roger collins – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 979: Nicholas Blair

The Failure Demon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, in another universe…

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

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

Arrivals and Departures

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 977: Before dawn

An information management day. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins has told his distant cousin, Roger Collins, about a parallel universe that is occasionally visible in a room in the long disused east wing of the great house of Collinwood. Today, Roger tells his sister Elizabeth about the room. Liz owns the house. We might wonder if she will have questions about what effect the presence of a spare universe on the premises will have on her property taxes.

Roger talks about the phenomenon while standing in the room with permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD. He is incredulous when he notices that Julia is not listening to him. She cannot tell him what has distracted her. Unknown to Roger and Liz, Barnabas is a vampire. Julia has devised a treatment that is supposed to put this curse in remission, but it is not working at all. She has given him the last of the injections, and the only difference in Barnabas is that he is getting sick and feeling an unusually intense bloodlust.

Caretaker Chris Jennings, another distant cousin, comes stumbling home to his cottage on the grounds of the estate. He finds his girlfriend and ex-fiancée Sabrina Stuart waiting for him. Chris is another patient Julia has been unable to help. He is a werewolf. There was a full moon last night. Sabrina tells Chris he killed a man named Bruno. Chris is distressed that he killed anyone, but Sabrina points out that Bruno knew of his secret and was trying to use him to kill others. He was holding her and a man named Rumson prisoner, and when the police searched Bruno’s premises after his death they found Sabrina and Rumson imprisoned there. Sabrina keeps telling Chris she wants to marry him. Most of the time they will live ordinary lives, but one night out of 28 she will just have to lock him up in a special cell. Chris won’t hear of this.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, is a great one for love stories and an admirer of actress Lisa Blake Richards. Chris and Sabrina have run out of road on Dark Shadows, and are obviously going to be written out soon. Mrs Acilius wishes they could ride off into the sunset accompanied by the sound of wedding bells. So when Chris refused to marry Sabrina, she exclaimed “Stupid man!” I pointed out something Chris knows but does not mention to Sabrina, that his curse is hereditary. Any male descendants he has will also be werewolves. Mrs A conceded that this does complicate matters.

Roger saw Chris at Bruno’s place when he rescued him and Carolyn shortly before moonrise last night. Chris was at that time in the throes that precede his transformation. Chris ran off before Roger or Carolyn could see what became of him. Roger comes to the cottage to check on him.

Chris is in the back changing out of his bloody clothes, so Sabrina answers the door. She tells Roger that Chris is there and that she was with him all night, watching over him because he was ill. After what he saw of Chris at Bruno’s, Roger has no doubt that Chris needed a nurse, and he tells Sabrina that he is glad he had such a charming one. The audience can understand that Sabrina wants to conceal Chris’ lycanthropy from Roger, but surely it cannot be wise for her to claim that she was in the cottage overnight. Not only are her true whereabouts known to everyone who was in or around the police station the night before, but since Roger was the one who found Bruno’s body and he found it on the grounds of Collinwood, even police as inept as the ones in Collinsport are likely to follow up with him. Besides, her imprisonment with Rumson is a sensational story, of interest to the press. Maybe we will move on to the next phase of the show before the facts come to light, but Sabrina can’t know that.

Sabrina is determined to persuade Chris to resume their engagement. She goes to the one person whose opinion Chris seems to respect, Barnabas. When she knocks on his door, Barnabas hides behind a partition. When Sabrina first arrived, she had seen Barnabas through the window of his front parlor, so she lets herself in. He finally gives up on hiding and pleads with her to leave. She ignores what he is saying and keeps talking. She plows ahead with her idea about how Barnabas can help her and Chris become a happy married couple. Barnabas struggles to resist his urge for blood, but cannot. He bites Sabrina, much to her surprise. Miss Richards’ understated exclamation of “Barnabas!” when he shows his fangs and goes for her neck is very nicely done, it really sounds like a woman puzzled that a trusted friend is violating her personal space.

Sabrina staggers back to Chris’ cottage. She collapses in his chair, and he sees the puncture wounds on her neck. They are much bigger than the marks we’ve seen on Barnabas’ previous victims. I suppose he really was a lot hungrier than usual. Chris doesn’t know that Barnabas is a vampire, and the cliffhanger leaves us wondering whether he can avoid finding out.

Probably the most memorable shot in the episode is a very impressive bit of videotape editing. Roger and Barnabas are standing at the door to the Parallel Time room, watching Roger’s counterpart interact with Liz’ and Chris’. Parallel Roger walks toward the door. He exits the room, not into the space Roger and Barnabas occupy, but into the hallway as it exists in Parallel Time. He vanishes from their view, and the effect also winks out in the room, leaving Roger and Barnabas looking into the bare, dark chamber it is in the house they know.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The videotape editors do not yet figure in the closing credits, which is a shame. They really are the stars of today’s show.

Episode 976: Roger Collins

When Dark Shadows began, its most dangerous villain was high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Since the plan was to kill Roger off after his crimes were exposed, writer Art Wallace and actor Louis Edmonds were free to present him as gruesomely as they pleased. That turned out to be so much fun for all concerned that it soon became impossible to imagine the show without Roger, and the plan changed.

Once Roger was established as a permanent part of the ensemble, they toned his wickedness down. He still did and said awful things, but they would pull him back whenever he might risk alienating the audience. So, he at first openly expressed his hatred for his young son, strange and troubled boy David, and in #68 and #83 coldly exploited David’s mental health problems to manipulate him into trying to murder well-meaning governess Vicki. But when David got Vicki into a situation that might actually have resulted in her death, Roger rescued her. When Roger’s estranged wife Laura showed up and wanted to take David away with her, Roger was so delighted at the prospect of getting rid of the boy that he willfully ignored one sign after another that something was seriously wrong with Laura. But when Vicki finally proved to him that Laura was an undead fire witch who intended to incinerate David, Roger joined in the effort to save him, and was so shaken by the experience that he would never again be overtly hostile to David.

Nor was his attitude towards David the only sign of Roger’s pathological lack of family feeling. He had squandered his inheritance, selling his half of the family business to finance his extravagant lifestyle. His sister, reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, went deep into debt buying back what Roger had sold. When Roger ran out of money, Liz took him and David in at the great house of Collinwood. When in #41 Liz reproved Roger for the difficult position she had put him in, he proudly declared that he had “enjoyed” his inheritance, and twitted her for her dreary ways. Liz gave Roger a job in the business, but the only time we saw him visiting his office he answered his phone and told the caller that what he was asking was someone else’s job. When in #273 Roger found that seagoing con man Jason McGuire had tricked Liz into believing that she had a terrible secret that she could keep only by surrendering her whole fortune to him in blackmail payments, he admitted to his sister that if she had confided her troubles in him, he would probably have done the same thing.

When vampire Barnabas Collins succeeded Laura as Dark Shadows‘ supernatural Big Bad, Roger was pushed to the margins of the story. From that time on, he had two things to contribute. The first were sarcastic remarks, many of them very funny, that established him as the show’s sardonic gay uncle. The second, which gave him what little function he retained in the plot, were ostentatious refusals to believe the evidence piling up on all sides that the family was beset by a procession of bloodthirsty monsters. Since several other characters, Liz among them, also refused to face these facts, the show could go long periods of time without featuring Roger at all.

In November 1967, Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. From then until March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in that period. The segment was a hit in the ratings, and a triumph for Louis Edmonds, who was cast as haughty overlord Joshua Collins. Joshua was the opposite of Roger- as protective of the family’s position as Roger was careless of it, as committed to making money as Roger was thoughtless in spending it, as courageous in the face of physical danger as Roger was cowardly. The 1790s segment became The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, as we saw how Joshua’s best qualities led him to create the dark and twisted world in which his descendants would grow up to be weak, selfish men like Roger.

When the show came back from the 1790s, Roger was obsessed with a portrait painted in those days. The portrait’s subject was Angelique, the wicked witch who precipitated the disasters that annihilated Joshua’s family. Before long, Angelique herself returned, wearing a wig, using a false name, and married to Roger. The spell Angelique cast to win Roger occasionally caused him to think he was Joshua, and by the time that story ended Roger had become, if not the imperious tycoon Joshua was, certainly a hard-working, conscientious family man. He still had a languid manner and a way with a quip, but was otherwise unrecognizable as the show’s original Man You Love to Hate.

Evil spirits drove the Collinses out of the great house of Collinwood in #694. That episode marked the end of Roger’s function as one of the “There must be a logical explanation!” people. He was the last member of the family to insist that everyone else was being silly, but when he finally accepted the reality of the situation and was on his way out of the house, he turned to declare to the ghosts that the living would be back to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. From that moment on, Roger was no longer a narrative brake pad.

For most of 1969, Dark Shadows was set in 1897. In that year, we got to know Quentin Collins, who as a ghost would be chiefly responsible for the haunting that had driven the Collinses out of Collinwood. We saw that the living Quentin was a charming rogue, a spendthrift who cheerfully tells his sober-minded sister Judith that he can waste money faster than she can give it to him, inclined to violence when it serves his purposes and quick to run away when he is in danger of being called to account for his crimes. In short, he is what Roger originally was, only played by a younger, sexier actor, and with an unlimited future on a show that has discovered the characters won’t alienate the audience by being evil, only by being dull.

In the 1897 segment, Edmonds played Quentin’s brother Edward, who was not dull, but not evil either. Edward was stuffy and hypocritical. He was occasionally cruel, sometimes because of greed, sometimes because of prejudice, and sometimes because he flew into a panic in the face of an unexpected danger. But he was sincerely devoted to his children, and he had a sense of decency that would assert itself even after he had done awful things. For all his faults, Edward was ultimately one of the most lovable characters Dark Shadows ever created. If 1795 was The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, 1897 was largely the Comedy of Edward.

After 1897, Dark Shadows spent several months bogged down in an attempt to make a story out of some themes drawn from the tales of H. P. Lovecraft. Roger showed up in this part of the show just a few times. Quentin, brought into contemporary dress intact due to his great popularity in the 1897 segment, told Roger what was going on in #958. Rather than scoff as he would have in 1967 or 1968, Roger accepted Quentin’s account at once and helped him in the battle. Roger had by that point turned into Edward. His habit of denial was gone, and with it all of his languor and most of his wit.

Now the show is clearing out the last villains left over from the Lovecraft project and launching a story about a parallel universe that is occasionally visible through a doorway in the long-disused east wing of the great house. Roger is active in both of these plots today.

Even when he was a villain who cared nothing for his son, his sister, his family name, or Collinsport Enterprises, Roger very much enjoyed the company of his niece, Carolyn Collins Stoddard. On Friday, he was hugging Carolyn while she wept about the difficulties she was having in her new marriage; he called her “Kitten,” a term of endearment he has used with her since #4. In those early days, the show was heavy with hints that Roger and Carolyn’s relationship verged on incest. She often answered to “Kitten” in the moments when those hints were most insistent. But there was nothing unwholesome about Roger’s embrace of Carolyn on Friday, and he is irreproachably fatherly in his attitude towards her today.

At rise, Carolyn is in a trap. A man named Bruno, one of the leftover villains introduced while the show was dealing with the Lovecraft-derived material, has tricked her into entering a room where he has already imprisoned her old friend Chris Jennings. Bruno locked the door, and Carolyn saw that Chris was on the floor, writhing in pain. She asks him what is wrong, he won’t answer. Carolyn doesn’t know it, but Chris is a werewolf. The moon is rising, and his pains are the first stage of his transformation.

Bruno’s master wants Carolyn’s husband dead, and has decided that if the werewolf kills Carolyn he will lose the will to live. Since it would have been at least as easy to get the husband into the room as it was to get Carolyn there, and since one of the main things they have told us about the husband is that he is vulnerable to werewolf attacks, this scheme is unnecessarily complicated, marked for the audience as likely to fail. Indeed, since Bruno, his master, and Carolyn’s husband are all short-timers who don’t really need to be on the show anymore, while Carolyn has been a core member of the cast since #2, we can be quite sure it will fail, and if we have spent time over the weekend wondering about the cliffhanger, we’ve spent it wondering what will save Carolyn.

What saves Carolyn turns out to be well-timed intervention by her Uncle Roger. Roger was worried that she wouldn’t tell him why she was crying about her marriage, and followed her to Bruno’s place. He saw her enter, and after a few minutes let himself in. He confronted Bruno in his parlor, heard Carolyn and Chris in the back room, and found that the door to the back room was locked. When Bruno told him the door would stay locked, Roger hit him on the head with a candlestick, knocking him out. He took Bruno’s key, unlocked the door, and freed Carolyn. While Roger telephoned Collinwood to ask for permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, Chris jumped out of the back room’s window. Roger then decided that he and Carolyn should go home.

It may strike first-time viewers as odd that Roger calls Julia and not the police. Established fans will be unsurprised, knowing that the Collinsport Sheriff’s office is one of the world’s most useless organizations and that Julia is a mad scientist whose powers know few limits. Still, once Roger gets Carolyn home he does tell her they should call the sheriff. She refuses, and also forbids him to tell her mother Liz anything about what has happened.

Roger finds Liz moping in the drawing room. He strikes up a conversation about Carolyn’s troubles. He says that he and Liz both made unhappy marriages, and that it is disappointing to see that the next generation seems determined to repeat their mistakes. He says that he wishes Carolyn would confide in one of them. Liz says that all she knows is that someone or something is threatening Carolyn’s husband, and that she refuses to discuss it. The camera pulls back, and we see that Carolyn is right there. Director Henry Kaplan was pretty bad at moving the actors around and even worse at figuring out where to point the camera, but he deserves credit for this shot. When we suddenly see Carolyn standing there, we realize that Roger and Liz are so deep in their worries that they are oblivious to their surroundings.

Carolyn insists on going to the carriage house on the grounds of the estate to see her husband. Since Bruno is at large, Roger objects. He can’t mention Bruno in front of Liz, since Carolyn has decreed that her mother must not be told what happened earlier in the evening, so he is powerless to stop her going.

Bruno does catch up with Carolyn, and he tells her he is going to kill her. Before he can do so, the werewolf springs out, pushes Carolyn aside, and slashes Bruno. She goes home and tells Roger and Liz what happened. From Carolyn’s description, Liz recognizes the werewolf as the same creature they encountered in late 1968 and early 1969, and Roger rushes out.

Roger finds Bruno on the ground. He tells Bruno he will call a doctor. Bruno says it’s too late. He says a few words (“animal… not an animal…”) and loses consciousness.

Back in the great house, Roger says that the police are searching the grounds for the werewolf. He says it’s terrible that Carolyn should have met with such an incident on top of what has already happened to her. Liz asks what he means, and Carolyn glares at him, appalled at his indiscretion. He stammers out something about how she’s having marital problems, then announces he has to go because he promised to do something for Barnabas.

Roger and Liz never have figured out that Barnabas is a vampire, and though Carolyn was briefly his blood thrall she’s forgotten all about it. So far as the Collinses are concerned, their distant cousin Barnabas is just a night person. Several times now, Barnabas has looked into a room in the east wing and has seen, not the dark space, bare floor, and sparsely decorated walls that are there in his universe, but an alternative version of the room, brightly lit, fully furnished, and heavily decorated. He has seen people with the same looks, voices, and names as people he knows, but with different personalities and relationships. He has reported this to Julia and her friend, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, who have explained to him the many-worlds hypothesis.

On Friday, Barnabas told Roger about the room and about Julia and Stokes’ theory. The Roger of 1967 and 1968 would have jeered at Barnabas before he had spoken five words, but in 1970 he believed him readily enough. Barnabas expressed surprise at Roger’s openness to his outlandish account, and Roger acknowledges that “a year ago” he would have dismissed it. It was thirteen months ago that Roger turned and told the ghosts that the living would someday reconquer the great house; when he says “a year ago,” perhaps Roger is rounding down. Roger agreed then to come back and check the room.

When Barnabas showed Roger the room on Friday, it was bare. When Roger goes there himself today, he finds that the parallel universe is there. He cannot pass the invisible barrier in the doorway to enter it, nor can he communicate with the people there, but he can see them and hear them.

The first resident of the parallel universe Roger sees is Bruno’s counterpart. Astonished, he exclaims “I just saw him die!” Parallel Bruno is looking at the portrait of Parallel Angelique that dominates the room and telling it that the music he wrote for her will make her immortal. Roger does not appear to recognize the portrait’s resemblance to his second wife, much less to remember that he himself used to carry on similarly one-sided conversations with her eighteenth century portrait.

Parallel Liz enters and demands to know what Parallel Bruno is doing in the room. He says he belongs there. She tells him he is the only one who thinks so. She tells him that the master of the house, who is Quentin’s counterpart, will be coming home soon, and that he will never tolerate Bruno’s presence. Bruno says that he has heard that Quentin has remarried. When Liz says this is so, Bruno declares that Angelique will never allow another woman in the house. Liz is exasperated that people keep talking about Angelique as if she were still alive. Bruno exits.

Stunned by what he has seen, Roger looks away for a moment. He thinks of going to fetch Barnabas. His attention returns when he hears a conversation between Liz’ counterpart and his own.

Barnabas saw Parallel Roger on Friday; he was talking to the portrait in a way that suggested an obsession not so different from the one which the eighteenth century portrait had inspired in the Roger we knew. Today, Parallel Roger talks to Parallel Liz about Parallel Bruno in an airy, superior manner quite out of keeping with what we have had from our Roger today, but which sounds exactly like him as he was in 1967 and 1968.

PARALLEL ROGER: Was that Bruno, the terrible-tempered boy wonder I saw just now?

PARALLEL LIZ: Yes, he’s come back.

PARALLEL ROGER: Back to compose more of his morbid music and bore us with his tiresome memories of her? Well… It’ll be worth seeing the look on Quentin’s face when he finds out, won’t it?

Alliterative series such as “terrible-tempered” and “more morbid music” were characteristic of the old Roger’s verbal cleverness, as sarcastic expressions like “boy wonder” and complaints of boredom were typical of his habit of advertising his contempt for everyone and everything. Even Parallel Roger’s closing hope of “seeing the look on Quentin’s face,” as opposed to any thought of action he might himself take, is of a piece with the old Roger’s cowardice and laziness. Our Roger is horrified by the sight of his double.

Evidently the makers of the show have decided that Roger’s development has brought him to a dead end, and they are going to use the journey into “Parallel Time” to reintroduce the original villain. That Parallel Roger shares a scene with Parallel Liz suggests that we will again see the dynamic that their counterparts in the main “time-band” pioneered on the show, the conflict between Bratty Little Brother and Bossy Big Sister. This type of conflict is still one of Dark Shadows‘ signature elements, represented most prominently by Barnabas and Julia. The 1897 segment benefited from a similar conflict between Quentin and Judith; the 1795 segment lacked such a conflict, and in its absence they had to lean pretty hard on stories that put individual characters into isolation from the rest of the cast, burning them up one by one. Perhaps they plan to use the old standoff between Bratty Roger and Bossy Liz to keep the Parallel Time story spinning if the overall narrative hits some rough patches.

This episode marks the final appearance of the main “time-band” version of Bruno; the werewolf really did kill him. It is also the last time we will see the werewolf. Alex Stevens was billed as “Stunt Coordinator” when he played the werewolf. He will stay with the show as a stuntman, but won’t get his name in the credits again.

Episode 975: What strange world have I discovered?

Roger Collins is up late. He heads for bed, and finds his distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, in the house. Barnabas apologizes for prowling about at such a late hour, and offers an explanation. He was in the long-disused east wing, where he found a room that contains a parallel universe.

Barnabas takes Roger to the room, which is vacant. He tells him that the parallel universe is visible only occasionally, and that even when it can be seen there is an invisible barrier that keeps him from entering or communicating with the people he sees there. Roger asks Barnabas if he has ever seen the phenomenon during the day. He says he has not. Roger says he will come back himself in the morning and investigate. Roger goes back to the main part of the house, and Barnabas heads for an exit that is closer to his own house.

Before Barnabas gets very far, he hears Roger’s voice. It is coming from the room, which has changed. He sees Roger’s counterpart sipping wine and talking to the portrait that hangs there.

The portrait depicts the counterpart of Barnabas’ ex-wife, wicked witch Angelique. In #464, Roger became obsessed with an eighteenth century portrait of Angelique herself. When he stared at the portrait, his personality collapsed into that of haughty overlord Joshua Collins, who lived in the days when the portrait was painted. Shortly afterward, Angelique showed up, wearing a wig and using a false name. Roger married her.

The portrait that holds Parallel Roger’s attention shows Parallel Angelique in contemporary guise. He talks to the portrait, not about a distant past which an ancestor of his might have known, but about the days when he and Parallel Angelique used to meet here, in her room. He says that people thought he was in love with her, but that he wasn’t. He was fascinated by her, but not in love. He says that he has never cared for the wine he is drinking, but that he still buys it, because it was her favorite.

The counterpart of Roger’s niece Carolyn enters. We saw the Roger and Carolyn we have known since the first week of the series earlier in the episode. They were embracing while she cried on his shoulder about some problems she is having in the B story. He called her “Kitten,” a term of endearment he has used for her since #4. That was typical of their interactions. But Parallel Carolyn has little use for her uncle. She snaps at him about talking to himself, he snaps at her about being in the room, and they snap at each other about Parallel Angelique. Parallel Carolyn says she would like to make Parallel Angelique “whirl in her grave,” at which Parallel Roger contemptuously declares Carolyn could never accomplish such a thing.

Even in death, Parallel Angelique dominates Parallel Roger and Parallel Carolyn. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Parallel Carolyn mentions that she is married to the counterpart of Barnabas’ servant Willie Loomis. Barnabas has seen this other William H. Loomis, and knows that unlike Willie he is an educated man, the author of several books. He is still unable to think of him as anything other than the man he knows, however, and is shocked at the idea that any iteration of Carolyn would marry him.

When Barnabas saw him, Parallel William was wearing pricey clothes and affecting a sophisticated manner, and Barnabas learned that three of his books were bestselling novels that had been made into feature films. But we find out in this scene that the Loomises are now short of funds. Parallel Carolyn is searching for a book that Parallel William wrote and from which he has the opportunity to make a few hundred more dollars by making an abridgment for a magazine. Parallel Roger mocks his niece for scrounging for money; she remarks that their cousin Quentin is not so generous with her as he is with him. This confirms what has been suggested in previous glimpses of the Parallel Time room, that Parallel Quentin is the Master of Collinwood in its universe.

The doors close. When Barnabas opens then again, the room is vacant. He is deeply frustrated that he cannot see more of what happens there. We can understand. We, too, want to watch Dark Shadows, and are disappointed when it isn’t on.

Occasions when we might expect to see Dark Shadows but don’t include most of this episode. The Parallel Time story is just getting started, and it needs a lot of actors who are away doing principal photography for the feature House of Dark Shadows. So we spend the bulk of today on what took up all of yesterday’s episode, a lot of back and forth among characters who aren’t really on the show anymore. They are left over from a couple of exhausted storylines.

A man named Bruno, a remnant of the show’s attempt to tell a story about some events that belong in the tales of H. P. Lovecraft, is holding two prisoners. The prisoners are Chris Jennings and his fiancée, Sabrina Stuart. Chris is a werewolf. He and Sabrina are left over from a story told at the end of 1968 and beginning of 1969, and in the last few months there was a lackadaisical attempt to tie them in with the Lovecraft material. Bruno is hoping to trap Carolyn with Chris when Chris transforms, so that he will kill her. His motivation for this is an overly elaborate plan that no one who has seen the show expects to work, so even though the episode ends with Chris and Carolyn locked up together while the full moon rises it doesn’t leave us in much suspense. I suppose it is a step up from yesterday’s closing cliffhanger, in which Chris found a stooge named Sky Rumson in Bruno’s closet, strung up by his wrists, bleeding and begging for help. That made so little impact it isn’t even mentioned today. For all we know Chris just closed the closet door and let Sky have his privacy.

Episode 971: A twist of time

Out With the Old

Vampire Barnabas Collins inadvertently killed his victim Megan Todd the other night, turning her into a creature like himself. Now his chief enabler, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, is browbeating his ex-blood thrall Willie Loomis into destroying Megan. Willie is horrified by the prospect of driving a stake through a woman’s heart, and Julia gives him a pep talk. She says that staking Megan is the only way to free her of the curse and to free her blood thrall, Barnabas’ distant cousin Roger Collins, from bondage. But it is necessary to finish Megan off “most of all, for Barnabas.”

“Most of all, for Barnabas.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The premise of Willie’s character at this point in Dark Shadows is that he regards Barnabas as a dear friend and valued patron. When Willie first knew Barnabas, from April to September 1967, Barnabas drank his blood, beat him savagely when he defied his fiendish commands, and framed him for his crimes. Barnabas had Julia fetch Willie back from the mental hospital she controls in May 1968, so he could use him to steal bodies to use in making a Frankenstein’s monster. Barnabas’ vampirism was in remission at that time, so he did not have any supernatural control over Willie. Willie’s attitude towards Barnabas then was rather insouciant, so he and Julia kept threatening to send him back to the ward for the criminally insane unless he obeyed them. Barnabas only seemed happy during this time once. That came in #560, when he saw the agony Willie went through when he persuaded him that it would be his fault if the monster murdered Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. I suppose people do rewrite their own pasts to make them bearable, so it is understandable that Willie has chosen to believe that his abuser was really his best buddy. Still, it does seem a bit much for Julia to tell Willie that he should destroy Megan “most of all, for Barnabas.”

Julia accompanies Willie to Megan’s hiding place in the long-disused east wing of the great house of Collinwood. Willie breaks down outside the room where Roger is guarding her coffin, and Julia has to give him another motivational speech. She tells him he “mustn’t think of Megan as a person,” but as “a creature, an evil thing,” and besides that “You must help her to rest” and that staking is “the best thing for her.” While Willie struggles to hold back his tears, she warns him against waking Roger. By the time they enter the room, Roger is awake. He fights Willie and Julia to protect Megan, and Willie defeats him only by breaking a bottle over the back of his head.

Bonkus of the konkus. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia and Willie take Roger out of the room. Julia tends to Roger while we hear Megan’s screams. Once the staking is complete, Roger comes to, with no recollection of how he got to the east wing or what Megan did to him. This recovery tells us Megan is destroyed.

Later, Barnabas will tell Willie to bury Megan and all her belongings in a hole in the ground somewhere out in the woods. This shows longtime viewers that Barnabas has improved his post-murder game considerably. The first time he forced Willie into helping him cover up a killing came in #276. Barnabas had strangled Willie’s sometime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire. He had Willie help him bury Jason in the secret room in the old Collins family mausoleum, which would eventually cease to be much of a secret and which several people could connect with Barnabas. He also neglected to do anything about Jason’s belongings. Everyone thought Jason was leaving town and was glad to see him go, so there was no investigation. But in #277, Roger mentioned to his sister, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, that all of Jason’s stuff was still in the room he had been occupying at Collinwood. He told Liz that even Jason’s razor was still there. It was strictly a matter of luck that no one asked any questions about Jason- had they done so, Barnabas would have been in trouble almost immediately.

This episode marks, not only the end of Megan’s career as a vampire, but Marie Wallace’s final appearance on Dark Shadows. Miss Wallace was one of the most exuberant practitioners of the Dark Shadows house style of acting, a hyper-vehement manner of performance previously unknown in the history of the dramatic arts. It can take a bit of getting used to. But once Megan became a vampire, she suddenly became quiet and subtle, almost understated. Miss Wallace explains that by saying that the dentures they gave her to wear as fangs didn’t stay in her mouth very well, so she had to go small to keep them from flying across the room. As a result, her last few episodes are a revelation. The first time we watched the show I was impatient with Miss Wallace’s ultra-intense technique; I can appreciate it now, but her miniaturizing approach to Vampire Megan is so very effective that I wish we could have seen a couple hundred more episodes of her doing that kind of thing.

Miss Wallace tells the story of the day they shot this episode. She got a telephone call from her agent that they wanted her for a part on a soap called Somerset. She was thrilled, since there was no new part planned for her after Megan’s demise. From the few surviving bits of video showing her on Somerset, it doesn’t look like she decided to become a miniaturist.

In With the New

Megan is left over from an exhausted story. The new one is starting in another room in the east wing. The Collinses cram all of the deserted rooms in their buildings full of stuff- vases, paintings, books, furniture of all sorts. This room outdoes all the rest, and contains a whole parallel universe.

Barnabas has been peeping in on the doings in the parallel universe room for couple of days, but there is an invisible barrier which prevents him entering it or communicating with the people he sees and hears there. At the opening today, he sees Julia’s counterpart and Liz’ continuing a quarrel they had been having when he observed them before; at the close, he sees Willie’s counterpart and Julia’s having a similar quarrel.

Parallel Julia wears a maid’s uniform, but is full of commands for Parallel Liz and Parallel Willie. Parallel Liz’ response to her commands shows that she is not the mistress of the house, and cannot control Parallel Julia. Parallel Willie wears an ascot and a smoking jacket, and regards Parallel Julia with amused contempt.

Parallel Willie finds a book in the room that he wanted; Parallel Julia takes it from him, and tosses it into the hallway. The book passes through the barrier, and lands at Barnabas’ feet. The doors to the room close. Barnabas opens them again, and finds that the room is empty, devoid of the people, furnishings, and lights that had been visible there a moment before. Carrying the book, he goes in.

The title and author of the book stun him. It is titled The Life and Death of Barnabas Collins; its author is William Hollingshead Loomis.

In #326, Willie had been shot by the police, who blamed him for some of Barnabas’ crimes. Barnabas grew anxious as the hours passed and Willie failed to die. He complained to Julia of Willie’s “leech-like persistence” in remaining alive. Julia tried to reassure Barnabas that Willie was unlikely to survive much longer, and in response he raged that Willie might just as easily recover from his wounds and “write his memoirs!”

That line found an echo in #464, when we learned that Barnabas’ eighteenth century servant Ben Stokes had indeed written a memoir, though the extant manuscript was missing some parts about Barnabas. In #756, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins heard that Ben had secrets about Barnabas which he “took to his grave,” so she dug the grave up and, by golly, there were the missing passages explaining that Barnabas was a vampire. Now the same line is going to give rise to another William Loomis, one who has written a book about his world’s counterpart of Barnabas.

Episode 970: Another road

Yesterday, Barnabas Collins went to the long-disused east wing of the great house of Collinwood to search for the coffin that vampire Megan Todd occupies during the day. Barnabas is himself the vampire who ended Megan’s human life, passing his curse along to her. When his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, makes a characteristic remark and tells him “you must not feel personally about Megan Todd,” Barnabas asks “How can I feel any other way?” Most of Barnabas’ feelings, in this or any other matter, consist of pity for himself, but there is a trace of sympathy for Megan in there someplace, probably.

Now, Barnabas has taken Julia to a spot that he happened upon while looking for Megan. While Julia was in the carriage house on the estate with matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Barnabas saw two women who looked and sounded exactly like them in a brightly lit, fully furnished, heavily decorated room behind a pair of doors in the otherwise dark and empty east wing. Julia’s double was wearing a French maid outfit and giving orders to Liz’, which is probably someone’s fetish but which is totally out of character for the women Barnabas knows.

In #351, Barnabas was without a blood-thrall. Julia offered to guard his coffin during the day. They were not really friends at that point, and he reacted to her offer warily. Among his objections was that it was not suitable for her, as a medical doctor, to fill such a position. She assured him that she was not volunteering “to be your maid.” Longtime viewers might remember that line when they see Parallel Julia in her livery.

There was an invisible barrier in the doorway that Barnabas could not cross, and he was unable to attract the attention of the women who were so near to him, even when he shouted what he supposed to be their names. The doors closed, and when they opened again the barrier was gone, but so were the doubles of Julia and Liz, along with all the furnishings and lights that had surrounded them.

Thinking of what Barnabas has told her about the room, Julia hesitates to enter it with him. She dismisses her concern as “silly.” Regular viewers will perk up at this- labeling a fear as “silly” is the surest way of marking it as the basis of an upcoming major story point. Once inside the bare room, Julia starts thinking out loud:

JULIA: I was at Eliot Stokes’ house one night, oh, last spring. We were having a brandy after dinner and he started talking about time… He was complaining that we all simply accept it. We don’t have much choice, I thought.

But Eliot had been reading a theory. It sounded insane to me. A theory of parallel time… we live on this universe in 1970, right? We accept the fact that our time is the only time that we can truly know. Suppose time is like a road and parallel to it there’s another road. On one we live the lives we know, but on the other road our lives are different because we’re in a different time-band* and we’ve made different choices. For example, in that other band of time I could’ve made a different choice when I was at college. Instead of being a doctor I could’ve married and had children.

Barnabas, you don’t actually think through some warp in the time band that you have actually seen us living other lives?

BARNABAS: I don’t know, there’s got to be a more rational explanation.

JULIA: Must there?

So, now we know that we are about to launch a new kind of time travel story. The show has taken us back in time for long costume drama inserts, most notably from November 1967 to March 1968 when it was set in the 1790s and from March to November 1969 when it was set in 1897. Now they are going to travel sideways in time, and take us to a parallel universe where Julia is a maid and Liz is not the lady of the house.

Time bandits. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

At the end of the episode, Barnabas sees the room change again. Parallel Time Liz and Parallel Time Julia uncover a portrait that hangs there, the portrait of a woman whom PT Liz insists is dead and PT Julia insists is still the rightful mistress of the room. Barnabas recognizes the subject as the Parallel Time counterpart of his ex-wife, wicked witch Angelique.

With this, the behavior of PT Liz and PT Julia falls into place. We’re about to see a story derived from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. PT Julia is Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper maniacally devoted to Rebecca, the late wife of Maxim de Winter. PT Angelique is the one whose death and continued ownership of the room have been a point of contention between PT Julia and PT Liz. We’ve seen a photograph of Parallel Time counterparts of Barnabas’ distant cousin Quentin Collins and strange and troubled boy David Collins, signed “Your loving husband, Quentin.” PT Quentin is the one whom we have heard Liz say is returning with a new wife. In the main “time-band,” Quentin is a penniless rogue with a long supernatural backstory, but his counterpart is the master of Collinwood, and Liz ranks somewhere below the uniformed domestics in the household hierarchy. The David we know is the son of Liz’ brother Roger and a blonde fire witch named Laura Murdoch, but evidently his Parallel Time counterpart is the son of the counterparts of Quentin and Angelique. We have had no indication of who Quentin’s new wife is to be.

This is not the first reference to Rebecca on the show. When Clarice Blackburn joined the cast as housekeeper Mrs Johnson in September 1966, she was supposed to model the character on Mrs Danvers. Mrs Johnson came to Collinwood as a spy for Collins family nemesis Burke Devlin, driven by her certainty that Roger was responsible for the death of her beloved former employer Bill Malloy. Bill, like Rebecca, had drowned under suspicious circumstances, though he didn’t have much else in common with her. By the time the “Death of Bill Malloy” story played out, Mrs Johnson had taken on a new function as an inveterate gossip who made narrative progression possible by blabbing everything she knew to everyone she met. Blackburn’s outstanding talents made her a significant part of the show for quite some time; it’s a shame she isn’t going to be part of the upcoming segment.

Rebecca was not the only Du Maurier novel to inspire a story on Dark Shadows. Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis first freed Barnabas to prey upon the living after David and Mrs Johnson told him the plot of Du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek and claimed that it happened to one of the Collins ancestors. Searching for the treasure the pirate gave to the lady, Willie stumbled upon Barnabas’ coffin. He opened it, earning a bite that made him the vampire’s slave.

Willie’s mistake was that he did not know what kind of show he was on. When Dark Shadows began, executive producer Dan Curtis and ABC vice president for daytime programming Leonard Goldberg** meant for it to be the television equivalent of the “Gothic romance” novels that were so popular in those days. Du Maurier’s novels were among the cornerstones of the Gothic romance genre, and if it were still that kind of show in April 1967 Willie would have been on solid ground in his expectation that there might be a lot of jewels hidden in an unmarked coffin in the old mausoleum. But when Laura was on the show from December 1966 to March 1967, her story subsumed all the major plot threads into a tale of the supernatural. Willie and his sometime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, were on the show as in-betweeners to sweep up the last non-paranormal odds and ends and help introduce the next uncanny menace.

Now, the show is heading in the opposite direction, and Willie is back to help take us there. In Parallel Time, Dark Shadows will finally do the Daphne Du Maurier adaptation that didn’t work out in the Bill Malloy story and that was never meant to work out for Willie. But Megan has to be destroyed before Barnabas can decamp for Parallel Time, and he and Julia order Willie to destroy her.

It was not a foregone conclusion that Julia and Barnabas would want to stake Megan. At the moment, Julia is giving Barnabas injections meant to relieve him of the effects of the vampire curse. Similar injections had worked in 1968 and again during the 1897 segment. Julia shows Barnabas the cross she wears to ward Megan off, and he does not recoil from it. That suggests the injections are having some effect on him, even though he keeps complaining that they aren’t doing anything to curb his bloodlust. When Julia and Barnabas find Megan in the east wing, she refuses the injections. When they find that she is feeding on Roger, they conclude that she cannot be allowed to see another night.

Willie is horrified by the command to drive a stake through Megan’s heart. He protests that he doesn’t even know her. As Barnabas and Julia tell him of the nightmare that awaits everyone if he doesn’t do as they say, he starts to talk about his fiancée Roxanne and the secrets he has been keeping from her. He worries about the image she will have of him if she finds out that he is the former blood-thrall of one vampire and the destroyer of another. “I mean, she’s gonna be thinkin’ I’m weird or somethin’!” I suppose that would be an occupational hazard for blood-thralls.

Willie is worried Roxanne might get the wrong idea about him. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There is an odd moment when Julia is asking Liz about the east wing. Liz tells her that Roger knows more about the legends of the house than she does. When Julia was first on the show, she was posing as an historian looking into the old families of New England. In those days, Liz mentioned that Roger knew far less about the Collins past than she did, which fit with the original keynote of Roger’s character, an extreme lack of family feeling. But by this point, Roger has merged with the roles Louis Edmonds played in the 1790s and 1897 segments, both of whom were dedicated to the honor of the Collins name.

*The first appearance of this bit of Collinsport English.

**Not to be confused with his then-boss, network president Leonard Goldenson.

Episode 960: My last run-in with him

When Dark Shadows began in June 1966, its most dangerous villain was high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Roger had squandered his half of the Collins family’s wealth and put his sister, the reclusive Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, in a difficult position by selling his half of the family business to support his extravagant lifestyle. He now worked in the business as Liz’ employee and, with his son, strange and troubled boy David, lived in Liz’ house as her guest. Roger schemed to cover up his past crimes, and was quite willing to add murder to them if that was the only way to preserve his cushy circumstances.

As played by Louis Edmonds, Roger was too much fun to be killed off as the original story bible foresaw. The show had not in those early days committed itself to the all-villain cast that has come to define it, so they decided that they could keep Roger around only by nerfing him. He became a sardonic gay uncle, amusing, lovable, and harmless. He has been on the margins for years now, often absent for long periods. When Dark Shadows turned to time travel and began to feature extended costume drama inserts, they could make use of Edmonds’ talents by casting him as other characters. His turn as haughty patriarch Joshua Collins made him the star of the 1790s segment that ran from November 1967 to March 1968, and as the stuffy Edward Collins he was among the highlights of the 1897 segment that took up most of 1969. Now that the show has returned to contemporary dress, Edmonds is Roger again, and he is the same afterthought he has been for so long.

Today, a villain who introduced himself as Jabe but whom everyone calls Jeb walks into the house. Roger hears him, and protests that it is customary to knock. Jabe says that Liz gave him the run of the place, and tells Roger he has come to visit David. Roger forbids him to see David; Jabe says there is nothing he can do to stop him, and he goes upstairs to David’s room.

Roger picks up the phone and calls his distant cousin Quentin Collins. He tells Quentin he isn’t going to put up with any more of Jabe’s insolence, and that he doesn’t care how dangerous he is. He hangs up, and finds Jabe standing in front of him. Jabe asks if he is wondering how much he heard. Roger says that he doesn’t care if he heard all of it, that he wants him to leave the house at once. Jabe says that if it was Quentin he was talking to, he knows more about him than he had assumed. He also tells Roger that nothing Quentin may have told him about him and his associates was an exaggeration. If Roger defies them, he and everyone he loves will pay a terrible price.

Roger and the “cheap, insufferable pig.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Roger was a villain, they sometimes made him sympathetic by having dashing action hero Burke Devlin threaten to take over the house and start ordering him around. Later, Liz was being blackmailed by seagoing con man Jason McGuire, who when he reached the zenith of his power acted like he owned the house and tried to order Roger around. Burke eventually peaced out, and Jason’s scheme led to his own death not long after he got openly aggressive towards Roger in the drawing room. So longtime viewers will look at this scene and find a reason to believe that Jabe’s menace is approaching its peak.

Jabe’s henchman Bruno has captured Chris Jennings, who is a werewolf. He has locked Chris up in the tomb of the Stockbridges, an old Collinsport family who are in a way related to Roger’s ex-wife. The full Moon will be rising tonight, and Bruno has chained Chris to a wall in the tomb. He has set the world’s most talkative zombie to guard Chris. The zombie was in life a law enforcement officer known as “Sheriff Davenport.” When Jabe raised him from the dead, we saw that his gravestone read “Sheriff Davenport,” so apparently “Sheriff” was his given name. Bruno gave Sheriff a revolver loaded with silver bullets and ordered him to shoot Chris if he started transforming.

Bruno went to Jabe to report that he had captured the werewolf. Before he could get a word out about that, Jabe was berating him about other matters. Jabe wound up hitting Bruno, then twisted his arm until he said that Jabe was born to lead and he was born to follow. After that, Bruno decided that he wouldn’t have Sheriff kill the werewolf after all. Rather, he would sic the werewolf on Jabe.

Jabe’s intolerable personality keeps alienating followers, and he has assembled an array of adversaries including not only people like Bruno who know all of his secrets, but also a vampire, a wicked witch, a mad scientist, and a man with a Dorian Gray-like magical portrait that gives him an immunity to physical harm. On top of all that, we saw yesterday and today that a ghost is after Jabe, and that Jabe is especially vulnerable to ghosts. Add the werewolf to that force, and it seems Roger will be sipping his brandy in peace any day now.

Episode 958: A house of lies

The residents of the estate of Collinwood are divided. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, her nephew David Collins, and their distant cousin, eleven year old Amy Jennings, have been brought under the power of the Leviathan People, an unseen race of Elder Gods who mean to retake the Earth from humankind. Liz has invited the harbinger of the Leviathans, a shape-shifting monster who in his human form is a young man who once revealed he wanted to be known as Jabe, to live in the carriage house on the estate. Jabe’s onetime foster mother Megan Todd is living as Liz’ guest in the main house.

The main house is also home to mad scientist Julia Hoffman and governess Maggie Evans, who have ranged themselves against the Leviathans. Yesterday Jabe was about to kill Maggie when he saw something outside Collinwood’s Tower Room that scared him off. Wanting to know what it was Jabe was afraid of, Julia went to the scene to investigate, and found Jabe lurking there. Before he could attack her, the mysterious presence returned, and Jabe ran off. Today, we see the presence- it is a dark shadow. It makes perfect sense that a reminder of which show he is on would terrify Jabe. The writers keep painting his character into a corner so that he won’t be able to continue once the current storyline ends.

Julia sees a dark shadow. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The shadow appears to be that of a slim man wearing a comically oversized hat and a cape. The only character who dressed that way was painter Charles Delaware Tate. Tate was killed by a werewolf in #922. It seems unlikely that Tate’s ghost would haunt Jabe, since werewolves and Leviathans are each other’s implacable enemies. Granted, the Leviathans are also hostile to humans, but Tate was always something of a post-humanist himself. For a while he had magical powers that he used to blur the boundary between humans and their portraits, and in his later years he tried to replace himself with a robot. Besides, Tate was always such a jerk to every individual person he met that it is difficult to imagine him taking much trouble to defend humanity in the mass.

Jabe has murdered three people so far. He raised one of these, Sheriff Davenport, from the dead. He made Davenport into a peculiarly garrulous zombie and forced him to do his bidding. I don’t know of any stories where the same person manifests after death as both a zombie and a ghost, but then I’m no expert on tales of the supernatural. So I guess the shade could be Davenport’s.

Jabe also murdered Paul Stoddard, Liz’ ex-husband and father of her daughter Carolyn. Last week Jabe was afraid Paul’s ghost would come after him, so he dug his body up and burned it. Today we hear that the village of Collinsport is buzzing with talk about the fact that Paul’s body went missing. So Paul is a possibility. The third victim, Maine state police investigator Lawrence Guthrie, was a one-time character. It would seem a bit late to start developing him now.

At the end of the episode, the ghost appears to David in the form of a man hanging from the ceiling. We get a clear look at the ghost’s trouser legs and boots. This rules out, not only Davenport, Paul, and Guthrie, but almost all characters from the parts of Dark Shadows set in contemporary times. The only women who have worn trousers were Carolyn, in a couple of 1966 episodes, and Megan. Both of them are still alive. The only man who wore boots was motorcycle enthusiast Buzz, who dated Carolyn for a little while in 1967. Those longtime viewers who remember Buzz might be amused if it were to turn out that he was the Leviathans’ mightiest foe.

“If you FEEL it… Sit it!” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This episode also features Roger Collins, who is Liz’ brother and David’s father. Roger meets his distant cousin Quentin Collins. From December 1968 to September 1969, Quentin was a ghost who haunted Collinwood, rendering the place uninhabitable and killing David. There was a time travel story going on for most of that period, and in September 1897 events played out differently than they had the first time through. The result of that difference was that Quentin did not die. The haunting broke and David came back to life on the anniversary of the change. Some magic spells cast on him have kept Quentin alive and apparently twenty nine years old ever since, but the haunting still happened and Roger’s memory of it gives him a shock when he sees the living Quentin. He quickly composes himself; he has already heard of Quentin’s claim to be his own great-grandson, and accepts it cheerfully.

Amy is Quentin’s actual great-granddaughter, and she is not so easily persuaded. Both as a living being in the 1890s and as a ghost in the 1960s, Quentin was obsessed with a phonograph recording of a sickly little waltz and inflicted endless replays of it on the residents of Collinwood. While Quentin and Roger are chatting in the drawing room, she starts playing the waltz. Amy asks Quentin if he likes it. He zones out, and after a long interval declares that he likes it very much. She says she is going to play it again, and Roger forbids her.

Amy says she doesn’t have anything to do. Roger puts his hand on her shoulder, tells her that the house is full of good books, and marches her off to find one. I had remembered this scene with David as the one Roger takes to the library, and moreover had remembered it as their last scene together. When the show started, Roger was a villain and David was a budding psychopath, so it would have been touching to end their story on this note of loving paternal firmness.

Later, Amy goes upstairs to David’s room. David has for several weeks been using a wheelchair because of a broken leg, but it hasn’t occurred to anyone to move him to one of the vacant rooms on the first floor. She tells him about Quentin, and he tells her to get the sacred book of the Leviathan people from its hiding place on the top shelf of his bookcase. They search the book for guidance. Just as they find something promising, they feel a ghostly chill. The book flies off David’s desk and bursts into flames. The ghost has done its work; David observes that “The chill is gone.”

David keeps ordering Amy around the whole time they are on together. This is quite a change from the beginning of Amy’s time on the show, in the early days of Quentin’s haunting, when they bickered like an old married couple and took turns being the one in charge. Since then, Amy has been in steep decline, absent from the cast and unmentioned for months at a time. Indeed, today is the last episode in which Denise Nickerson will appear only as Amy Jennings. Amy will make two brief appearances in upcoming episodes where Nickerson plays another character, but this is the end of the road for her as a significant presence on the show. She started so strong and Nickerson was so talented that it is very sad to see her go like this. The chill is gone, baby.

Roger doesn’t know about the Leviathans, but he has caught on that something very strange is going on. He goes to the Old House on the estate, home to his distant cousin Barnabas Collins. He finds Quentin there. Quentin tells him Barnabas is not in. Roger tells Quentin about the strange goings-on, and Quentin says that he can explain them. He warns Roger that the knowledge he is about to impart to him will put him in deadly jeopardy.

Once Roger has heard the story, he says he wants to take David and flee. Quentin tells him this will not work- the Leviathans will kill both of them if they try it. All they can do is fight them. Roger is unconvinced of their chances, but does not have a better idea.

Roger was one of the last characters to hold out against the evidence that the show had become a supernatural thriller. Even after he was forced to accept that he was up against uncanny forces of evil, he would snap back to “Surely there is a logical explanation!” mode the minute the danger had passed. That changed when Quentin’s ghost forced the family out of the main house in #694. When he accepts Quentin’s story today, we can see that it will no longer be Roger’s function to slow the story down. That is good news and bad news- Dark Shadows long had too many speed bumps, and like all of Louis Edmonds’ characters, Roger is too delightful to be related to such a lowly rank. But not since he ceased to be a villain in #201 have the writers come up with anything else for him to do. We may be losing Roger altogether before much longer.

Episode 901: In Collinsport, where your only hope lies

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard thinks that her recently returned father, Paul Stoddard, is mentally ill. She knows that her mother Liz and Liz’ brother Roger are deeply hostile to Paul, and thinks that her distant cousin Barnabas is friendly to him.

We open in the Blue Whale tavern, where Carolyn has been pleased to discover Paul and Barnabas sitting together at a table. Barnabas says that Carolyn is her father’s most precious possession, and she happily agrees. Paul angrily denies that this is the case, and jumps up. He asks Carolyn to go away with him, and leaves the tavern.

Carolyn is bewildered by this reaction, and annoyed when Roger enters. She exits to follow Paul, and Roger goes to the table to warn Barnabas that friendship with Paul would mean trouble with Liz. Barnabas assures him they are not friends.

In Paul’s hotel room, Carolyn tells her father that his troubles are all in his head. She says that she will try to help him, and mentions Julia Hoffman, a psychiatrist who is permanently in residence at the great house of Collinwood. Paul insists that he really does have enemies, and pleads with Carolyn to join him in running far away. She refuses, and insists that he must solve his problems where he is.

Carolyn goes home to the great house. She and Roger have a confrontation. He gives her a check for $5000, payable to Paul. He tells her that the only reason Paul has come back is that he wants to get money out of the Collinses, and that if she gives him that check, he will leave again.

Carolyn goes to the antique shop where she has been working for her friends Megan and Philip Todd. Megan is holding a baby, whom she identified to Carolyn as her nephew Joseph, her sister’s son. Barnabas is with Megan and the baby. Carolyn apologizes to Megan for being late to work, and tells Barnabas she has been late many times. Megan says that it isn’t a problem, that she couldn’t have got away from the shop any earlier even if Carolyn had been there. Barnabas exits.

Carolyn tells Megan that is strange to be reunited with a father who left when she was a newborn. Megan says that she was close to her own father growing up, and that she was an only child. Carolyn furrows her brow, looks at the baby, and asks if he isn’t her sister’s son. Megan scrambles for a second, then claims that Joseph’s mother is her stepsister, one of two daughters of the widow her father married.

Megan takes the baby to his bedroom upstairs. Carolyn answers the telephone, and tells Philip that she will have Megan call him right back. She waits a moment, then goes upstairs. She hears a loud breathing sound coming from the baby’s room, as if a gigantic obscene telephone call were in progress.

Unknown to Carolyn, her father’s troubles are not imaginary, and Barnabas is not his friend. Between her two scenes in the antique shop, we saw Paul in his room. A true Collinsporter, he was in bed fully clothed, wearing even his tie and his shoes, but still he had difficulty sleeping. Barnabas entered the room and told him it was odd to sleep on such a sunny day. To demonstrate the day’s sunniness, he turns a light on. He also ruffles the window-shades, but does not open them. Evidently that would be a little too on-the-nose.

Paul aims a revolver at Barnabas and says that he will kill him if he doesn’t leave him alone. Barnabas says that if he kills him, someone else will be sent in his place. Paul says that he will also kill that person, and he squeezes the trigger several times. That only makes a clicking sound. Barnabas tells him that “we” knew about the gun, as “we” know about everything Paul might do before he does it, and that the ammunition was therefore removed. He also tells Paul that if he leaves Collinsport without permission from whomever it is Barnabas represents, Carolyn will suffer.

The telephone rings, and Barnabas orders Paul to answer it. It is Carolyn. He tells her that he is feeling better, and that he does not want to go away. Barnabas praises him for beginning to see things “our way.”

Paul telling Carolyn that everything is just great with him. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Today’s closing credits are the first headed by “Starring Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins.” From now on, Frid will get the “Starring” designation unless Joan Bennett is in the day’s cast, in which case she gets “Starring” and he follows with “Also Starring.”

Episode 839: Second chance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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