Mitch Ryan took a call from Miss Richards, who was at that time his fellow student in a writing class. I’ll miss her, even if Danny Horn doesn’t.

*That pocket gets a couple of closeups today; after watching the episode, my wife and I happened to see another video mentioning that there was a trend towards putting pockets in skirts in the early 1970s.

Episode 1023: The lady wanted a certain piece of information

Barmaid Buffie Harrington sees a man assaulting a woman in the alley next to the tavern. She recognizes the man as ruffian John Yaeger. Yaeger used to buy Buffie gifts, then beat her and laugh at her bruises. She recognizes the woman as her childhood friend Maggie Evans. Maggie moved away from the village of Collinsport when she was very young, and came back recently as the wife of Quentin Collins, drunken sourpuss and master of the estate of Collinwood. Buffie orders Yaeger to unhand Maggie. He sneers at the women, threatening to make a stink if they go to the police. Buffie stands her ground, and at length Yaeger backs down and leaves.

Maggie goes to Quentin’s friend Cyrus Longworth in his laboratory. She tells Cyrus that Buffie rescued her from Yaeger. She asks Cyrus if it is true that Yaeger is his friend. Cyrus looks pained, and says that for some time he has considered Yaeger his enemy. Maggie had never seen Yaeger before; she was at the docks because he called her anonymously and promised her some information relevant to her suspicion that Quentin murdered his first wife, Angelique Stokes Collins. Nor did he identify himself to her. Buffie did not call him by name. So Maggie and Buffie must have had a conversation afterward in which she told him who Yaeger was and that he and Cyrus are connected to each other.

What neither Buffie nor Maggie knows is that Yaeger does not exist. He is simply a disguise Cyrus assumes when he wants to hurt someone. Cyrus never meant to tell Maggie anything about Quentin; he called Maggie to meet him at the docks because he wanted to rape and abduct her. Cyrus has devised a potion that causes his hair to turn darker and sprout all over his body, his shoulders to broaden, and his skin tone to change. John Yaeger is the alias he uses when in this disguise. After Maggie leaves, he tells himself that he and Yaeger are the same person, and that he is responsible for all of Yaeger’s crimes. He smashes up his lab equipment and burns his notes. All he really needed to do was pour out the potion. One of the essential ingredients is a compound he can’t make himself. He murdered the only known supplier, so once it is gone, it will be gone for good.

Cyrus is only the first character today to use Maggie’s need for information about Quentin to trap and hurt her. Quentin’s brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, keeps baiting her with references to the cause of Quentin’s current fit of bad temper. She finally insists he tells her what he means, and he says it is the anniversary of his wedding to Angelique.

The other character is Angelique herself. Unknown to any other character in today’s episode, Angelique has risen from the grave, murdered her identical twin sister Alexis, and taken Alexis’ place as Quentin’s houseguest in his mansion, the great house of Collinwood.

Maggie turns to “Alexis” for information about Quentin and Angelique’s marriage. When she asks if Angelique often wrote her when she was living in Florence, “Alexis” replies “Not often, but when she did she made up for it.” We know this is a lie, and Maggie should too. When the real Alexis first came to the Collinwood, housekeeper Julia Hoffman asked if she received the letter she sent informing her of Angelique’s death. She said she did not. It turned out that the last address Angelique had for Alexis was in Tangier, a city she had left some time before moving to Florence. Maggie takes “Alexis'” statement at face value, and also believes her when she says that Angelique wrote only of how wonderful her marriage to Quentin was. Further, she believes that Angelique was telling the truth in those supposed letters. Since her own marriage to Quentin has been miserable from the first day we saw them together, this depresses Maggie.

Maggie goes to sleep, and Angelique casts a spell to send her a dream. In the dream, Maggie goes to Angelique’s old bedroom and opens a hidden compartment in a small table. She finds a packet of letters there. She wakes up, goes to the room, and finds not only that there is such a compartment but that it does contain the letters. Presumably she will read these and add to her misery.

As Yaeger’s former punching bag and current blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins, Buffie is central to two of the ongoing stories. When she rescues Maggie, we can assume that they will renew their friendship, putting her close to the heart of all the other stories. The episode thus promises to usher in the Age of Buffie. But in fact, this is the character’s final appearance.

I suspect that the writers and producers were impressed with Elizabeth Eis’ performance and expanded Buffie’s part beyond what they originally intended. There were several cast members whom Dan Curtis Productions was contractually obligated to use in a certain number of episodes per month, and for the first weeks of the current segment most of those were off in Tarrytown, New York, doing principal photography on the feature House of Dark Shadows. That gave the show a greater flexibility with new performers than they have now that those people are back.

Moreover, the writers projected the plot out thirteen weeks at a time, in documents divided into 65 parts for the 65 episodes of that period. These projections were known in the soap opera business as “flimsies.” The show would scrap its plans completely when a story drew a different reaction from the audience than they had expected, most famously when Barnabas was introduced in April 1967 and was such a hit that they dropped the original idea to stake him at the end of a number of weeks. But Buffie isn’t that kind of a hit, and with the return to the jigsaw puzzle they have to solve every day to get the name actors their required appearances, the writers have to stick close to the flimsies for a while. By the time they could find room for Eis, the story had moved on and Buffie was no longer particularly relevant. Eis will be back later, when the show is set in a different version of Collinsport, playing a character who shows up in only three episodes.

Episode 1021: At the window, looking in

The opening voiceover tells us that vampire Barnabas Collins is about to “find an innocent victim, who will not only add to his grief and guilt, but also to his immediate peril.” Innocent victims can be so inconsiderate that way.

Barnabas has taken barmaid Buffie Harrington back to her apartment. She asks if she can give him a drink. He moves closer, and she takes him in her arms. He takes a drink, all right. She screams and collapses. As she hits the floor, Cyrus Longworth, MD, lets himself into the room and makes eye contact with Barnabas.

Barnabas claims that he ran into the room when he heard Buffie’s scream, which is not one of his more convincing lies. Cyrus insists on examining Buffie. In the nick of time, Buffie wakes up. She agrees with Barnabas that she is fine. Barnabas offers to stay with her. Cyrus does the same, to which Barnabas replies that he must have some business to attend to if he is in this part of town so late at night. Cyrus can’t deny that, and leaves.

Barnabas gives his new blood thrall some quick instructions, including strict orders to stay away from Cyrus. The next evening, Cyrus drops by Buffie’s place again, and she is as cold and unfriendly as Barnabas could have wished. As Cyrus is going, Buffie asks if he has heard from his friend John Yaeger lately. He says he hasn’t, but that she will be the first to know if he does. He leaves.

Barnabas materializes. Buffie is surprised that he was eavesdropping. Now that he knows Cyrus is close to Yaeger, he rescinds his order for her to avoid him. He says that Yaeger knows where his coffin is, and he wants to know everything he can about Yaeger for his own protection.

The next evening, Cyrus is back at Buffie’s. He is surprised she invited him. She says she hadn’t meant to be so rude the evening before. She asks about Yaeger, explaining that she has some things of his and is keen to get them back to him as soon as possible. Cyrus says only that he is sure Yaeger will be back soon. He leaves, and Buffie asks herself why Cyrus is protecting Yaeger.

Returning viewers know what Buffie and Barnabas do not. Yaeger does not exist. Cyrus has developed a potion which alters his appearance so drastically that even those closest to him do not recognize him when he is under its influence. Thus disguised, he calls himself “John Yaeger” and indulges his sadistic impulses. With this episode, the show sets Barnabas and Cyrus on a collision course. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde meet Dracula, here we come.

In the great house of Collinwood, another bizarre imposture is underway. Angelique Stokes Collins, the late wife of Quentin Collins, has returned from the dead, murdered her identical twin sister Alexis, and taken Alexis’ place as a houseguest. Her goal is to alienate Quentin from his new wife, the former Maggie Evans, and return to her previous place as mistress of Collinwood.

“Alexis” has been telling everyone that Angelique was murdered, which she in fact believes herself to have been. Since the coroner’s report ruled Angelique’s death the result of a stroke, Quentin does not take this idea seriously. “Alexis” has managed to persuade Maggie to do so, however, and when first we see them they are having a testy exchange over the question.

“Alexis” is happy to overhear this conversation. When the drawing room doors open, she presents Maggie with a bunch of flowers she has picked from the gardens on the grounds of the estate. Since the estate belongs to Maggie and Quentin, this is rather a childish gesture, but it pleases Maggie. “Alexis” goes to fetch a vase.

Cyrus shows up. Maggie goes upstairs while Cyrus and Quentin go to the drawing room. The men talk about Larry Chase, an attorney who represented both of them. Larry died in the foyer at Collinwood yesterday. At that time Quentin and Maggie were out together, so Larry was alone with “Alexis.” Cyrus says that Larry somehow froze to death in the foyer.

Angelique is alone with the flowers. She casts a spell causing them to shrivel and die. She then turns to the camera, looks directly at the audience, and gives her best “Ain’t I a stinker?” look.

In #346, Barnabas touched a bouquet of flowers, causing them to shrivel and die. That embarrassed Barnabas, as if he had lost control of his gastrointestinal system for a moment. It also alarmed well-meaning governess Vicki, but she never mentioned it again, and it certainly didn’t tip her off that Barnabas was a vampire. This incident shocks and befuddles Quentin and Maggie, but when he brings it up in their bedroom later she has already forgotten all about it and he agrees it wasn’t very important.

Even if it had made as big an impression as Angelique was hoping it would, destroying the flowers would probably not have advanced her goal of making Quentin suspect that Maggie is a supernatural force of darkness. He does notice the similarity to what happened to Larry, but since Angelique was with Larry when he died and Quentin and Maggie were together somewhere else, and since Angelique was in contact with the flowers for far longer than Maggie was, any suspicion it would raise would most logically be directed at herself.

“Alexis” has more success persuading Maggie to suspect Quentin of the murder of Angelique. Maggie has a dream about the séance at which Angelique died. It ends with Quentin choking Angelique. She wakes up screaming that he shouldn’t have murdered his wife.

In fact, Quentin did choke Angelique at the séance, but Angelique has discounted that as a possible cause of her death. She thinks that someone else drove a pin into her head while Quentin was busy strangling her. How the autopsy missed that, she hasn’t told us.

Last week the show credited its videotape editors for the first time, the team of Danny Rosenson and Robert Steinback. Today is the first credit for another pair of videotape editors, Chuck Gardner and Indra Sadoo.

The music under the closing credits sounds quite different than it has the last couple of years. We were wondering if it was an old tape, and then, about halfway through, came the voice that used to end every episode- ABC staff man Bob Lloyd intoning “Dark Shadows… is a Dan Curtis Production.” I was delighted to hear him again, if only on an old recording used by mistake.

Episode 991: It wasn’t all mushy

In December 1966 and January 1967, strange and troubled boy David Collins was unwilling to believe that a woman who had come to the estate of Collinwood was his long-absent mother, Laura Murdoch Collins. He had troubling dreams about her. In #150, we saw him asleep in his bed when Laura appeared in the corner of his room. He opened his eyes and looked at her while she made a speech. This is not generally considered a dream sequence, since David appears to wake up at the beginning of it. But Laura turns out to be a humanoid Phoenix. The Phoenix is a creature first described in the Histories of Herodotus. As is typical in ancient Greek literature, all dreams in Herodotus take the form of a person materializing at the foot of the dreamer’s bed and delivering a speech while the dreamer appears to be awake. So I think we have to consider that the first dream sequence dramatized on Dark Shadows.

Now, we have crossed over into an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” David’s counterpart is strange and troubled teenager Daniel Collins. Daniel is unwilling to believe that a woman who has come to the estate of Collinwood is not his late mother, Angelique Stokes Collins. We see him asleep in his bedroom. As Daniel’s problem is the mirror image of David’s, so his room is the mirror image of David’s. Daniel’s bed is at stage right while David’s is at stage left on the same set. Daniel has a troubling dream in which Angelique appears to him. Dark Shadows is a lot more definite now than it was in its first year, so they have a special effect to show that even though Daniel is opening his eyes and getting out of bed, it is still a dream sequence. It is 1970, so that special effect is a disco glitter ball throwing colored lights.

Daniel thrashes about in bed, and the visitor, who has been patiently trying to explain to everyone that she is Angelique’s identical twin sister Alexis, comes rushing in. Daniel awakes, and asks her to promise to tell him the truth. He in turn promises to keep her secret. He asks her if she is his mother. She is silent, apparently stunned by the question. At that moment, Daniel’s father Quentin appears in the doorway.

Laura turned out to be an undead blonde fire witch come to burn David alive that she might renew her own unnatural existence. Angelique’s counterpart in the main continuity is also an undead blonde fire witch, and for a time she was David’s stepmother and represented a considerable danger to him. So regular viewers will understand Daniel’s confusion.

There is a scene today in the tavern in the village of Collinsport. In the main continuity, this tavern was called the Eagle in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the Blue Whale in the twentieth. In this universe, it is still called the Eagle. The bartender in the Blue Whale is usually played by Bob O’Connell. The bartender in the Eagle today is played by Kenneth McMillan. McMillan was a very distinguished actor and does a fine job telling a long story, but Bob O’Connell is a favorite of longtime viewers and I think we are all disappointed we didn’t get another chance to see him.

Episode 980: I don’t want memories

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard has had a dream in which her new husband, whom she knows as Jeb Hawkes but who when we first saw him asked to be called Jabe, was in a fight on top of Widows’ Hill. His opponent, a stooge named Sky Rumson, threw him off the precipice to his death. When she awoke, Carolyn ran to the hill in search of Jabe. Instead, she found Sky. He told her that her dream was not complete, because it did not show her death. He then grabbed her by the throat.

Jabe rushes up and knocks Carolyn out of Sky’s grip. He and Sky fight, and Sky does throw him off the precipice. Carolyn escapes.

Back home at the great house of Collinwood, Carolyn finds her mother, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, and permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD. It takes her a while to compose herself sufficiently to tell Liz and Julia what happened. Julia offers Carolyn a sedative, which prompts her to jump up and shout a verbal refusal. By the time Carolyn starts telling the story, her distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, has joined them in the drawing room. She interrupts herself to yell at Barnabas that he always hated Jabe and is probably glad he’s dead. When Carolyn finishes, Barnabas slips out. Liz calls the police, and Julia is surprised neither of them saw Barnabas leave.

For the last nineteen weeks, the show has been trying to make a story out of some themes drawn from the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. That segment is usually called “the Leviathans,” after a race of Elder Gods who are behind the action. Jabe was central to the Leviathan segment. Sky is the only other character remaining from it. Barnabas appears in the house where Sky has been crashing and finds him packing his bag. Sky does not understand how Barnabas got in. Barnabas dismisses his question, merely saying that Sky knows there are things he can do that ordinary people cannot. Sky draws a revolver and fires two rounds at Barnabas point blank, without effect. Sky exclaims “Oh, no!” Barnabas is amused that none of Sky’s late colleagues told him that he is a vampire. He takes Sky’s hand, curls his arm back so that the gun is pointing at his heart, and squeezes Sky’s finger onto the trigger.

Back at the great house, Liz gets a telephone call from the sheriff. The police haven’t found Jabe’s body, and have surmised that it washed out to sea. They have found Sky, and have tentatively ruled his death a suicide. Later, Carolyn has another dream. In this one, Jabe shows up and confirms his death. That marks the end of the Leviathan segment. Carolyn will go on using the name “Mrs Hawkes” and saying she misses Jabe, but otherwise the last nineteen weeks will be forgotten.

Carolyn sees Jabe for the last time. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Before killing Sky, Barnabas had mentioned that he almost regrets not leaving him to the other person who is on her way to do him in. That is Sky’s estranged wife, wicked witch Angelique. Had the Leviathan segment been more successful, or had Geoffrey Scott been even marginally competent in his performance as Sky, they might have made something of the parallels between Sky and Jabe. They are both very tall men with blonde wives who are dissatisfied with them. Angelique is dissatisfied that Sky is a tool of the Leviathans and that he tried to set fire to her on the orders of their representative, and Carolyn is dissatisfied with Jabe because he keeps running away from dangers he has brought on himself by his rebellion against the Leviathans and he won’t tell her anything about himself. Sky is a mortal man, while Angelique may once have been human but has long since become a creature of the supernatural. Carolyn is a mortal woman, while Jabe is now human but was originally a shape-shifting monster from beyond space and time.

But the ratings have been sinking throughout the Leviathan period, and the whole narrative structure of the arc keeps collapsing around them every time they try to do anything with it. So they are in too much of a hurry to move on to the next thing to do any exploring of the characters. Also, Scott is hopeless. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, put it, it isn’t that he is an actor with just one strategy. He keeps trying different things, and none of them comes close to working. We won’t see him again.

The new story has to do with an alternate universe that is occasionally visible in a room in the long disused east wing of Collinwood. Barnabas, Julia, and others have been spying on its inhabitants, and Barnabas is fixated on the idea that if he can cross over into it his vampirism will disappear. Since his bloodlust is overwhelming him, he is desperate to pursue this forlorn hope. He goes to the room when the alternate universe cannot be seen there, and a moment later finds that it has changed with him in it. Julia is in the hallway, looking in. At first she and Barnabas can see each other, and she can hear him, though he cannot hear her. After a moment, Carolyn’s alternate universe counterpart enters and demands to know who Barnabas is and what he is doing in the house.

Barnabas took Carolyn as his blood-thrall in October 1967. The show went back in time to 1795 the following month. In the 1790s segment, Nancy Barrett played fluttery heiress Millicent Collins. We saw that Barnabas first became a vampire in 1796; not long after, he took Millicent as his blood thrall. Shortly after the show returned to contemporary dress in March 1968, one of Julia’s colleagues in the mad science profession applied a treatment that put Barnabas’ vampirism into remission. That freed Carolyn of her connection to him, and at some point she forgot it ever happened.

For most of 1969, Dark Shadows was set in 1897. In that segment, Miss Barrett played repressed schoolmarm Charity Trask. Barnabas bit her, too. Carolyn’s counterpart in “Parallel Time,” known by her married name Carolyn Loomis, is the fourth character* Miss Barrett played on Dark Shadows; considering that Barnabas is so frantically hungry, it looks like she will follow in the footsteps of her predecessors and serve as his breakfast.

*Or fifth- in #819, sorcerer Count Petofi found Charity’s personality to be an irritant, so he erased it and replaced it with that of the late Pansy Faye, a Cockney showgirl/ mentalist. From that time on, Miss Barrett played Pansy, not Charity.

Episode 979: Nicholas Blair

The Failure Demon

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair first joined the cast of characters in June 1968, posing as the brother of Cassandra, wife of Roger Collins. Since Cassandra was an alias that 200 year old wicked witch Angelique was using, we knew right away this could not be so. Nicholas asserted himself as Angelique’s boss, faced down the ghost of the fanatical Reverend Trask, and kept saying that he had a plan that was far more important than Angelique’s petty little scheme to establish herself in the great house of Collinwood and turn Roger’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins back into a vampire. As played by Humbert Allen Astredo, Nicholas kept us believing for weeks that we would be in awe once we heard his plan.

Eventually, Nicholas stumbled upon the fact that Barnabas’ best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, had constructed a Frankenstein’s monster in the course of a project to keep his vampirism in remission. From that point on, Nicholas declared that his plan was to force Julia to make a female Frankenstein’s monster, to mate the already existing monster to her, and thereby to breed a new race of people loyal only to his master, Satan. He’d been on the show so long at that point that his sudden parachuting into the Frankenstein story only revealed that up to that point, all his talk about his grand design had been empty boasting.

Moreover, Nicholas’ plan for the patchwork people did not make sense in the context of the show. In a novel or movie like Rosemary’s Baby, the audience sees the heroine raped with the acquiescence of her husband, and our horror at that crime gives force to the premise that she will bear Satan’s only begotten son, who, in an inversion of the Christian story, will transform the whole world by the very fact of his birth. Stealing fresh corpses, chopping them up, and stitching them together isn’t the same horror as rape, but it is a pretty disgusting way to spend an evening, so I suppose that will get you off to some kind of start. But if your show is on the air for half an hour a day across the board Monday through Friday, your audience has time to sit with Nicholas’ scheme and think through all of the practicalities it implies. The new race is going to take many years to grow and multiply and overtake H. Sap., even if its members all have Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome. What are we all supposed to do in the interim, watch the Frankenbabies through nanny cams? It isn’t an idea for series television.

Nicholas not only saddled himself with a plan that obviously wasn’t going to work, he didn’t deliver on his claim to be a surpassingly talented sorcerer. In #528, Angelique asked him to slip a potion to one of her adversaries. He complained that “I am much too talented to spend my time drugging drinks,” but he complied with the request. Not only did that turn out to be a waste of time, later he would on his own initiative drug a couple of other people’s drinks, again without the results he wanted.

Eventually, Nicholas fell in love with Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. That amused Angelique, who taunted him with all the times when he had sneered at her for the humanity she showed in her emotional attachment to Barnabas. As Nicholas grew fonder of Maggie, his powers became less reliable, and his involvement with the main plot became more tenuous. No longer able to make Angelique obey him, Nicholas was reduced to using unsightly ex-convict Harry Johnson as his henchman. By the time the Frankenstein project collapsed and Satan called Nicholas back to Hell, not even Astredo’s considerable acting talent could make us take him seriously.

Nicholas returned in February 1970, just over five weeks ago. At that point the show was mainly concerned with an attempt the writers were making to take some material from the tales of H. P. Lovecraft and make a story out of them. The Leviathan People are Elder Gods who want to reconquer the Earth and destroy humankind. Their harbinger was a shape-shifting monster who had taken the form of a tall young man and invited people to call him Jabe. Jabe was supposed to join with Roger’s niece Carolyn to produce a new race of people.

The Lovecraft material never came together, and by the middle of February the makers of the show were scrambling to find a new direction. Nicholas appears to have been a last-minute replacement for a different sort of villain who was supposed to take over as the chief menace in the second half of the segment. Now they have thrown out that second half and are trying to get to something else before the ratings drop any further. So they brought back an already established character and plugged him into the scenes originally meant to be played by the one they never got around to introducing.

Bringing Nicholas in to the Leviathan arc makes it hard for longtime viewers to ignore the similarities between the Leviathans’ plan to breed a new race and his 1968 plan for the patchwork people, including the shared weakness that if either plan were successful, it wouldn’t leave you anything to put on a daytime soap. Also, Nicholas explicitly acknowledges that he has already failed in one such project, lampshading the problem but not alleviating it. He also keeps bringing up his “Master,” who is clearly still Satan. No other character in the Leviathan arc makes reference to any themes derived from Christianity- everyone else is living in the determinedly non-Christian world of Lovecraft’s imagination. So he seems out of place from the beginning.

The Leviathans’ plan was already nearing collapse when Nicholas showed up. Every time Jabe has used his powers, the results have backfired on him. His personality has alienated all of his allies. And now he doesn’t even want to be a shape-shifting monster anymore- he fell in love with Carolyn, and just wanted to take her on dates and then marry her. Nicholas is supposed to be the trouble-shooter who will turn this troubled operation around, but nothing about him inspires confidence that he is the right person for that job.

Since Nicholas arrived, things have gone downhill for the Leviathan cause even faster than they had been before. In #966, Nicholas watched in horror as Jabe smashed the box from which he originally emanated, causing all of the Leviathans’ other visible belongings to vanish. Nicholas then declared that everything was over, and that the time of the Leviathans was no more. But they still didn’t have another story ready to go, so he and Jabe have continued to hang around. Nicholas still has one follower, Angelique’s estranged husband Sky Rumson, but since there is no reason for Sky to be on the show either, that isn’t much of a basis for Nicholas’ continued presence. On his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn called Nicholas a “failure demon”; all in all, that would seem an apt classification.

Today, Jabe turns up at Nicholas’ place. Nicholas knows that Angelique cursed Jabe to be plagued by a mysterious shadow not his own that follows him and drives him mad. This much is borrowed from George MacDonald’s 1858 novel Phantastes, but unlike the Reverend MacDonald’s allegory of sin and anxiety this shadow is a physical weapon that will kill Jabe when it grows strong enough. Jabe asked Nicholas to use his powers to lift Angelique’s spell the other day, but Nicholas refused, even though he claimed that he could and he acknowledged that it would have been to his advantage to do so. The opening voiceover today reminds us that Nicholas knows all about the shadow.

Now, Jabe is telling Nicholas that he was wrong to turn against him, wrong to smash the box, wrong to give up his destiny of leading the Leviathans to global dominion. Nicholas dwells on his exhaustive knowledge of the shadow and tells Jabe he can take the shadow from him and set it on Angelique. He begins to hypnotize Jabe. When he seems to have Jabe in a trance, he tells him he does not give second chances, and that he is going to kill him and Carolyn. Jabe suddenly produces the paper cutout Angelique used to place the shadow curse on him and places it on Nicholas’ jacket. He then runs out of the room. The shadow appears and envelopes Nicholas, who collapses. Even though he knew in advance exactly what was going on, Nicholas still could not avoid death as the result of getting slapped on the chest with a piece of construction paper. He dies as he lived, a failure demon to the end.

Sky enters. Jabe returns, and Sky tells him Nicholas is dead. Sky whines that because Nicholas was not human, his death will not be the end of him and Jabe will not get away with killing him. Geoffrey Scott’s appallingly bad acting reinforces the image of Nicholas as a colossal loser- if this was the only ally he had left at the end, he must have been an even more hopeless stumblebum than we had thought. Jabe exits. A moment later, Nicholas’ ghost appears to Sky and tells him to kill Jabe.

Nicholas gives Sky his orders. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Jabe goes back to the great house of Collinwood to tell Carolyn that he is rid of the shadow. They are married now, but have spent very little time together because the shadow has kept chasing Jabe off. She is puzzled by the whole thing, in part because Jabe refuses to tell her anything about his situation, and is unenthusiastic about Jabe’s renewed insistence that they go away immediately. She agrees to leave with him in the morning.

Carolyn goes upstairs. In the drawing room, Jabe hears Nicholas’ voice telling him that he will never escape. Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, enters; Jabe tells him that he and Carolyn are going on a trip tonight.

Jabe sent Carolyn upstairs with orders to pack and tell her mother they were leaving, but it would seem she has not complied. She is snoozing in a chair in her room. She has a dream. It begins with Nicholas’ voice rasping at her that it will all end at Widows’ Hill. She then sees Jabe and Sky, lit in groovy psychedelic colors, arguing about Nicholas and fighting near the precipice. Sky throws Jabe over the edge.

Groovy, man. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Carolyn awakens, calls for Jabe, and rushes out. On her way she tells David that she is going to Widows’ Hill. A moment later Jabe comes along, and David relays this information to him.

Carolyn gets to the top of Widows’ Hill, where Sky is waiting for her. He tells her that the dream Nicholas sent her stopped short of its end, because he did not want her to see her own death. He grabs her by the throat.

Meanwhile, in another universe…

While Jabe, Nicholas, and Carolyn are cleaning up the messes the Leviathan segment left behind, Roger is busy getting the new storyline off the ground. There is a room in the long disused east wing of the great house in which an alternate universe is occasionally visible. Roger goes there, and sees the counterparts of Carolyn and David. They are talking about the boy’s parents, whom Roger ascertains to be, not himself and undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch, but the counterparts of his distant cousin Quentin Collins and of Angelique. Everyone else we have seen in “Parallel Time” has the same first name as their counterpart in the main continuity, but David’s is named “Daniel.”

Roger never found out who Cassandra really was, so it is a puzzle for longtime viewers how he knows Angelique’s name. Carolyn and her mother met her under that name at the house she and Sky shared, but somehow did not recognize her as Cassandra. She visited them at Collinwood after her marriage to Sky broke up, but did not see Roger there.

Arrivals and Departures

This is the first time we see this Daniel Collins, but not the first time we are exposed to his name. The closing credits for #958 billed David Henesy not as David Collins, the role he played that day, but as Daniel Collins. I don’t know whether they had already decided that would be his name in Parallel Time and the person making up the credit roll got confused about it, or if the writers thought the goof was funny and gave the character the name as an inside joke.

Also, Mr Henesy played a character named Daniel Collins in February and March 1968, when the show was set in the year 1796. Since they have established that the two universes diverged during that Daniel’s lifetime, he may be this Daniel’s namesake. There is another connection, an accidental one I’m sure but an accident with a bit of an eldritch quality to it. In #350, three weeks before the 1790s segment began and more than sixteen weeks before Daniel made his first appearance, a slip of Nancy Barrett’s tongue left Carolyn referring to David as “Daniel.” It’s odd that the two Daniels were both heralded by these small inadvertences.

This episode marks, not only the final appearance of Nicholas, but also that of Roger. Louis Edmonds will play Roger’s counterpart in the Parallel Time segment, and as these episodes are being taped he is playing still another iteration of Roger on the feature film House of Dark Shadows. He will also be back in another role later on. But all the character development Roger has gone through since we first saw him in episode 1 is at an end.

Monday’s episode gave Roger his real sendoff, and my post about it summed up his history. I will just mention here that when I first saw Dark Shadows, Roger was something of a puzzle to me. That was the 1990s, when I saw it on what was then The SciFi Channel. The first episode I saw was #193, featuring art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons, but I didn’t have a chance to watch it at all regularly until a month or so after that, when Barnabas had already joined the cast. By that point Roger was already very much confined to the margins.

Curious as to when the dazzling Mrs Fitzsimmons would return, I looked online and found what is now the Dark Shadows wiki. I was disappointed to find that she was a one-off character. I also found that her function was to bring to a head a major story centering on Roger. I then looked through the episode summaries of the first weeks of the show. Those were quite terse and indigestible, meant to remind people who had seen the episodes of points they had forgotten. But one thing I did gather from them was that Roger had been a major character when the show started, indeed its chief villain. I couldn’t imagine the sardonic but lovable Roger of 1967 and 1968 in that capacity, and when I finally saw those episodes many years later I was thrilled by Edmonds’ performance.

One of the strongest themes of Roger’s character in his early days as a villain was his open hatred of David. It is nice for longtime viewers that he makes his final exit with an affectionate fatherly hand on David’s shoulder.