quentin collins – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 1120: A son who can sail the ships

Gabriel Collins is frustrated by his lot in life. His father, the demented Daniel Collins, had planned to leave the family’s entire fortune to Gabriel’s brother Quentin. When Quentin’s friend, Gerard Stiles, reported that Quentin and his son Tad had been washed overboard during a storm at sea and were to be presumed dead, Daniel saw no need to change his will. Quentin’s widow Samantha is now Daniel’s sole heir. Gabriel, his wife Edith, and their two children are to receive nothing. As a wheelchair user, Gabriel’s prospects for employment in the year 1840 are quite dim, to say the least.

Over the last few days, Gabriel has been trying to improve his odds of inheriting by blackmailing Gerard into murdering Samantha. Now, Gerard and Samantha have come back from a trip to the village of Collinsport. Gabriel is disappointed to find that Samantha is still alive, and shocked that she and Gerard have married. He recovers his composure and tells the happy couple that Daniel will surely disinherit Samantha now.

Gabriel goes to Daniel’s room, the locked cell at the top of the tower on the great house at Collinwood. Daniel is kept there because of his unfortunate habit of mistaking women for his late wife and trying to murder them as he did her. How Gabrel got his wheelchair up the stairs to the tower room is not explained. Indeed, he is continually turning up by himself in rooms on every floor of the house, which no one asks any questions about.

Daniel tells Gabriel that Gerard asked him for Samantha’s hand in marriage and that he gave his blessing. Gabriel says that has has a complete dossier proving that Gerard is guilty of many crimes, probably including murder. This does not impress Daniel in the least. Daniel says that he ought to adopt Gerard, who is the sort of man who should be his son.

Gabriel has somehow got himself back downstairs to the drawing room. He tells Samantha that he knows facts about Gerard that she does not know. She refuses to listen to him, and leaves the room with an airy laugh.

Gerard enters and gloats about Samantha’s loyalty to him. Gabriel tries to leave the room. Gerard grabs the back of his wheelchair and holds him in place. Yesterday, Samantha slapped Gabriel in the face, and it was proof of Christopher Pennock’s success at making Gabriel a man we love to hate that we could sympathize with her. But that sympathy also grew from our fondness for Samantha. We’ve seen Gerard do nothing but run con games, and we know that he is fated to be the face of a terrible disaster at Collinwood in 1970. Appealing as James Storm is, Gerard has shown us nothing we can like. His assault on Gabriel is therefore much more outrageous than was Samantha’s. That’s as it should be- we’re supposed to be outraged. Gerard tells Gabriel that he has to be “a good boy” if he knows what’s good for him. There’s no way saying that can make us root for Gerard, no matter how much we may loath Gabriel.

Gerard takes hold of Gabriel’s chair, imprisoning him. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Gabriel’s cousin Desmond enters. He congratulates Gerard, but soon makes it clear he does not approve of the marriage. Gerard storms out, and Gabriel asks Desmond to run an errand for him. He gives Desmond a letter and says that if he presents it at the bank, they will give him his safe deposit box. Desmond agrees to bring Gabriel the box.

Gerard calls on Daniel in the tower room. Daniel tells Gerard that he reminds him of Quentin. This is rather a bold move on the part of the writers. The first version of Quentin we met was an evil ghost who haunted the great house starting late in 1968; we first met Gerard as an evil ghost haunting Collinwood earlier this year. The stories of the two hauntings were both adaptations of Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw, and had a great deal more in common with each other than with the source material. James Storm’s costume and hairstyle as Gerard even evokes David Selby’s as that original Quentin.

In March 1969, the show traveled back in time to 1897 and we met that Quentin as a living being. He was the great-nephew of the Quentin who preceded Gerard as Samantha’s husband. He was a violent, drunken wastrel. We saw him with his siblings and other denizens of the great house who already knew all about those lamentable qualities, so he wasn’t trying to fool anyone. Since the 1897 Quentin had David Selby’s charm and easy manner and spoke in the witty dialogue of Violet Welles, we couldn’t help but like him. We saw that for all his faults, he truly loved his young nephew Jamison Collins, and we could root for that relationship. It was hardly a surprise that Quentin soon caught on with a large audience, making Mr Selby Dark Shadows’ second major breakout star.

The first such star was of course Jonathan Frid as vampire Barnabas Collins. Though Gerard may look like a miniaturized version of Quentin, so far in the 1840 segment he has been more like Barnabas. As Barnabas presented himself to the Collinses in the great house in 1967 as a living man, their long-lost cousin from England, so Gerard is continually pretending to be something he is not. We first heard of Barnabas as, in the words of the opening voiceover, “the strangest, darkest secret of all,” first learned of his supernatural presence as a disembodied heartbeat emanating from his portrait, and first saw him as a hand clutching the throat of the luckless Willie Loomis, so we knew that he was a monster; likewise, we first saw Gerard as an immensely destructive ghost.

The major difference between Gerard and Barnabas is that we still haven’t got to know Gerard. Barnabas set aside his “cousin from England” act when we saw him alone with Willie, whom he terrorized and beat unmercifully. The contrast between Barnabas’ savage cruelty to Willie and his suave pretense with everyone else kept us interested until the collapse of his first crazy scheme, his attempt to erase the personality of Maggie Evans and replace it with that of his lost love Josette. Then, we saw some glimmers of recognizable human emotions coming through his horrible personality, and we started wondering what sort of person could become what Barnabas was.

Gerard’s mask has slipped a couple of times, but only to reveal other masks underneath. We’ve seen that he was cheating Gabriel when he led him to think he was going to murder Samantha for him, and even his assault on Gabriel today is cloaked in passive-aggression, holding his wheelchair instead of hitting his body. In #1113, we saw him alone with Cockney showgirl Leticia Faye, whom he had brought with him to Collinwood as part of a scheme to get money out of the Collinses. The more he talked to her about that money, the more sure she seemed to be that she wasn’t going to see any of it, whatever Gerard managed to do for himself. So far, Gerard has been a type, Con Man, and a function, Villain. We have yet to see any reason to expect that he will become a character. Though Gerard is the face of The Destruction of Collinwood as we saw it a couple of weeks ago, before the trip back in time to 1840, Gabriel seems to be a much more promising addition to the cast at this point.

Gabriel and Samantha are in the drawing room. He tells her that his wedding present for her should be arriving at any moment. He also tells her that he hired Gerard to kill her, which she immediately dismisses as a lie. She tells Gabriel that he is as insane as his father. A few seconds later, Gerard brings Daniel downstairs. It is not clear whether Daniel heard her; if so, we wonder whether he would be more offended at being used as an exemplar of insanity or at being compared to Gabriel, the son whom he hates with such an unreasoning passion.

Gabriel objects that it is unsafe to let Daniel out of the locked room. Daniel replies that Gabriel is just like his mother. Since Daniel is obsessed with his murder of Gabriel’s mother, that response goes a long way towards explaining why he hates Gabriel so much.

Desmond shows up with Gabriel’s safe deposit box. Gabriel opens it in front of everyone, with much ado about how its contents will expose Gerard for what he really is. The box turns out to be empty. We remember that Gerard and Samantha went to the bank before their wedding, and wonder how he got into the vault and emptied the box. Though if we are wondering whether we will ever see Gerard do anything other than run games on people, the emptiness of the box may strike us as a suitable comment on what Gerard really is.

It seems that nothing can stop Gerard. Samantha embraces him and tells him he has made her forget all about Quentin. At that, the doors swing open and there’s Quentin, saying “I’m home!” As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, we’ve seen so many people eavesdrop through those doors over the last four years that it is hard to believe Quentin did not hear Samantha telling Gerard she was no longer thinking of him.

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1864 narrative poem “Enoch Arden,” about a man lost at sea who returns to find that his wife has remarried in his absence, was hugely popular for a century after its publication, inspiring plays and movies, and prompting legislative bodies around the world to adopt laws defining the period after which a missing person could be declared legally dead. Dark Shadows adapted so many other hits of nineteenth century English literature that it is frankly a bit surprising it’s taken them this long to get around to it.

Episode 1113: Do you smell the smoke?

From March to November 1969, Dark Shadows was mostly set in the year 1897, to which time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins had made his way. Barnabas’ friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, would join him for several weeks towards the end of the 1897 segment.

While Barnabas and Julia were busy in the past, the show cut to a contemporary setting a few times to show us that time was passing there and that the actions taking place in 1897 were changing the circumstances at the great house of Collinwood in the twentieth century. When Barnabas returned to the contemporary setting, the other characters knew where he had been and remembered both the events he went back in time hoping to prevent and those that had replaced them.

The 1897 segment was so good I wished it had gone on longer. One way I imagined they might have been able to stretch it out would have been to do more with the intercutting timelines. So perhaps spend a week in 1897, then a week in 1969. Obviously that would have required a lot more advance planning than they ever managed to do, since they would have had to keep redressing the sets to represent the different periods, but I thought it might have been worthwhile.

Today, we have evidence that some idea like this also occurred to the makers of the show. Julia has gone back in time to 1840 to keep a series of events from starting that will lead to the ruination of Collinwood and its inhabitants in 1970. Barnabas was unable to join her. We spend time today with Julia in 1840, and then with Barnabas in 1970.

Arriving in 1840, Julia’s first act was to make contact with Barnabas’ old friend Ben Stokes. Ben believed her story and made himself incredibly helpful to her effort to establish herself at Collinwood. But she convinced herself that Barnabas had magically projected himself from 1970 into his body as it is in 1840. So she went to the secret room of the old Collins family mausoleum, unchained his coffin, and released him. He was about to kill her when Ben showed up and stopped him. Ben persuaded Barnabas to let Julia leave the room alive, and repeated her story to him. Barnabas reacted with incredulity, telling Ben that he had gone mad to accept such a tale, but Ben insisted Julia was their friend. Now Barnabas has resumed killing people, and Julia is terribly afraid that unless he stops he might be caught.

Barnabas is in the bedroom at the Old House at Collinwood once meant for Josette DuPrés to call her own after she married him. He takes Josette’s portrait off the wall and tells her that he must go on without her. We’ve heard that before. In #281, he stood in the same room and spoke to the same portrait, telling Josette that her ghost must go away and never come back so that he could face the world with someone else. We soon found that his plan was to turn that someone else into a simulacrum of Josette, and later he kept deciding that other women were reincarnations of Josette, so that speech did not represent the emotional growth we might have hoped to see. Finally, Josette’s ghost appeared to Barnabas in #948 and told him to lose her number, and his next love interest was a woman who did not remind him of her. That new woman was comatose, and Barnabas rhapsodized about how much beauty he found in her silence and immobility. Also, there was a bit of a problematic age gap, since she was 22 and he was well over 200. Baby steps, baby steps.

Barnabas has a heart to heart with Josette’s portrait. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Ben enters and tries to talk Barnabas into returning to his coffin and allowing himself to be chained back in. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, points out, he doesn’t even mention that murder is bad. He knows Barnabas well enough to know he’d roll his eyes at that kind of talk. He just focuses on the danger Barnabas is putting himself in. Barnabas says that Ben does not know how horrible it is to spend years trapped in the darkness. Returning viewers may smile at this, since Barnabas doesn’t know that either. When Julia opened his coffin, he had no idea more than a single day had passed since he was chained there in the 1790s. He flounces off to take more victims.

In the drawing room of the great house, Julia meets Cockney psychic Leticia Faye. She asks Leticia if she can tell what will happen in that room in 1970. Leticia laughs and says her visions don’t extend that far. She adds that there wouldn’t be much point in them if they did, since no one alive today will be around to see if they came true. Julia claims to have had a dream about 1970, and Leticia humors her. She goes into a trance, and smells smoke. That’s about it, and when Leticia comes out of it she is still laughing, perhaps thinking that it didn’t amount to much. But it reminds Julia of the disaster she escaped, and leaves her wondering what Barnabas is doing in 1970.

We cut to Barnabas’ house in that year. He is doing what he does best, sitting around feeling sorry for himself. Ben’s descendant, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes, is there. They are talking about the funeral held that afternoon for the residents of the great house killed in the disaster. Stokes does not know that Barnabas is a vampire, and so Barnabas has to make an excuse for his absence from this daytime event. He simply says he was too upset to attend.

Heiress Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes and charming rogue Quentin Collins survived the disaster and are in the Old House, both quite insane. Barnabas and Stokes cart them off to a psychiatric facility. This is the final appearance on Dark Shadows of either of these characters, each of whom has been enormously important to the show.

Carolyn is played by Nancy Barrett, who also plays Leticia. Quentin is played by David Selby. We had expected to see Mr Selby in 1840 as another character named Quentin Collins, but when Julia arrived she learned that Quentin was missing and presumed dead after a nautical mishap. This glimpse of Quentin doesn’t add much to the story, but it does serve to reassure us that Mr Selby has not left the cast and that we will be seeing the 1840 version of Quentin sooner or later.

Barnabas decides to cast some I Ching wands. That’s what got him back to 1897, and the wands fall in the same pattern this time as they did then. He meditates on them. He sees a door, and seems to pass through it. On the other side, he sees a tombstone engraved “Julia Hoffman Collins 6 October 1840.”

Julia is masquerading as the daughter Barnabas had after he left for England in the 1790s, and has been telling the Collinses to expect her brother, Barnabas Junior. We haven’t heard her give “Hoffman” as a middle name. Of course it had to be there for Barnabas to be shocked by the stone. Otherwise, he would just have wondered who “Julia Collins” was.

It strikes me that they missed an opportunity. Julia has said that she moved from England to Philadelphia. Even though she lived there for so many years that she picked up an eastern Pennsylvania accent, she did not contact the family at Collinwood. Eventually they are likely to find out that she has a great deal of medical expertise, most unusual for a lady in 1840. Had she introduced herself as Julia Collins Hoffman, she might have explained that she met her late husband Dr Samuel Hoffman while he was studying in London, married him there, and lived with him in his hometown, Philadelphia. At the name “Dr Samuel Hoffman,” a theremin might have played on the soundtrack. Electronic music enthusiasts would laugh at the nod to the real Dr Samuel J. Hoffman (1903-1967,) the great player of and composer for the theremin. And fans of Dark Shadows would be happy that Julia’s imaginary husband has the same first name as Grayson Hall’s real husband, series writer Sam Hall.

This episode marks not only the final appearances of Carolyn and the original Quentin, but also the last time Peter Miner’s name will appear in the credits as line producer. Starting tomorrow, Lela Swift will be in command at 433 West 53rd Street. Swift was the principal director since the beginning of the show, chiefly responsible for the show’s often striking visual composition. It will be exciting to see what she can do now that she has a wider scope of action.

Episode 1109: It’s the same as it was in the future

The ghost of Gerard Stiles kills Daphne Harridge, Tad Collins, and Carrie Stokes. It was his idea to bring these three back to life in recent weeks after he murdered them the first time, in 1841. Daphne regained a body of her own, while Carrie and Tad took possession of the bodies of Hallie Stokes and David Collins. Now all of them are dead again, David and Hallie into the bargain. What the point was of any of that, none can say.

Gerard waves a green polyester flag from the window of the room on top of the tower at the great house of Collinwood, prompting zombies to rise from the dead and wreck the house. The shots of the earth heaving as the zombies rise from their graves were anticipated when David waved the flag in #1089, when a monster masquerading as a man named Jabez Hawkes raised some zombies in #963, and when wicked witch Angelique raised Jeremiah Collins from the dead as a zombie in #392/393. For that matter, the whole graveyard scene was anticipated in the 1959 feature film Plan 9 from Outer Space, and actor Chuck Morgan, who also played one of Jabe’s zombies, even looks like Tor Johnson.

Laugh if you must, but he’s leading a group of six who will demolish an incomprehensibly large haunted house in a single night. That’s more than you’ve done.

The Destruction of Collinwood will leave most of the Collins family dead, missing, or hopelessly insane. That was prophesied when vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman traveled to the far-off future year 1995 in #1061-1070. It also echoes a line with which heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard greeted well-meaning governess Victoria Winters in #2, “Welcome to the House of Usher.”

Julia escapes from the zombies and finds herself in 1840. She has to leave Barnabas behind in 1970, where he is busy wrestling with some of the zombies. Each of Dark Shadows‘ major costume drama segments has begun with a character from the contemporary setting alone in an unfamiliar past. Victoria served this function in the first costume drama segment, when the show went to the 1790s from November 1967 to March 1968; Barnabas did it in March 1969, when the show started an eight months tour in the year 1897. Now it is Julia’s turn. She eventually joined Barnabas in 1897; we may wonder whether Barnabas, or perhaps someone else, will manage to find their way to her from 1970.

Episode 1107: Bury me not

A lot happens in this one, and all the actors do a good job. Even so, it feels very slow. None of the incidents seems to connect with any of the others.

Ill-dressed man Sebastian Shaw lets himself into the secret room where vampire Barnabas Collins keeps a coffin. It is not the coffin where Barnabas spends his days, but is the resting place of another vampire. Its occupant is Roxanne Drew, whom Barnabas loves and Sebastian hates. Sebastian opens the coffin, pulls a pistol, and aims it at Roxanne. He is about to fire when another figure appears in the corner of the room. Regular viewers recognize this figure as the ghost of pirate Gerard Stiles. Sebastian does not know that Gerard is a ghost. He fires two shots at him, of course without effect.

Barnabas enters. He disarms Sebastian, who tells him he was going to destroy Roxanne but that a man stopped him. Barnabas recognizes his description of Gerard. Sebastian shows Barnabas the bite marks on his neck, and explains he was under Roxanne’s power until recently. She lost her control of him when she began feeding on governess Maggie Evans. Longtime viewers have often wondered why Barnabas didn’t build an army by biting everyone who got in his way and turning them into his blood slaves; this is the first explicit statement on the show that a vampire risks losing control over one victim by taking another. We’ve seen examples of Barnabas’ power weakening when he takes an additional victim, but this has been far from consistent.

Sebastian shouts so loudly the microphone distorts his voice in a way we’ve never heard before on the show. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas asks if Roxanne ever mentioned the name Gerard Stiles. Sebastian says that he believes she did, but that he can’t remember in what connection it came up. We’ve had a few hints recently that Roxanne has some kind of association with Gerard and the other ghosts who are taking over the great house of Collinwood. This doesn’t give any substance to these hints, but it does confirm that the writers plan to keep dropping them.

Upstairs, Barnabas visits the other undead female he is keeping in his house, former ghost Daphne Harridge. He questions Daphne, who confirms that there was a girl named Roxanne Drew around Collinwood when she and Gerard were alive in 1840. She doesn’t remember much about Roxanne, but does recall that there was some drastic change in her that got people talking in that year. The show is obviously preparing for a trip back in time to 1840, so with this we learn that Roxanne will figure in that segment and that we will see how she became a vampire.

Another rehumanized ghost, Quentin Collins, enters. Barnabas orders Daphne to leave with Quentin, going far away from Collinwood before Gerard can get at her. Quentin tells Daphne to take Barnabas’ orders. When she protests, he says “Daphhh-neee” in a slow, condescending voice. David Selby started doing this in March to July 1970, when Dark Shadows was set in an alternate universe and he played a different Quentin Collins, one who was married to Maggie’s counterpart. That Quentin was an insufferable jerk who often scolded Maggie with a slow, condescending “Maaaa-ggie.” Hearing him say Daphne’s name in that tonal format this time, I finally realized what it reminded me of. Ted Knight, as pompous newsman Ted Baxter on the Mary Tyler Moore show, would often pronounce the two-syllable names of people he was addressing using the same intonation. All of a sudden I could hear Quentin telling “Murrr-ray!” he shouldn’t put such complicated words in the copy he writes, or “Georrr-gette” not to be so independent. When I mentioned the resonance to my wife, Mrs Acilius, she laughed and said she couldn’t believed she hadn’t noticed it herself.

Barnabas leaves Daphne alone with Quentin. They toast their future life. Daphne abruptly collapses, and Quentin clutches his stomach. Gerard appears, and Quentin asks him why he has poisoned them. Quentin is an expert on ghosts who poison the living. In #677, he was himself a ghost, and he put strychnine in a drink his great-grandson Chris Jennings took. Barnabas’ buddy, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, saved Chris then. Now, Julia is with Barnabas when he returns to the room. Daphne is on the floor, unconscious but still alive. Quentin is nowhere to be seen.

Barnabas goes to the great house, searching for Quentin. He finds heiress Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes, playing a mad scene. Nancy Barrett and Jonathan Frid make Carolyn and Barnabas sound like Ophelia and Claudius in Act 4, Scene 5 of Hamlet, for a little while anyway. When Barnabas tells Carolyn that they must stop what is happening, she replies “I cannot stop anything. Whatever gave you the impression that I could?” It really is lovely.

Barnabas goes back to his house. Julia has treated Daphne, who is resting comfortably, aside from glycerin tears streaking her face at several angles, none of them convincing. Carolyn enters and demands to be left alone with Daphne. Julia and Barnabas know that Carolyn is intermittently possessed by a ghost known as Leticia, who is somehow associated with Gerard and Daphne, and are therefore reluctant to comply with this demand. But they apparently don’t think they have much to lose, so they go along with it.

Carolyn/ Leticia gives Daphne a dress. It is the dress she wore when she was a ghost. Daphne cries out to Gerard, asking if the time has really come. She then goes and hides in the closet. There was a lot of dull business with clothes when Quentin was a ghost, late in 1968, and they recycled that early in the current haunting, five weeks ago. This moment is easier to take, both because it is mercifully brief and because the dress is clearly legible as a sign of imminent story progression in the form of Daphne’s next death.

Quentin and Gerard are in a graveyard. Quentin has recovered from the poisoning sufficiently to smile lovingly at Gerard and say that he can’t imagine why he ever thought he was his enemy. He examines the tombstones in the fenced-off part of the graveyard and reminisces about the men buried under them, men who were underlings of Gerard’s in 1840. Since Quentin is only 100 years old, he is puzzled that he has memories from 130 years ago, but when he takes another look at Gerard’s smiling face his anxiety dissipates. He looks at a blank tombstone and puzzles as to why it is blank. At Gerard’s bidding, he digs up the grave and opens the coffin. He is delighted to realize that it was meant for Quentin Collins, and that the time has come for him to get into it. He briefly resists the idea of burying himself alive, but then looks at Gerard, says “You are Death. Whatever made me think I could run away from you?,” and complies. We end with Gerard putting the dirt back on top of the grave, Quentin securely inhumed.

Longtime viewers know that Quentin is alive because of a magical portrait that immunized him against aging, lycanthropy, and injury. So we are left wondering whether he is also covered for asphyxiation. If he is, Gerard is going to be pretty embarrassed when Quentin makes his way out of the ground.

Episode 1099: A governess that was here once

For several months starting in late 1968, Dark Shadows did an adaptation of Henry James’ Turn of the Screw. This segment is often called “The Haunting of Collinwood.” For the last six weeks, they’ve been doing a second adaptation of that same novella. I call the current segment “The Re-Haunting of Collinwood.”

So far, the remake has been so close to the original that it is little more than a test of the patience of longtime viewers. The last few days, they’ve been deviating a bit. So the ghosts of teenagers Tad and Carrie have erased the personalities of their lookalikes, David Collins and Hallie Stokes, and are now operating as living beings in their bodies. That didn’t quite happen in 1968 and 1969, when David and his friend Amy Jennings were beset by ghosts who were excited by their resemblance to their late ancestors Jamison and Nora Collins.

Carrie and Tad have cast a spell that has conjured up their old governess, Daphne Harridge, as a living woman. Amy and David never even tried to bring lady’s maid Beth Chavez back to life. She remained an unspeaking ghost until the show went back in time to 1897 and we met her in her proper lifetime. Today, Daphne orders Tad and Carrie to go through the same spellcasting procedure to bring the other ghost, the evil Gerard Stiles, back to life. Again, David and Amy did not try to bring Quentin Collins back to life. He is alive today only because he was immunized against death and aging in the 1897 segment, since he was such a hit with the audience.

Summoning Gerard. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Yesterday, David’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins questioned Carrie and Tad and revealed their true identities. Neither of them was able to name the parents of the person they were possessing. Tad was also unable to name David’s former governess Victoria Winters. Through the show’s first year, Vicki was the chief protagonist and main audience identification character. She was written out in 1968, and Barnabas’ question was the first reference to her in months. She comes up again today. Carrie brings some contemporary clothes for Daphne to wear. She explains to Tad that “They belong to a governess that was here once… Her name was Victoria or something.” She says that the current governess told Hallie that Victoria left the clothes behind, but did not explain why.

Two consecutive episodes alluding to Vicki will be enough to get longtime viewers wondering if we will see her again. They had run out of things for Vicki to do in the story long before she left the show, and there is no clear opening for her now. When Carrie calls attention to the fact that there is a mystery around the circumstances of Vicki’s departure, she reminds us that that Vicki disappeared into a time warp. Since The Re-Haunting of Collinwood seems to be heading into a trip back through time to the year 1840, that might lead us to hope that what we find in that year will have something to do with Vicki. Then again, if all the ghosts are going to turn into living people, maybe they will be able to cancel their reservations for the journey to the past and stay in contemporary dress. Perhaps in that case, Vicki will find her way back as well. We might imagine that we will find tomorrow that they have failed to bring Gerard to life, but have conjured up Vicki instead. Maybe the summoning procedure only brings up governesses with long black hair.

Daphne is played by Kate Jackson, in her first screen role. Miss Jackson would go on to star in primetime series such as The Rookies, Charlie’s Angels, and Scarecrow and Mrs King.

Episode 1098: Who was your governess before Maggie? Tell me her name.

Barnabas Collins leaves people who appear to be his distant cousins Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes and David Collins, as well as Carolyn and David’s houseguest Hallie Stokes, in David’s bedroom. Barnabas is still within earshot when these three address each other as “Leticia,” “Tad,” and “Carrie.” He rushes back into the room, looks at those who might be taken for Hallie and David, and declares “You are both possessed!” He ignores the fact that the same evidence indicates that Carolyn is also possessed.

Initially, Tad and Carrie pretend they were only using those names as part of a game. Barnabas says that in that case, he will play, too. He asks Tad to name David’s mother. He cannot. He then asks who his previous governess was. He can’t answer that, either. He asks Carrie why Hallie lives in the great house of Collinwood. She says that it is because there was an accident. Barnabas confirms that is so, and that the accident involved her parents. He asks her what their names were. She cannot answer. He presses on when they object. Finally, Carrie calls out to Daphne, a ghost whom she and Tad had previously denied ever having heard of, to come and help them. Shocked, Tad looks at her and calls her Carrie. The cat is out of the bag.

Longtime viewers will be thrilled by Barnabas’ questions. Not only is it a refreshing change to see him demonstrating presence of mind and moving quickly to advance the story, but the references to David’s mother and to his previous governess bring up characters who used to be very important to the show and who have been absent from the story and unmentioned for a long time. Real heads know who those women were, Tad and Carrie are exposed as noobs.

Throughout this interrogation, Carolyn/ Leticia was standing still, watching placidly while Carrie and Tad got flustered and blew their cover. Barnabas asks what the ghosts of Daphne and of someone named Gerard want. At that, Carolyn/ Leticia breaks her silence. Smiling, she says that Tad and Carrie do not yet know the answer to that themselves. Neither does she, come to that. She wafts away, leaving everyone reeling.

Yesterday, Tad told Carrie that if they let on who they really were, they would be defeated at once. It was not at all clear then what anyone could do to bring that about. Tad tells Barnabas that he and Carrie are here to stay, and that there is nothing he can do to stop them. This seems to be true.

Carrie distressed, Tad defiant. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After Barnabas leaves Carrie and Tad alone in David’s room, they wonder what happened to Hallie and David. They say that they liked them, and that they hope nothing bad happened to them. Carrie asks Tad if he thinks David and Hallie are dead. He says he doesn’t think so, but he sounds very doubtful. Carrie asks where they are. He says they aren’t anyplace. While he and Carrie are using their bodies, Hallie and David “don’t exist.” It may seem obvious that ceasing to exist qualifies as something bad happening to a person, but ever since Epicurus in the fourth century BCE that has been an open question among philosophers. So maybe nothing bad did happen to David and Hallie. Certainly nothing at all will happen to them ever again.

Though Carrie and Tad have entirely erased Hallie and David, Carolyn persists. Leticia sets out to tell Quentin Collins something. By the time she gets to Quentin’s room, Carolyn has reemerged and is unsure what she is doing there. Quentin is drunk, which is not unusual. He is under Daphne’s power and has been unable to do anything to prevent Tad and Carrie from taking over David and Hallie’s bodies. Carolyn became clairvoyant when Leticia moved in with her, and can tell Quentin is feeling guilty about something. He denies everything.

There’s a lot of spellcasting today. Quentin tries to break free of Daphne by setting fire to her handkerchief. This fails immediately. Carrie and Tad try to raise one of the ghosts from the dead. They hope they will get Daphne, because they are afraid of Gerard, but they have no way of knowing which one it will be. The episode ends with a knock at the door. We will have to wait until tomorrow to find out whether that will be Daphne, Gerard, or the man from the gas company come to read the meter.

Episode 1097: In a different life

In July 1970, Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman came unstuck in time and spent two weeks in the far-off future year 1995. They found that the great house of Collinwood was in ruins, its residents either dead, missing, or insane as the result of a mysterious disaster that took place before 1970 was out. Since returning to their own period, they have been making fruitless efforts to learn what is happening and prevent the disaster.

Today, we see Julia sitting on the couch in the drawing room, reading a book and picking her teeth. Barnabas is pacing nearby. I am not making this up, the ABC network actually broadcast this on national television.

This thrilling scene follows an exchange in which Barnabas and Julia talk about a place called Rose Cottage that they heard about in 1995 and have been trying to find for the last six weeks. Julia tells Barnabas that it has just occurred to her that the place may not be known as Rose Cottage now. Barnabas does not understand what she means. Julia tries to explain that it might be possible for people to use one name for a house at one time and a different name for the same house at a different time. Barnabas has difficulty with this concept. Grayson Hall and Jonathan Frid, highly trained and much-honored actors, play this exchange with great emotional tumult, focusing our attention on the precise level of cognitive ability it suggests the characters have.

Just as we are thinking that the show has finally come to a dead halt, Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes enters. Julia and Barnabas notice that Carolyn seems to be in a good mood, to which they make it their business to put an immediate stop. They say Carolyn must not have heard about the latest crisis concerning teenagers Hallie Stokes and David Collins:

JULIA: Carolyn, how are you feeling?

CAROLYN: Quite well, thank you. But both of you look so terribly distressed. Whatever’s the matter?

BARNABAS: Well, hasn’t anyone told you?

CAROLYN: Told me what?

BARNABAS: Well, the children are missing.

CAROLYN: Oh, that. Yes, I know.

JULIA: Well, aren’t you the least bit concerned about it?

CAROLYN: No.

JULIA: Why, Carolyn? Why aren’t you concerned? Carolyn, do you know something about David and Hallie you’re not telling us?

CAROLYN: Perhaps.

JULIA: Well, you must tell us. Do you know where they are?

CAROLYN: They’re gone. David and Hallie are gone.

BARNABAS: We told you that!

JULIA: Carolyn, we believe they’re in some terrible danger, the children.

CAROLYN: The children, in danger? No, no, that’s not true.

JULIA: How do you know it’s not true?

CAROLYN: Because I know the children are alive and well.

JULIA: If you know that much, then you must know where they are.

CAROLYN: No, that’s all I can tell you. They’re alive and well. Now, you must excuse me, I’m really very tired. (Exit)

BARNABAS (watching Carolyn go): Do you think she knows what she’s talking about?

JULIA (wonderingly): I have no idea.

They say that if a performer is really present in a scene, there is always a chance that when you throw the light on them something wonderful will happen. What Nancy Barrett does here is as pure an example of this I could hope to find. Carolyn’s blissed-out insouciance is so great to watch that it redeems everything that went before. I wonder if Frid and Hall’s ferocious overplaying was deliberate, meant to give the sharpest possible contrast to what they knew Miss Barrett was about to do.

Later, Barnabas encounters Carolyn in the little-used west wing of the great house:

BARNABAS: Carolyn, what are you doing up here?

CAROLYN: What, I just went to get something from my room.

BARNABAS: Your room?

CAROLYN: Yes, just down the hall.

BARNABAS: But your room isn’t up here in the west wing, it’s downstairs in the house proper.

CAROLYN (laughing): Don’t be absurd. You know perfectly well I’ve always lived in the west wing. I do think it the most enchanting part of the house.

BARNABAS: Carolyn?

CAROLYN: May I ask why you keep calling me that?

BARNABAS: Because it’s your name.

CAROLYN (laughing): You know very well my name is Leticia, and I live in that room just down the hall.

BARNABAS: Leticia?

CAROLYN: Of course.

BARNABAS: Well, Leticia, perhaps you can tell me where the children are. Can you do that?

CAROLYN: What an odd question.

BARNABAS: What’s odd about it?

CAROLYN: Do you realize how late it is? Where else would the children be but in bed? You are a strange one! (exits, laughing.)

In 1995, Barnabas and Julia found that Hallie and David had died in 1970, and that ghosts which looked like them were in fact the ghosts of teenagers named Carrie and Tad who died in 1841. So when they find that David and Hallie are not in the house, they fly into a panic. In that same year, they found that Carolyn was alive, and that she had gone insane in 1970. So far as they could tell, Carolyn believing herself to be someone named Leticia who lived in the west wing of Collinwood was no part of the disaster. So they stay focused on Hallie and David, and let Carolyn/ Leticia go her own way.

Barnabas takes “Leticia’s” suggestion and goes into David’s bedroom. There, he finds the young fellow asleep in bed. Later, Julia has gone to Hallie’s room and found her bed also occupied. Julia woke her and herded her into David’s room, where Barnabas confronts both teens. They claim that they ran away from home because all the talk about ghosts and whatnot had unsettled them, and that they came back because they realized they were being silly. Barnabas mentions the names of some of the ghosts; they claim never to have heard those names. Barnabas is startled by this denial. Returning viewers know that Julia has mentioned the names to David and Hallie, and it is likely she told Barnabas she had done so. They are trying to play dumb, but in fact reveal that something is very wrong.

Carolyn enters. Barnabas leaves her alone with the teenagers. He is still just outside the door when he hears the three of them bid each other goodnight. Carolyn calls them Carrie and Tad; they call her Leticia. Barnabas bursts back in and declares “You are both possessed!” All three of them are possessed, but what he saw in 1995 leads him to disregard Carolyn’s possession and to focus on David and Hallie’s.

Early in the episode, we saw what it means when Carolyn says “David and Hallie are gone.” They no longer exist. Their bodies are now the vessels through which Tad and Carrie have resumed living. Carrie and Tad talked about the importance of keeping up the appearance of being Hallie and David; Tad said that one slip would be enough to expose them, and then “the game will be over.” We might wonder how. What can the living characters do to defeat the ghosts, if they know what the ghosts are doing? Nothing we’ve seen in the last six weeks suggests an answer to that question. For all we can tell, Julia, Barnabas, and the rest of them are so completely helpless that the ghosts may as well throw all discretion aside and operate openly.

Episode 1088: Why do I have to see Collinwood again?

Julia Hoffman and her friend Barnabas Collins have seen the future. They know that before 1970 is out, a mysterious disaster will leave the great house of Collinwood in ruins, inhabited only by ghosts. In the course of the disaster, teenagers David Collins and Hallie Stokes will die, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard will vanish, and the rakish Quentin Collins will go insane.

Liz has forbidden Julia from telling Hallie and David what she knows. The ghosts have stepped in and asserted an influence over David and Hallie, preventing them from telling Julia or anyone else what they know. One of the ghosts has taken Quentin into her power, preventing him from doing anything to move the story forward. Astrologer/ psychic Sebastian Shaw knows that a disaster is in store, but he is under the influence of a woman named Roxanne Drew, who wants him to string Liz along with happy talk until they can bilk her of a lot more money.

Today Sebastian has a vision while he is alone with Liz. He describes a room and tells her she must not enter it. He then rushes out. When Liz repeats Sebastian’s description to Quentin and Julia, they recognize the room as one they had been in earlier. Julia wants to go there at once, but Quentin points out that if Sebastian’s words are of value that is what they ought not to do. Julia agrees with this. Liz says that she can’t very well accept being told not to go into a room in her own house. Julia and Quentin take a very stern tone with her, speaking to her as if she were a naughty child.

Liz is too well-bred to point out that both of them live in her house as her guests, but she does object and does go to the room. All Sebastian told her about the room was that it had been out of use for a long time, the walls are green, and there is a small figurine in it of a woman bending over a child. All Quentin and Julia told her was that they had been there. Yet she goes directly there. In the room, she encounters the ghost of the malign Gerard Stiles.

Liz senses Gerard’s presence. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Liz had called Sebastian to Collinwood because the horoscope he prepared for her predicted that on this night an enemy would become a friend. We know enough about Gerard to be sure that his “friendship” means only his control. So if the prediction means anything, it can only be that Liz will cease to be a potential adversary to Gerard and will fall under his control. That, in turn, means that she, too, will be sidelined into a refusal to communicate, becoming yet another brake on a story that has been going nowhere for weeks.

Episode 1087: How can I go to sleep in a house like this?

For several months starting in late 1968, the great house of Collinwood was haunted by the unspeaking ghost of Quentin Collins. The Haunting of Collinwood posed a grave danger to children David Collins and Amy Jennings. At the end of March 1969, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins tried to communicate with Quentin’s ghost in hopes of saving David’s life. Barnabas came unstuck in time and found himself in 1897, where he met Quentin as a living being. For the next eight months Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in that year. David Selby’s charm made Quentin a breakout hit. In the course of Barnabas’ bungling, history was changed so that Quentin did not die. Instead, he was immunized against aging, so that when the show returned to contemporary dress he showed up alive, well, and apparently a bit under 30.

Now, this storyline is being recycled. In the Re-Haunting of Collinwood, the unspeaking ghost of Gerard Stiles takes the place of the unspeaking ghost of Quentin. Hallie Stokes takes the place of Amy. David is reenacting his original part.

David Henesy does a good job today playing David’s frustration at finding himself in the same situation over and over. He is in his bedroom when Gerard stands in front of him menacingly. He screams. Permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman lets herself into the room. Julia knows about Gerard, and tells David she can feel that “he” has been in the room. David feigns ignorance. Julia has withheld her knowledge of the ghosts from David, so she cannot give him an answer when he asks who she is talking about. She stays on the offensive, asking him to tell her. He won’t, so she asks him why he was screaming. He tells her he had a nightmare. She demands he stop lying and claims that she has always told him the truth. In fact, she has never told him the truth, and her failure to let him in on what she knows about Gerard and the other ghosts is a case of dishonesty that has kept the show on a treadmill for three and a half weeks now, so this is just a bizarre claim.

David becomes angry with Julia. When she tells him that it is important he report anything unusual to her, he explodes:

DAVID: What’s so unusual about a dream? Nothing. Or a kid having one? I can’t do anything around here without one of you jumping on my back, asking me about unusual things. Well, the unusual things around here are you, and Barnabas, and Quentin.

JULIA David, just be calm.

DAVID: No, you calm down! Pretty soon somebody’s going to come in here and say, ‘David, why aren’t you asleep yet?’ How could I go to sleep in a house like this, with all of you people crawling all over the halls?

David is right when he says that he is questioned in just about every episode in which he appears, and right that there have been countless scenes in which someone comes into his bedroom and asks him why he is still up. He’s also right that people at Collinwood keep odd hours. Most episodes are set at night, and involve people running into each other at four in the morning and exchanging stories about how they are out running errands and have to rush off to keep an appointment. And he is certainly right about Julia, Barnabas, and Quentin being unusual. Julia is a mad scientist, Barnabas is a vampire, and Quentin is an ex-ghost, ex-zombie, and ex-werewolf. All three of them have made weird journeys through time and into the world of the dead, and each is guilty of several murders.

Later, David opens the door to his bedroom and finds Julia examining his belongings. He’s had as much of that kind of thing as he plans to take:

DAVID (sharply): What are you doing here?

JULIA (oblivious to David’s irritation): Oh, David, David, this flag, it was never here before.

DAVID (angrier): Well, I don’t think that’s any of your business.

JULIA (still oblivious): I was just curious.

DAVID (making an effort to control his anger): Well, you have no right to be here.

JULIA (finally aware that David is upset): David!

DAVID (really blowing his stack): I’ve got a right to some privacy, don’t I? Do I have to put signs up?

JULIA (sincerely puzzled at his reaction): David, there’s no reason for you to be this angry.

DAVID (firm): Well, you can just get out of here. You don’t have to come back until you’re invited, and I can guarantee you won’t be, because I’m tired of all of your questions and snooping. Tired!

JULIA (seeming to realize she is in the wrong): I’m sorry.

Later, David goes to the drawing room and apologizes to Julia for his harshness. She says that he was right to object to her letting herself into his room when he wasn’t there. She assures him it won’t happen again. David says that he is glad she isn’t angry, because he can’t stand to be on bad terms with anyone. What if something happens and they never have a chance to make up? Julia shows signs of concern when he first says this, but then smiles and says she is sure that she and David will have many opportunities to fight and make up. As in all scenes where Julia talks to a child character in a happy and relaxed tone, we can see that Grayson Hall must have been great with kids. Julia offers David a hug at the end, but he is too deep in his thoughts to embrace her. They exit together.

Looking forward to future fights and makings-up.

The episode ends with Gerard in corporeal form, standing behind Quentin and preparing to strangle him with a cord. Gerard is played by James Storm, who like David Selby is a darkly handsome man. Mr Storm is much shorter than Mr Selby. This has some practical advantages. Mr Selby is well over six feet tall, so that it was often beyond the abilities of the makers of the show to keep the studio lights out of frame when they were shooting him from the perspective of a scene partner. But when we see the two of them together, I can think of Gerard only as mini-Quentin. It rather undercuts the effectiveness of the closing cliffhanger.

Episode 1086: Their ridiculous prophecies

Teenagers David Collins and Hallie Stokes are intermittently subject to possession by the ghosts of Tad Collins and Carrie Stokes. They fear that the ghosts will soon take them over permanently, erasing their own personalities once and for all. We have seen the future, and know that unless something changes not only will the bodies of Hallie and David become vessels for Carrie and Tad, but those bodies will die and the ghosts will haunt the uninhabitable ruins of the great house of Collinwood for years to come.

Previously, Tad and Carrie had been unaware of David and Hallie. When one of them was possessed, the ghost would not know whom the other meant when addressing them by the name of the living person. But yesterday Carrie and Tad simultaneously took possession of Hallie and David, and they talked to each other about how much they liked them and how puzzled they were that they were afraid of them. They went to the ghost of their governess, Daphne Harridge, and asked her if she knew why David and Hallie were afraid of them. For a moment we might have hoped that communication would take place and the story of the haunting would finally pick up steam, but that hope was dashed when Daphne responded to Tad and Carrie with silence. Daphne had been silent in her interactions with the living characters until Hallie and David heard her laugh in a dream they both had in #1082. It’s depressing that she can’t talk even to her fellow ghosts.

Any hopes we may have had for Hallie or Carrie also suffered yesterday from Kathleen Cody’s poor performance. Miss Cody gets a lot of hate from fandom, much of it unfair. She is good sometimes. But called upon to draw a bright line between the frightened Hallie and the cheerful Carrie, she went way overboard in both parts. The excessively ebullient Carrie is easy to ignore, while the heavily distraught Hallie is tiresome in the extreme. Even the usually reliable David Henesy occasionally got caught up in Miss Cody’s hamminess and overplayed David Collins. He pulled himself back each time, but it is hard to look forward to heaven knows how much more of this story when that keeps happening.

Today we get another David and Hallie/ Tad and Carrie episode, and it is little better than yesterday’s. Miss Cody is even more monotonous than she was yesterday. Mr Henesy does keep from following her into the dead end where she is stuck, and he manages to introduce a touch of comedy. The ghosts lock David in his room with Hallie, and his response is go directly to the window, open it, and climb out. His room appears to be on the third floor of the house and to overlook a cliff, but if that’s the only alternative to spending an hour locked up with Hallie I don’t think anyone can blame him.

David climbs out the window to get the hell away from Hallie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The highlight comes when David sees his distant cousin, Quentin Collins, standing by the brandy decanter. David has overheard Quentin muttering about a mysterious stranger and has questions:

David: Who are you talking to?

Quentin (drunk): The dregs, David…the dregs of this glass. That’s where all the answers are.

David: I thought you said something about a stranger.

Quentin: Oh, well, I’m in immediate danger of becoming a stranger to my glass, but that can be easily remedied. Yes, it can be. [Pours drink.] Ah ha ha…friends again.

Quentin was a malevolent ghost when we first got to know him, late in 1968. We then traveled back in time to 1897, where we met him as a living being. He was an utterly irresponsible rascal, selfish, cruel, cowardly, and shameless, and everyone who saw him fell in love with him at once. His death was prevented, he was immunized against aging, and when the show returned to contemporary dress there he was, none the worse for his 100 years. But they couldn’t find much of a place for him in the story. He may not be making many things happen these days, but in this exchange we find that he is still an alcoholic. As long as he has that going for him, he will always be the Quentin we can’t get enough of.