mrs acilius – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 1070: Never without you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 1059: Who will ever light this light?

Sixteen weeks ago Dark Shadows crossed over to a different universe than the one where the first 196 weeks of the action took place. The show insists on calling this segment “Parallel Time.”

The only villain left standing in this next-to-last installment of “Parallel Time” is the evil Tim Stokes, whom we did not see and barely heard of until the tenth week of the segment, and who did not start acting on his own initiative until the last few days. Thayer David does a great job playing Stokes, and the character evokes his earlier parts in interesting ways. But he is obviously a last-minute addition meant to keep the story going while they take care of some loose ends they were in too much of a hurry to tie up in a natural way.

Desperate to get vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman out of Parallel Time, writer Gordon Russell resorts to what Roger Ebert used to call an “Idiot Plot,” a series of events that can take place if and only if every character is dumber than any member of the audience.

Barnabas has fallen in love with and bitten a non-character named Roxanne, who, in lieu of a personality, has psychic powers. Yesterday Barnabas gave Roxanne a scarf that belonged to Julia’s counterpart in this universe, and Roxanne told him its owner was dead. Only today, when Maggie speaks the name of that other Julia Hoffman with revulsion, does Barnabas remember that there are two of them, and that the scarf belonged to the one whom he already knew to be dead.

Barnabas and Roxanne know that Stokes is on the loose and that he has vowed to take revenge on everyone. So she walks home alone, and finds Stokes waiting for her there. He finds Barnabas’ bite marks on her neck, and realizes that he is a vampire. Stokes decides he must lock Roxanne up. A man of his evil ways must know of any number of places where he could lock Roxanne up, many of which would take Barnabas a long time to find, but he choose to stick her in her closet. Minutes after his departure, Barnabas comes to the house and lets her out.

Barnabas takes Roxanne back to the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, where Maggie has the suitcase Julia brought with her when she came to this universe five weeks ago. Roxanne takes a piece of costume jewelry and confirms that its owner is alive. She leads them to the basement of the great house on the estate. They hear Julia weeping in the dungeon behind a bookcase where Angelique trapped her a few days before her own destruction. This weeping sound will bring back memories for longtime viewers. In the first months of the show, several characters heard the sound of a woman weeping behind a wall in the basement of the great house, a sound strongly implied to be of ghostly origin. They eventually gave that sound an explanation that was neither supernatural nor consistent with what we had seen up to that point, and then never mentioned it again. But it’s good to be reminded of it regardless.

Barnabas, Roxanne, and Maggie eventually find Julia and take her back to the Old House, where they give her a large brandy. Barnabas, Maggie, and Julia then go to the police station, leaving Roxanne alone in the house so that Stokes can get at her. She threatens him with a dagger, and he withdraws. Maggie then goes from the police station to the great house by herself so that Stokes can grab her.

A joyous reunion. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 1053: To have the final word

For some time, wicked witch Angelique Stokes Collins has been dissatisfied with her minion Julia Hoffman. What she most wants from Hoffman is information about her new enemy, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. Yet Hoffman has told her nothing useful about Barnabas. The only time she brings him up is to claim that she was busy following him when Angelique needed her to do something else. Even then, her reports are no more substantive than “He went into town,” without so much as a single name of a person he met or building he entered while there. Hoffman keeps showing friendliness to people to whom Angelique wants her to be hostile, asking questions to which she ought already know the answer, and resisting orders she would usually be eager to follow. Whatever is wrong with Hoffman, Angelique does not propose to put up with it indefinitely.

Yesterday, Angelique found the solution to the puzzle. She learned that she has not been dealing with Hoffman at all, but with her Doppelgänger from an alternate universe. Barnabas came from that universe as well. This Julia is as devoted to Barnabas as Hoffman was to Angelique, and followed him to this reality to take her place at his side. Today, Angelique traps Julia in a secret chamber off the basement of the great house of Collinwood and demands to know what she has done with Hoffman. At length Julia confirms her true identity and admits that she killed Hoffman, but she will not answer any of Angelique’s questions about Barnabas.

Angelique takes out a medallion and tells Julia to look at it. Julia gasps and turns away. She says that she knows about hypnosis and knows how to resist it. Angelique says that if she knows how to resist, there is no reason for her not to look at the medallion, but Julia keeps looking away. Julia was first introduced as a psychiatrist, whose talent for hypnosis was of magical proportions. By showing her medallion to a person, she could erase and rewrite that person’s memory as easily and as completely as one could erase and rewrite a chalkboard. Julia is the heroine of the show now, but longtime viewers will still find it fitting that Angelique turns the tables on her.

Upstairs in the same house, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins is having a conversation with Angelique’s portrait. This is one of several habits Roger has that recall Waldo Lydecker, the sarcastic dandy in the 1943 novel and 1944 film Laura. Lydecker turned out to have murdered a woman with whom he had a strange obsession.

Roger is overwrought, telling the Angelique in the portrait that he should have known she would come back from the dead. If he had, he would have realized it was a waste of time to kill her. He only made things worse by doing that; for one thing, it made it necessary for him to kill his niece Carolyn. As he says this, his sister Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Carolyn’s mother, overhears. She storms in. He tries to deny that meant anything he said, but Liz won’t be stopped. As Roger presses his hands on Liz’ shoulders, Joan Bennett plays the part of someone being strangled. Louis Edmonds’ fingers are nowhere near her throat. You can’t believe that Roger is hurting Liz, but you can easily believe that Edmonds and Bennett are a brother and sister playing pretend. They look like they’re about six.

Just as Roger closes Liz’ body into the storage space under the window seat, Barnabas enters. Roger is on the point of tears, a circumstance Barnabas notices. Roger keeps urging Barnabas to leave the room with him, but he replies that what he has to say will take only a moment. Barnabas says that he is worried about Liz. Roger gets even more upset, and Barnabas finally agrees to go downstairs with him.

For longtime viewers, this scene makes a poignant contrast with #446. In that episode, set in the year 1796, Edmonds played haughty overlord Joshua Collins, father of Barnabas. Joshua discovered that Barnabas had become a vampire. Joshua confronted his son in his hiding place. Joshua was at once horrified and shattered, but in no way intimidated by Barnabas, who was for his part alternately ashamed and petulant. Edmonds and Jonathan Frid made that scene into one of the high points of the series. Now, it is Edmonds’ turn to be the murderer dejected by the knowledge of his own inexpungable guilt, and Frid’s turn to be the upright family man. Barnabas does not know Roger’s secret as Joshua knew his, but in Roger’s inability to face him we see the fear of the same righteous condemnation Joshua had felt it his duty to proclaim.

At one point in this conversation Frid has so much trouble with his lines that the words dissolve into a buzzing sound. I told my wife, Mrs Acilius, that it sounded like Barnabas had briefly turned into Bob Dylan. She roared with laughter and said that was exactly what she was going to say.

This is the first “Parallel Time” episode in which Lara Parker is credited as playing Angelique. Previously she had been billed as Alexis Stokes, the identical twin sister whom Angelique killed when she rose from the dead ten and a half weeks ago and whom she has been impersonating ever since. Several times in the series, cast members have wandered onto the set while the credits were rolling.* Referring to this, Mrs Acilius had explained that they kept using Alexis’ name in case any characters who didn’t know who she really was wandered in while the credits were rolling. She imagined them looking up, widening their eyes, and pointing. She meant that hypothesis as a joke. But since the only character in today’s episode who didn’t know Angelique’s true identity was Liz, who was dead by the time the credits rolled, I think we have to take it as proven.

*Most conspicuously in #703, #635, #510, and #328. There are also moments when crew members can be seen during the closing credits, most spectacularly in #999, when a man is just sitting there eating a sandwich.

Episode 1047: Extraordinary enemies

Evil wizard Tim Stokes combined medicine with black magic to connect his late daughter Angelique with a woman named Roxanne. The connection drains most of the “life force” from Roxanne into Angelique. This rendered Roxanne comatose and allowed Angelique to move among the living so long as Roxanne neither dies nor gets even a tiny bit better.

Vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman are interlopers from another dimension. They know what Stokes has done and want to defeat Angelique. They made off with Roxanne and were keeping her in the Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, planning to use some mad science equipment to revive her. Roxanne did perk up after the first treatment, and Barnabas took her on a date to his favorite place, the old cemetery north of town, where she showed some signs of recognizing her surroundings.

Yesterday, Stokes went to the Old House to search for Roxanne while Barnabas was out. When Barnabas got home, Roxanne was nowhere to be found. We learn today that Stokes does not have her. He turns to a man named Claude North for help in finding her. Yesterday he told Angelique that he was most reluctant to contact North; only after an incantation calling upon all the spiritual forces of darkness fails to solve their problem does he consider turning to him. He told Angelique that North was no ordinary man, and he is evidently more unpleasant to deal with than are Satan and his minions. But he answers when Stokes picks up the telephone and calls him.

Barnabas is also familiar with “Claude North” as the name of someone linked to Roxanne. He found a drawing of her signed by North in the secret chamber in the back room of the mausoleum in the cemetery. He goes back to the cemetery twice tonight. The first time, he goes into the secret chamber and finds evidence that a man with the initials “CN” has been staying there. He takes this as confirmation that it is Claude North’s roost. It does not seem likely that it is North’s only residence, since there is no sign of a telephone there. Stokes is spying on Barnabas while he does this. He is disturbed that Barnabas knows about the secret chamber, and wonders if he has been keeping Roxanne there.

Barnabas goes back to the Old House and finds Stokes talking with the lady of the house, Carolyn Loomis. Angelique killed Carolyn’s husband Will the other day because he would not reveal Barnabas’ secret, and Carolyn has been drinking steadily ever since. Barnabas tells Stokes that since he has extended his condolences to Carolyn, he can leave now. Stokes takes his time about going. He says that Will thought that Barnabas might have a girl someplace. “Is he right, Mr Collins? Do you have a girl someplace?” Thayer David delivers this line with an urgency that elevates it from mildly clever to almost brilliant. Jonathan Frid responds with a slow burn that brings the exchange to perfection. Barnabas knows that Stokes neither has Roxanne nor knows that he does not have her, but he also knows that Stokes, as a native of this universe, is likelier to find her than he is.

“Do you have a girl someplace?” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas goes back to the cemetery and finds Roxanne there. She is kneeling at a gravestone. It marks the grave of Claude North, who lived from 1814 to 1866.

In his own world, Barnabas was trapped in the counterpart of the secret chamber in the mausoleum for 171 years. So regular viewers think of that chamber as a place for vampires. North’s tombstone suggests that he might be such a creature.

Moreover, the drawing of Roxanne evokes Charles Delaware Tate, an artist who was a character on the show in 1969. Tate had the magical power to bring people to life by drawing them. He became obsessed with a woman he created in that way. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, points out, Tate’s erotic preoccupation with a product of his own imagination is as much a metaphor for extreme selfishness as is the vampire. So if the answer to the question of Roxanne’s origin is that she sprang into being as the result of North’s drawing of her, it would only be appropriate if North were also a vampire.

There is a scene in the room on top of the tower at the great house of Collinwood. Carolyn goes there and looks at the window from which Will fell to his death. To her surprise, sourpuss Quentin Collins enters the room. Quentin is a fugitive from justice, having assaulted a policeman and fled from jail because he was under arrest for murder. He makes menacing remarks demanding her silence; she’s so drunk that it doesn’t seem likely she will remember he was there. In the other continuity, the Collinses had a habit of using the tower room, which is entirely enclosed in windows that can be seen from every part of the estate, as a hiding place; we can see that their counterparts here maintain the same self-defeating tradition.

Episode 1046: Such a fearful unreality

Writer Gordon Russell takes bits of old episodes and mixes them as if he were rotating a kaleidoscope. There is a plot involved also, but the screen iconography is the main thing.

The show has been operating on the principle of the kaleidoscope for some time. They’ve traveled back in time repeatedly. Now they have traveled sideways in time and taken us to an alternate universe, which they insist on calling “Parallel Time.” Each of these segments represents a turn of the kaleidoscope, rearranging the actors, sets, musical cues, curse stories, imaginary geography of the estate of Collinwood and village of Collinsport, and other elements to create new patterns that shed unexpected light on familiar material.

Evil wizard Tim Stokes has used a combination of black magic and medical science to establish a remote connection between a woman named Roxanne and his late daughter, Angelique Stokes Collins. This connection drains the “life force” from Roxanne into Angelique, reanimating her and leaving Roxanne comatose. To sustain this circumstance, Roxanne must remain in precisely her current condition. If she dies, all of her “life force” will vanish, returning Angelique to the tomb. Whenever she recovers even a tiny bit of her lost strength, Angelique collapses, possibly to die.

Vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman are visiting from the main continuity, and they are determined to stop Angelique’s evil plans. They have learned what Stokes has done, and have taken Roxanne into their own custody. As we open, Julia has just given up on an attempt to revive Roxanne and gone back to the great house at Collinwood, where she is impersonating her own Doppelgänger, the housekeeper. This woman, also named Julia Hoffman, was Angelique’s most fanatical devotee until Julia killed her, stole her French maid outfit, and assumed her identity.

Alone with Roxanne in the secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor of the Old House on the grounds of the estate, Barnabas gives a soliloquy about his feelings for her. She opens her eyes and sits up.

In the spring of 1968, Julia took charge of an experimental procedure another mad scientist had devised to free Barnabas of his vampirism. The core of this procedure was the creation of a Frankenstein’s monster named Adam. In #490, Julia ran the apparatus and was disappointed when Adam seemed still to be inanimate. She and Barnabas left the lab, and Adam came to life. Her disappointment and departure are repeated in this scene, though Barnabas is there to see Roxanne open her eyes.

When Roxanne comes to, we cut to the great house and see Angelique collapse. She crawls around on the floor, trying to make her way to a telephone. This action is shown in quick cuts, but not quite quick enough. It is so much the sort of melodramatic business that was overdone in movies in the 1940s and 1950s and parodied in sketches on The Carol Burnett Show in the 1960s and 1970s that it raises a bad laugh.

Barnabas takes Roxanne out of the secret room, to the parlor. He finds that she cannot speak. He shows her a drawing of her that he found in another secret room, the chamber in the back of the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. It is signed “Claude North.” Roxanne reacts to the drawing with delight and to the name “Claude North” with dismay.

In the summer of 1969, the show was set in the year 1897. One of the characters we got to know in that year was the mysterious Amanda Harris. It turned out that Amanda had popped into existence when an artist thought her up and made a sketch of her. This artist, a repellent little man named Charles Delaware Tate, had no idea he was endowed with the power to bring his fancies to life by drawing them until he met Amanda, at which point he developed an exceedingly unpleasant obsession with her.

Roxanne’s origins are at this point as unknown to us as Amanda’s were when we first got to know her. So the drawing will suggest to longtime viewers that “Claude North” will turn out to be this universe’s version of Tate. When Stokes tells Angelique that he might be able to bring Roxanne back by contacting North, the thought of having further dealings with the man is abhorrent to him. Like Roxanne’s own display of distaste at North’s name, that fits with the idea that he might be a version of the loathsome Tate.

In the great house, Maggie Collins, current wife of Angelique’s widower Quentin, finds Angelique crawling on the floor and picks up the telephone to call the doctor. Angelique says that she needs her father, not the doctor, puzzling Maggie. While they contact Stokes, Barnabas takes Roxanne to the mausoleum and shows her the secret room in an attempt to restore her memory and her power of speech.

In #283, the original continuity’s version of Maggie was a mental patient at Windcliff, a private hospital Julia controls. She had succumbed to amnesia, reverted to early childhood, and become largely nonverbal after an ordeal as Barnabas’ victim. In that episode, Julia took Maggie on a trip to the mausoleum, where Barnabas had tortured her, in an attempt to restore her memory and power of speech. Now, the relatively benevolent Barnabas is taking Roxanne to this universe’s version of the same location in the same hope.

Stokes attends to Angelique in her room. He gives her some medicine to keep her alive until they can find Roxanne. He warns her that if Roxanne manages to speak, her first word will send Angelique back to the grave. He performs an incantation to summon the spiritual forces of darkness to come to their aid. When Mrs Acilius and I were watching this on Amazon Prime, Stokes’ incantation was interrupted by an ad for Chipotle. I’d always thought calling on the Devil and his minions was likelier to bring Taco Bell upon you, but I don’t suppose Chipotle is all that different.

Stokes DoorDashes Chipotle. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

During the 1897 segment, we saw a new version of a character from an earlier phase of the show, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. That iteration of Laura was a heat vampire who drained the warmth from the living to remain animated. They’ve given the current version of Angelique the same condition, though we haven’t seen it lately. In #737, Laura was in a bad way. She lay in bed and her thrall Dirk Wilkins cozied up to her in the most sex-like interaction we had seen on the show up to that point (or up to this point, come to that.) Angelique’s bedroom is laid out the same way today as Laura’s was then, and as Dirk was on Laura’s right, Stokes is on her right. Earlier episodes made it clear that there was something deeply weird about the relationship between Stokes and Angelique. In the contrast between this scene and the one between Laura and Dirk, longtime viewers can see that Angelique and Stokes’ particular weirdness does not involve incest per se. Rather, it is their shared dedication to evil for its own sake that warps everything between them.

Back in the Old House, Barnabas puts Roxanne to bed on her table in the secret room. He goes into the parlor. A car pulls up. It is Carolyn Loomis, wife of his late blood thrall Will Loomis. Carolyn chatters happily about some shopping she did and asks for Will. Barnabas realizes she does not know that Will has died. He breaks the news to her. He says that Angelique killed him, which is part of the truth. Carolyn says it is because of Barnabas that Will was killed, which is the other part of the truth. Barnabas seems to have a whole speech prepared about how he will avenge Will’s death by defeating Angelique, but Carolyn keeps interrupting to ask who will avenge it by defeating him

Elsewhere in the 1897 segment, Barnabas’ enemies had killed his blood thrall Sandor Rákóczi. In #798, Sandor’s wife Magda blamed Barnabas for her husband’s death. She told him she would avenge Sandor by killing him. She then despaired of that and offered herself to him as his next victim. Barnabas grandly replied, “No, Magda, you will not kill me, and I will not harm you. We will grieve together.” Carolyn does not allow Barnabas to speak so loftily.

Carolyn goes to the great house. She is just about to reveal Barnabas’ secret to Maggie when Barnabas himself shows up. While he defuses the situation, Stokes realizes that the Old House is vacant. He slips out to search for Roxanne there. When Barnabas returns, Roxanne is nowhere to be found.

It may seem unlikely that the show will resolve this cliffhanger in the obvious way, by showing us that Stokes took Roxanne from the secret room. They usually go for surprise. Nonetheless, longtime viewers will be inclined to expect this to happen, even though it is so on-the-nose. This room was first seen in #113, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan opened it as a dungeon for well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. Not even Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins, knew of the room’s existence, and David knew the Old House better than any other character on the show at that point. The room is therefore uniquely Matthew’s territory.

Like Matthew, Stokes is played by Thayer David. Stokes’s ancestor was eighteenth century indentured servant Ben Stokes, whose counterpart we saw in the 1790s segment as a commentary on Matthew, an example of the good and sane man Matthew might have been had he not grown up in the shadow of the ancient curses of Collinwood. Once those curses had been in operation for a little while, Ben started turning into Matthew. As Matthew inadvertently killed a man because of his unbounded devotion to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Ben inadvertently killed a man because of his unbounded devotion to Barnabas. As Matthew set out to cover up his accidental homicide by killing Vicki, who was played by an actress whose father was a Danish count, so Ben deliberately committed a murder to cover up his own accidental killing, and his victim was a lady with the title “Countess.” As a descendant of Ben and therefore a reflection of Matthew, it is a matter of course that Stokes knows about the room. Barnabas’ decision to hide Roxanne in the room is just one more case of a severe misreading of Dark Shadows by someone who didn’t watch the 1966 episodes.

Episode 1045: Have you a medical degree?

We open in the room atop the tower of the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Wicked witch Angelique, enemy of the mysterious Barnabas Collins, confronts Will Loomis, Barnabas’ henchman. She demands Will tell her Barnabas’ secret. Returning viewers know that Barnabas is a vampire, and Will is his blood thrall. When Will tells Angelique that he is incapable of betraying Barnabas, we know that he is making a literal statement of fact. But Angelique has power over Will, too. Caught between these opposing forces, Will does the only thing he can. He opens the window and flings himself to his death.

John Karlen plays Will, Lara Parker Angelique. In his post about this episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn observes that Karlen approached all of his parts as if he were in a play by Tennessee Williams. In a comment I left under that post, I said that while most of Karlen’s scene partners stuck with their own distinctive styles of acting while playing opposite him, resulting in surprisingly effective mashups of techniques that you wouldn’t think could coexist on any stage, Parker followed his volcanic lead in today’s first act. Will’s anguish and Angelique’s vehemence both go way over the top, but the result is far from hammy. Orson Welles famously said that hamminess is not overacting, it is false acting. There is nothing false between Will and Angelique today.

Just before Will jumped out the window, Julia Hoffman entered the room. Furious that Will has died without telling her what sort of creature Barnabas is, Angelique accuses Hoffman of startling him and ruining everything. Wondering if Will may have survived his fall, she orders Hoffman to accompany her to the foot of the tower. Hoffman kneels down and says that Will’s spinal cord snapped on impact resulting in instant death. Angelique says that she is intrigued by Hoffman’s diagnosis. “Have you a medical degree?”

Unknown to Angelique, the true answer would be yes. Angelique believes herself to be with Hoffman the housekeeper, her most fanatical devotee. In fact, the woman is Hoffman’s counterpart from an alternate universe, Dr Julia Hoffman, MD. Julia has followed her best friend Barnabas into this continuity and is assisting Barnabas in his battle against Angelique. Julia killed Hoffman and assumed her identity. Julia responds to Angelique’s puzzlement with a story about an incident when she saw a man fall from a roof and land in the same twisted position Will now holds. She remembered the words the doctor said when examining that man and merely repeated them when she saw Will’s distorted neck. Angelique compliments Julia on her extraordinary memory, and proceeds as if she were telling the truth. There seems little else she could do.

I remembered the line “Have you a medical degree?” from the first time Mrs Acilius and I watched Dark Shadows. Angelique has noticed that Julia is different from the Hoffman she knows, and has been showing signs of impatience with her. But she has not suspected she is a different person, only that she is going soft on her enemies. “Have you a medical degree?” makes it seem that might be changing. Julia may be in grave danger before long.

Barnabas rises from his coffin in the basement of Will’s house. He goes upstairs and finds Angelique waiting for him. She says she came, not to see him, but to console the widow Loomis. Thus Barnabas learns that Will has died.

Barnabas tells Angelique that he will avenge Will’s death upon her, but she tells him that he is the one to blame. It was because his power over Will matched hers that Will could respond to her commands only by killing himself.

Angelique’s counterpart in Barnabas’ own universe placed the curse that first made him a vampire. She was also wholly or partially responsible for the deaths of his mother, sister, aunt, uncle, fiancée, and many other people he cared about. So he reacts to the sight of this Angelique with barely controlled rage. For her part, she has no idea who he is, and does not know why he is hostile to her. She, therefore, is much cooler. The contrast is fascinating to watch, far more interesting than are the scenes between Barnabas and the other Angelique and one of the joys of the “Parallel Time” segment.

Julia and Barnabas are busy with a science project. They have learned that Angelique returned from the grave because her father, evil barfly Tim Stokes, somehow established a remote connection between her and a woman named Roxanne whom he keeps in the back room of his apartment. This connection, whatever it is, drains most of the “life force” from Roxanne into Angelique. This creates a delicate situation. If Roxanne dies, all of her “life force,” including that which animates Angelique, will vanish. But if she regains any of the force that has been taken from her, even enough to flutter her eyelids, Angelique will collapse and, unless Roxanne is brought back down to the prescribed level of debility, re-die.

When Julia and Barnabas first came upon Roxanne, they planned to kill her to finish Angelique off. Barnabas put the kibosh on that when he saw how pretty Roxanne was. Then they thought of destroying Angelique by reviving Roxanne, but, for reasons too silly to explain, they’ve decided they want to keep Angelique around. So now Barnabas has decreed that they will manipulate Roxanne’s condition to slow Angelique down. They have taken her from Stokes’ place and put her on a table in Will’s basement, somewhere away from the coffin. They have connected her to a lot of mad science equipment that is supposed to act on the “life force.” Longtime viewers know all about this equipment, because Julia had it in 1968 when she was building a Frankenstein’s monster as part of a project to cure Barnabas of vampirism.

The doctor is in. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia runs the equipment. Roxanne’s condition does not change. Julia tells Barnabas that Angelique is expecting her back at the great house. In her absence, Barnabas takes Roxanne’s hand and stares at her. She opens her eyes and sits up. In the great house, Angelique weakens and collapses.

Many fans wonder where Julia could have got the “life force” equipment. In her own universe, she is a medical doctor and the head of a private hospital, so she could order anything she needed from a medical supply house. Here, her only identity is her imposture as Hoffman the housekeeper, who did not have a prescription pad.

I don’t see why people are so concerned with this. In 1968, the equipment originally belonged, not to Julia, but to another mad scientist, Dr Eric Lang. Barnabas and Julia simply stole it from Dr Lang’s house after he died. In this continuity, we haven’t heard about Dr Lang, but we hadn’t heard about him in the main continuity either until Barnabas fell into his clutches, at which point he already had all of his equipment. So we can presume Barnabas and Julia just found out when his counterpart would be out of the house and raided the place.

Will’s death marks his final appearance, but John Karlen will be back in a couple of months as Willie Loomis, the version of him we met in the main continuity. He will play other characters later, when the show will be set in other periods.

Episode 1043: The temperament to kill

In 1967, vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman settled in on the estate of Collinwood, Barnabas as the master of the Old House on the grounds and Julia as a permanent guest in the great house. Now they have both crossed over to an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” Barnabas has passed himself off to the residents of the great house on this universe’s version of Collinwood as their long-lost cousin from South America, as in the original continuity he persuaded their counterparts he was their cousin from England. He has bitten and enslaved the owners of the Old House, alcoholic writer Will Loomis and Will’s wife, the former Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Julia met her own counterpart, a Julia Hoffman who never became a doctor or got entangled with Barnabas. This Hoffman was the housekeeper in the great house, and as fanatically devoted to the undead Angelique as the original Julia is to Barnabas. Julia greeted Hoffman by beating her to death, stealing her French maid outfit, and assuming her identity.

Yesterday, Carolyn told Julia that she had realized who killed Angelique the first time. Today, she clams up and refuses to say who it is. Julia tells Barnabas about this. He suspects she is protecting Will. He questions Will, who says he is innocent. Barnabas’ power precludes Will from lying to him, so he turns his attentions to Carolyn. He forces her to say that she believes the killer to be her mother, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Barnabas knows Liz’ counterpart in his own continuity and cannot imagine that any version of her would commit such a crime. Carolyn’s reason for accusing her mother is that the murder weapon was one of her hatpins. Barnabas points out that anyone in the house could have stolen the pin.

Angelique has returned from the dead. Impersonating her identical twin sister Alexis, she is staying in the great house as the guest of her widower, sourpuss Quentin Collins. Quentin is missing at the moment, on the run from the police after being charged with a murder of which he is more or less innocent. Barnabas and Julia know who Angelique is and what she is up to.

Angelique is being maintained in the world of the living by a procedure her father, Tim Stokes, invented. Stokes is keeping a comatose young woman named Roxanne in the back room of his apartment. Stokes has somehow established a remote link between Roxanne and Angelique. This link drains most of Roxanne’s “life force” into Angelique. Roxanne must remain in precisely her current state of debility for Angelique to continue her existence. If Roxanne dies, the force will vanish altogether, taking Angelique with it. If Roxanne regains her strength, the link will be broken and the whole force will revert to her.

Barnabas has devised a cockamamie scheme to take Roxanne’s body from Stokes’ place, hide it somewhere, and have Julia bring her back to life. He reminds Julia that she performed a similar procedure when she cured him of his first vampire curse by constructing a Frankenstein’s monster named Adam. She responds that what Stokes has done is altogether different from what she did, and that she has no idea whether she will be able to figure it out. Barnabas, who has no scientific education beyond whatever he picked up as a boy in the eighteenth century, vows to revive Roxanne himself if Julia will not help.

Julia points out the many flaws in Barnabas’ plan. As she does so, Jonathan Frid’s delivery of Barnabas’ responses gets more and more uncertain. He’s been doing quite well in recent episodes, but he’s so bad in this scene that before long Grayson Hall can no longer keep track of Julia’s lines. When, on his way out of the house, he proclaims that he is ready to do battle with Angelique, he is proposing a two-front war. He is already engaged in desperate combat with the coat rack holding his cane. My wife, Mrs Acilius, said that Barnabas’ plan is so ridiculous it’s no wonder the actors can’t get the words out.

Barnabas takes Will to the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. He explains that there is a secret room there that was used to hide weapons from the British during the Revolutionary War. Will made a study of the Collins legends and is skeptical, but Barnabas opens the panel and ushers him in.

Once they are inside, it is Barnabas’ turn to be surprised. In his universe, he was locked in a chained coffin in the counterpart of this room, undiscovered for 171 years. But here, he finds furniture, a candelabra, a glass of fresh milk, and a drawing of Roxanne signed “Claude North.” Someone has been living there, someone connected with Roxanne. Will says out loud that they can’t keep her there. Barnabas says that they will find another place for her, and they carry on.

Will and Barnabas find the drawing. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas and Will enter Stokes’ apartment. Will assures Barnabas that Stokes won’t come back until after closing time at the local tavern, but a moment later claims that he feels a presence. Barnabas looks around. No sooner had he declared that Will is wrong than the ghostly voice of the late Miss Julia Hoffman fills the room, forbidding them from proceeding with their mission.

Roxanne is played by Donna Wandrey, whose short red hair, pale complexion, and strong chin are reminiscent of Grayson Hall. When we first saw her, we wondered if it would turn out that Roxanne was Hoffman’s secret daughter. The ghostly voice adds substance to the idea that there was something important linking Hoffman with Roxanne.

Episode 1038: A family that is finished

Julia Hoffman joined the cast of characters in the summer of 1967 as a supremely confident professional, a medical doctor doubly qualified as a psychiatrist and a blood specialist and the head of a private hospital. Julia came to the estate of Collinwood because she had figured out that Barnabas Collins, master of the Old House on its grounds, was a vampire. She had a plan for curing vampirism and believed that if she succeeded she would change the way science defines life and death, thereby revolutionizing medicine.

Julia’s plan was not successful. She came to be so closely entwined with Barnabas and so deeply complicit in his crimes that she could not hope for any future that did not revolve around him. She decided to make the best of this, and set about falling in love with Barnabas. At first he mocked her cruelly for this. Eventually his response to her signs of romantic interest softened into an embarrassed sympathy.

In #980, Barnabas crossed over into an alternate universe, hoping that he would escape his curse there. He found he was still a vampire, and that he was surrounded by strangers. He has now persuaded the Collinses in the great house at Collinwood that he is their long-lost cousin from South America. He has once more established himself in the Old House, this time by biting and enslaving its owners. He quickly made enemies, most notably the undead Angelique Stokes Collins. The housekeeper in the great house was Angelique’s most fanatical devotee and deadliest enforcer. Her name was Julia Hoffman.

Yesterday, Hoffman had learned that Barnabas was a vampire, found his coffin, placed a stake on his chest, and raised a hammer to drive it through his heart. At the last second, a blow was struck from behind, killing Hoffman and saving Barnabas. The killer was Julia, who had made her way into this universe to take her place at Barnabas’ side.

In #351, Julia offered to guard Barnabas during the day. Since Barnabas had previously given this task only to domestic servants, he was shocked to hear a medical doctor volunteer to perform it. Julia smiled and said “I am not offering to be your maid.” Now, Julia is wearing Hoffman’s French maid outfit and posing as her in an attempt to find out what Angelique is up to. Long before Julia killed Hoffman, she had destroyed her old self in the course of her relationship with Barnabas.

Julia is waiting by Barnabas’ coffin when night falls. The lid opens, and she looks delighted. This image is hilarious, but again contrasts with her earlier behavior to show how ragged her personality has become after all this time as a vampire’s henchman. In #289, Julia made her way to Barnabas’ coffin during the day, opened it, looked inside, and staggered back, shivering with a mixture of terror and triumph. She was at once fantastically intrepid and apparently sane. We did not then know what her intentions were, but the daring action combines with Grayson Hall’s masterful performance to persuade us that Julia might be equal to almost any task.

Now, Julia has become so dependent on Barnabas that she neither sees the horror of the situation nor remembers that he is dangerous to her. The very first we saw of Barnabas was his hand darting out of his coffin to choke someone who woke him unexpectedly, and the second time someone did that, in #275, the choking was lethal. Moreover, Barnabas knew that Hoffman was his deadly foe, so even if he’d been up for a while he could be expected to kill Julia before she had a chance to utter a word if he found her in his hiding place dressed as she is.

Fortunately for Julia, Barnabas has developed a habit of standing around and pontificating before his murders. So she has a chance to explain who she is. She shows him the stake and hammer Hoffman was holding when she found her, and he is convinced. He seems impressed that she killed her Doppelgänger for his sake, and they look more like they are about to kiss than they ever have before.

Barnabas and Julia, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

Julia goes to the great house to report to Angelique, who is staying there in the guise of her identical twin sister Alexis. Angelique irritably asks where Julia has been all day. Julia makes an excuse, and Angelique starts talking about the progress of her evil plans. Before she gets very deep into it, she has a seizure of some kind. Julia asks what she can do to help, and Angelique tells her that she knows very well what to do. The only useful information Julia can get out of her are the word “father” and the sentence “He is doing this!” She decides to call on Angelique’s father, Tim Stokes. She looks Stokes’ address up in the telephone directory, and sets out.

When Stokes answers his door, he expresses surprise, not that Julia is there, but that she bothered to knock before entering. He makes some remarks which Julia cannot even pretend to understand. He says that Angelique must surely have told her about the situation; she says that she did, but that she is very confused about all of it. Stokes ushers her into his back room to give his own explanation.

A blanket covers the body of a woman lying on a table in the back room. Stokes explains to Julia that the woman is not dead. He drained her “life force” to enable Angelique to transcend death, but she retains enough vitality that she keeps pulling that force back to herself from Angelique. That is what causes Angelique to have her seizures. The woman must remain in precisely her current state if Angelique is to exist in the world of the living. The more of her strength she regains, the weaker Angelique will become, and if she dies, Angelique will return to the grave. He has given the woman an injection; he tells Julia that when she returns to the great house she will find that Angelique has recovered.

Julia does indeed find this. She urges Angelique to have Stokes over and repair her relationship with him. Since everyone else is out of the house, tonight would be the perfect time for such a tête–à–tête. Angelique agrees.

While Angelique is mixing martinis for Stokes, Julia is with Barnabas. She goes to the Old House and tells him what she has discovered. He produces a short knife and says that it should take care of the matter. In Stokes’ apartment, he stops and talks about all the time he has spent trying to find Angelique’s vulnerabilities, and wonders that now they have found such a simple method for getting rid of her once and for all. It sounded to my wife as if he was upset that Julia had beaten him to the answer.

In the back room, Julia hands Barnabas the knife. He again goes into a pre-murder soliloquy. Julia peps him up by telling him that the woman isn’t really alive, and that her continued existence means death and destruction for many others. Barnabas agrees. He lifts the blanket and prepares to strike.

The first murder in which Julia participated directly was that of her onetime friend and medical school classmate Dr Dave Woodard in #341. Woodard had learned that Barnabas was a vampire and that Julia was helping him, and was going to expose them both. After resisting the idea for several days, Julia complied with Barnabas’ demand that she prepare a lethal injection for Woodard. She handed him the hypodermic then, as she hands him the knife now. In those days, Barnabas and Julia were not yet friends, and Barnabas replied that she would have to administer the shot herself. In the end, he wound up giving Woodard the fatal dose while Julia stood in the doorway and blocked their victim’s escape. Afterward, Barnabas taunted Julia with her new status as a murderer, making her miserable. Now, they like each other fine, and he accepts the weapon as a matter of course.

It is not surprising that Barnabas, confronted with a problem, chooses murder as the solution. That is always his Plan A, and usually his Plan B and Plan C as well. Indeed, when he wonders what Stokes will do when Angelique is dead he implies that he will murder him too, lamenting that “It never ends does it, when one begins to unravel evil?” Barnabas looks utterly hopeless when he says this. He always feels deeply sorry for himself when he thinks about killing someone.

But this is a new step for Julia. She usually puts up at least a show of reluctance when Barnabas is planning a murder, even if her immediate response when she finds a corpse in his vicinity is to arrange for its secret disposal. What Stokes told her about the “life force” logically entails that bringing the woman out of her coma would destroy Angelique as surely as killing her would. Their resources in this universe are so limited that this may not be a viable course of action, but on her previous form you would expect Julia at least to suggest it. We may wonder if something inside her finally broke when she looked at someone she had killed and saw her own dead face looking back at her.

Episode 1037: An uncertain and frightening journey

In November 1967, well-meaning governess Victoria Winters participated in a séance. She came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. For the next four months, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. Viewers made the acquaintance of wicked witch Angelique and learned how old world gentleman Barnabas Collins first became a vampire.

Vicki herself learned nothing from her trip back in time. She spent the first part of it telling the actors about the parts they had played in the first 73 weeks of the show. After that incredibly stupid habit had burned away any goodwill the audience had for the character, Angelique framed Vicki for her own acts of sorcery. Vicki at first refused to take these charges seriously, an inexplicable response given both her knowledge of the period in which she found herself and her extensive experience with the supernatural in her own time, then kept looking for the most idiotic possible means of defending herself until she was sent to the gallows. In the nick of time, she was whisked back to the séance and to the 1960s, rope burns already visible on her neck. Vicki never regained the audience’s sympathy, and was written out later that year. Maggie Evans succeeded Vicki both as governess at Collinwood and as the perpetually imperiled heroine.

Now Barnabas has traveled in time, not backward, but sideways. He is in an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” Here, Maggie’s counterpart is married to foul-tempered sourpuss Quentin Collins, the master of Collinwood. Angelique’s counterpart is Quentin’s late first wife, returned from the grave and scheming to get Maggie out of the way so that she can remarry her widower. Angelique casts a spell today that leads Quentin to confront Maggie and announce that he is certain that she is a witch.

The 1790s segment was in some ways one of the show’s greatest triumphs, but nothing about Vicki’s part in it was very good. So seeing this Angelique reenact the story that culminated in the witchcraft trial will bring a sinking feeling to longtime viewers. It doesn’t help that Maggie has made a number of inexplicably foolish decisions and quailed in the face of opposition she would seem to be able to overcome easily.

Moreover, Quentin is such a miserable husband to Maggie that we have no rooting interest in their marriage. He is being relatively nice to her at the beginning of the episode, because she was just abducted and imprisoned by a madman, and he feels vaguely guilty that he had jumped to the conclusion that she left voluntarily and berated everyone who suggested she might be in trouble. But even in those nice moments he maintains a paternalistic, condescending tone towards Maggie. When she wonders aloud what other crimes her abductor might have committed, he insists that there could not have been any others and becomes exasperated with her for raising the topic. That led my wife to yell at the screen “Quentin, you are the worst husband! There may be others who are also the worst, but you are the worst!”

Quentin pets Maggie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Quentin so quickly flips from acting like he is indulging the moods of his silly child-bride to accusing Maggie of witchcraft, he not only confirms Mrs Acilius’ assessment that he is “the worst.” Coming so shortly after the abduction story, he seems to be a man blaming his wife for being raped. Indeed, the man who abducted her had in #1022 and #1023 jumped her and sexually assaulted her in a dark alley, and she explained her decision to keep quiet about that attack by saying she was afraid Quentin would blame her. This is an important theme, but it would be a tricky one to explore on a show about witches and vampires and time travel and parallel universes where the median viewer is about ten years old.

Perhaps it would have been possible to have another take on the themes of the 1790s segment that would not have led us to this particular dead end. I think of a comment left in 2017 on Danny Horn’s great Dark Shadows Every Day:

You know, [Parallel Time] might have had a very different feel with the following changes:

Alexandra [Moltke Isles] takes the role of Quentin’s evil first wife, Victoria Stokes Collins. There is no nice twin. She dabbles in “the black arts” but is not a full-on witch. She and Quentin have a son, David.

Lara Parker takes the role of Quentin’s new wife, Angelique “Angela” Evans. She’s kind-hearted and traditional and a romantic. She has no witchcraft powers. But not quite the pushover as time goes on.

And Kathryn Leigh Scott plays Margaret “Maggie” Evans still, but she’s now Angela’s sister and Cyrus’ lab assistant. She’s a modern woman — middle class, educated, confident, reluctant in matter of love.

Maggie and Angela are different — Maggie is the more confident, assertive, cynical of the two — but they are close and both “good” girls. Maggie doesn’t like Quentin.

Lisa Richards is looking for other work.

So in this version, there was a seance two years ago but instead of a murder, Victoria just simply vanished when the lights went out. They never learned what happened. There is no portrait. No one mentions her by name.

When Barnabas enters parallel time, Quentin has just brought Angela home, with Roger and Hoffman treating her like crap.

After about two weeks of establishing all these new relationships, they recreate the seance.

The lights go out, and when they come back on, there’s Victoria in clothing from the late 1700s. She has no memory of what happened — and doesn’t really care. She wants her rightful place as mistress of Collinwood back. (Explanation for her vanishing and returning: Daddy Stokes playing with I-Ching wands. Victoria kills her father when she learns he did that).

Can you imagine the shock for the audience to have “Vicky” just show up like that? And in the same manner RT Vicky did. And then to be evil?

That really could have been fun.

Comment left 29 July 2017 by “William” on “Episode 1056: The Parallel Sky,” Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day.

I like this idea very much. When she played Angelique’s identical twin Alexis, Lara Parker created a character who was not murderous, but far from a naif, and it is easy to imagine that a person like that would have stood up well enough to the kind of stresses that the wicked witch would bring against her to keep the drama going for some time. And it would be a nice inversion, not only to see the evil Vicki persecuting the innocent Angelique, but also to have his unresolved feelings for Vicki render the time traveler Barnabas as clueless in the evil Vicki’s proper world as the well-meaning Vicki was in Barnabas’ native time.

Moreover, these last two weeks the barrier between the universes has been getting leaky. So when the evil Vicki is finally thwarted here, she might escape into the original continuity and wreak havoc there. That would pick up on a road not taken in #872, when sorcerer Count Petofi escaped from the year 1897 and made his way to the Collinwood of the present day, only to be snatched back to the past after a few minutes.

I can’t wish that all of “William’s” dreams had come true. I like Lisa Blake Richards, so I’d want to leave her in the Jekyll and Hyde story and come up with another storyline to feature Kathryn Leigh Scott, either as Maggie or as another character. And it is a gift to viewers who have been with the show from the beginning that David Henesy’s character in Parallel Time is called Daniel Collins rather than David Collins, the name of his part in the other continuity, since the point was made in #153 and referenced later that David’s name was the result of events that wouldn’t have happened here. And while the séance gimmick is too good not to do, I would still like to see Mrs Isles play twins- the evil Victoria and her non-evil sister Veronica.*

*Mrs Acilius doesn’t like the name “Veronica” for this character. She’d rather call her Vanessa or Vivian.

Episode 1026: The spectacle of Barnabas Collins trying to prove anything

Maggie Evans is depressed about her marriage to drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins. In #1016, Maggie was getting ready to call a lawyer so she could put an end to their joyless union, but she changed her mind and decided to give it one more try. That has not worked out, and she has gone from contemplating divorce to attempting suicide. She is about to fling herself to her death from a window high in the great house of Collinwood when Quentin’s sister Elizabeth Collins Stoddard enters the room and talks her out of it. For its first 196 weeks, Dark Shadows was set in an alternate universe, which is in some ways a mirror image of this one. This incident is a case in point. In the original continuity, it was Liz’ counterpart whom people kept interrupting while she was trying to do away with herself,* so she takes the reversed position in this universe.

Most of the episode is devoted to the activities of a visitor from the main continuity, Barnabas Collins. The only thing Barnabas has a motivation to do is to try to get back home, but he seems to have decided he’d rather meddle in the problems the people in this alien universe are having. He suspects that the houseguest at Collinwood who is generally accepted as Alexis Stokes, identical twin sister of Quentin’s late first wife Angelique, is in fact Angelique herself risen from the dead. He also suspects that Maggie’s suicide attempt was the consequence of spells Angelique cast on her.

Barnabas is right about these things, but his grounds for believing them are thin. Angelique’s counterpart in his universe is a wicked witch who has long been the bane of his existence, and so he simply assumes that a woman with her face and voice will be the same. But for three weeks, Alexis really was staying at Collinwood, and Angelique really was in her tomb. Alexis looked and sounded exactly like Angelique. We saw that, while Alexis may not have been a one-dimensional innocent, she was not a witch and was not a direct threat to anyone’s life or liberty. Had Barnabas met Alexis before Angelique came back to life and murdered her, he would have had exactly the same suspicions about her that he has now about Angelique. It is purely a matter of luck that his suspicions coincide with the truth.

In the main continuity, Barnabas’ best friend and most frequent accomplice in his many crimes is mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD. Julia’s counterpart here is the housekeeper at Collinwood. Miss Julia Hoffman is as devoted to Angelique as the original Julia is devoted to Barnabas. As the first Julia shows great reluctance when Barnabas is about to murder someone and shows even greater efficiency in getting rid of the bodies afterward, so this Julia protested yesterday that she would have nothing to do with Angelique’s plan to drive Maggie to her death, but was waiting outside the room when she was about to jump.

After confronting Julia and Angelique, needlessly revealing to them his suspicions, Barnabas decides to get some hard evidence. So he goes to Angelique’s old bedroom and stares really hard at the portrait of her that hangs there. She is in another part of the house, but grows agitated. She runs to the room and screams at him to stop staring into her eyes. He breaks into a triumphant… not grin, exactly, it’s more of a simper. It may be the only triumphant simper ever seen. That suits the occasion. He knows he was right, but Angelique knows that he knows, and it is not clear what he either can do to fight her or what reason he has to want to fight her.

Barnabas’ triumphant simper. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Jonathan Frid’s invention of a facial expression previously thought to be impossible is one of several bits of conspicuously good acting in this episode. He also gets to deliver brief enigmatic responses to a number of questions, such as “Perhaps” and “Did I?,” and he makes each of those words materialize in space in such an arresting way that even his scene partners can’t help but show how impressed they are. As Liz fussing over Maggie, Joan Bennett shows a maternal quality that brings her hitherto undefined character into a very sharp focus. Grayson Hall also adds greatly to Hoffman’s depth. Standing by while Maggie is trying to kill herself, she is bland and detached. When she tells Angelique that it really is better for them that Maggie did not succeed, she is the opposite, torn between a number of emotions, including relief that she has avoided responsibility for a death.

Angelique has several comic lines, for example a wistful lament that she doesn’t get to see Maggie’s corpse mangled on the rocks below her window. And she puts real fervor into her spellcasting directed at Maggie. My wife, Mrs Acilius, remembered that when Lara Parker first joined the cast she wished she were playing an ingenue, so much so that Frid had to keep reminding her that she was the villain. But now she has settled in and become part of the group. So when Angelique abuses Maggie, Parker and her friend Kathryn Leigh Scott turn into two little girls playing make-believe, and they have so much fun at it that they are irresistible to watch, no matter how miserable Maggie is.

*For example, in #266, #267, and #268, and #569.