Version 4.0 of Dark Shadows began in #466 when old world gentleman Barnabas Collins was cured of vampirism and ended in #637 when Barnabas and his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, found that witch-turned-vampire Angelique had departed the scene. That version was a Monster Mash in which the main attractions of all Universal Studios horror hits of the 1930s found their counterparts. Version 5.0 is focused on just two monsters, a werewolf and a ghost. The werewolf is Chris Jennings, brother of nine year old Amy. The ghost is Quentin Collins, who is obsessing Amy and her friend, strange and troubled boy David Collins.
Today is taken up with two problems of plot mechanics. First, Barnabas is the undisputed star of the show, and he does not have any particular connection to either of the ongoing stories. Second, well-meaning governess Vicki is too familiar with the supernatural, too secure in her place in the great house of Collinwood, and too familiar to the audience to permit Amy and David to figure in a story based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, even if that story is inverted so that it is the children who see the ghosts and the governess who doubts them.
Today, Vicki’s husband, a repellent man known variously as Peter and Jeff, returns from the dead and takes her with him. He materializes in her bedroom, takes her by the hands, and they both vanish while Barnabas and matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard look on. That solves the second problem.
Peter/ Jeff and Fake Vicki vanish as Barnabas and Liz look on. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Liz’ brother Roger solves the first problem when he asks Barnabas to hang around the house while he is away on a business trip to London. Barnabas will therefore be on the spot while the children cope with “The Haunting of Collinwood.”
The opening narration is delivered by Roger Davis, who plays Peter/ Jeff. This not only produces a sinking feeling in regular viewers who recognize Mr Davis’ voice and realize that his absence these last few weeks was only a temporary reprieve, it also spoils the surprise when Peter/ Jeff shows up.
This is the last of Betsy Durkin’s 10 appearances as Vicki. The part originated in #1 as the audience’s main point of view character; then and for the next 126 weeks, she was played by Alexandra Moltke Isles. By the time Mrs Isles left the show, Vicki had long since run out of story, and was saddled with the hopelessly unappealing Mr Davis as her primary scene partner. Inheriting those difficulties, Miss Durkin never had a chance to establish herself as part of the show.
For the last eight weeks, Dark Shadows has been presenting a riddle about strange and troubled boy David Collins. In #288, he wondered if mysterious little girl Sarah might be a ghost. Since then, he has seen her several times, and every time she has given fresh evidence to corroborate that hypothesis. When he isn’t with Sarah, David is either looking for her or fielding questions from adults who are anxious to make contact with her, and in the course of every search and every question he finds still more reason to suppose that she is a ghost. David had always been the first character to believe in ghosts, yet he kept resisting the obvious conclusion that Sarah was one.
Friday, David had a dream in which Sarah told him that she died when she was ten years old. In that same dream, David saw his cousin Barnabas rise from a coffin, greet Sarah warmly, and threaten him with his cane. Yesterday, David woke up and told his well-meaning governess Vicki that he now understood everything about Sarah, because he knew that she was a ghost. Vicki listened carefully to his dream. Much to his frustration, she tried to talk him out of taking it literally. But today, when David is out of earshot, Vicki twice shows the other adults that she regards David’s dream with the utmost seriousness.
In the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, mad scientist Julia Hoffman tries to hypnotize David so that he will stop making trouble for her co-conspirator Barnabas. Before she can induce the trance, David recognizes her medallion as the one a faceless woman held before his face in the dream. He flees from Julia and calls out for Vicki.
Vicki and matriarch Liz ask Julia what happened. Julia tries to play dumb, but Vicki recognizes her medallion both as the one David described when he was telling her about his dream and as the one Julia showed her and Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, when she dropped in on them at Maggie’s house in #298. During that visit, Vicki briefly left Julia and Maggie alone together. Before she left the room, Maggie was about to remember who abducted her and held her prisoner; after she came back, Maggie’s amnesia had returned in full force. During the interval, Julia had used the medallion to do a little emergency hypnosis, restoring the memory block that keeps Maggie from identifying Barnabas as her captor and as a vampire. Julia has reason to squirm when she realizes that Vicki has connected the medallion both with that incident and with David’s dream.
Vicki goes to David’s room to again try to talk him out of a supernatural reading of his dream. She finds him gazing into his crystal ball, looking for Sarah. He pleads with her to allow him to go look for Sarah. She resists, but he tells her that he saw Sarah in the crystal ball and that it won’t take him long to find her. He promises to tell Vicki what he and Sarah talk about. She lets him go, on condition that he be back within an hour.
The riddle of David’s long refusal to acknowledge that Sarah is a ghost is matched by the riddle of Vicki’s attitude. She has seen and interacted with ghosts on many occasions, a fact that is no secret from David. Both her recognition of Julia’s medallion and her acceptance of David’s claim to have seen Sarah in the crystal ball show that she knows she is operating in a world where supernatural forces are at work. Yet she keeps urging David back into “logical explanation”-land. Perhaps she has read Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” and doesn’t want there to be any ambiguity about whether the boy saw the ghosts himself or his crazy governess put the idea into his head.
David goes to the woods, hears the familiar strains of “London Bridge,” and sees Sarah. She tells him that she knows he saw her in his crystal ball. When he asks how she knows he was looking into his crystal ball, she answers only “I know lots of things.” He asks her about his dream; apparently that is not among the things she knows about, because it all comes as news to her. David tells her that in his dream, she told him that she was very sick when she was ten years old. She excitedly replies “That’s true!” He then says that she told him she died of that sickness. Even now, after the dream, after telling Vicki that Sarah is a ghost and shouting with frustration when she won’t agree, he follows up the idea that Sarah has died with “That isn’t true, is it, Sarah?”
Before Sarah can answer, Vicki’s depressing boyfriend Burke lumbers onto the scene. He hears David and Sarah’s voices and shouts “David!” Sarah then becomes alarmed and declares she has to go away. David asks her to stay, and goes to tell Burke to wait. By the time they turn around, Sarah has vanished.
Burke used to be an interesting character, back when he was a dashing action hero played by the charismatic Mitch Ryan. In fact, he was the one who gave David the crystal ball in the first place, back in #48. But he hasn’t had much to do on the show since his major storyline evaporated in #201, and now he is played by Anthony George, an actor whose cool, understated approach was the exact opposite of Ryan’s tendency to red-hot, larger than life reactions. In the scripts written by Ron Sproat, the part of Burke still depends on Ryan’s strengths, and George is entirely at sea with it. Today, Gordon Russell’s script takes advantage both of George’s actual abilities and of the dimwitted impression he has made previously.
David tells Burke that he doesn’t think Sarah will talk to anyone other than him from now on, not because she is shy, but because she doesn’t want anyone else to know that she is a ghost. Burke gives David a smug little speech about how foolish it is to believe in ghosts. David asks how Sarah got away so fast. Burke admits he doesn’t know. David gives Burke some details about Sarah’s way of vanishing into thin air, and he is left speechless.
Back in the drawing room, Burke tells Vicki and Liz that David thinks Sarah is a ghost. Liz reflexively asks if he ought to be taken to a doctor. Burke suavely says that he doesn’t believe it is as serious as all that, that David is just letting his imagination run away with him.
Vicki speaks up. She says that she disagrees with Burke on two points. First, she thinks the matter is very serious. Second, she doesn’t believe it has anything to do with David’s imagination. Sarah really is a ghost.
Burke starts giving another sanctimonious speech about how one oughtn’t to believe in ghosts. Some weeks ago, Sproat and recently-departed, never-lamented writer Malcolm Marmorstein had given Burke some angry speeches in which he demanded Vicki stop taking the supernatural seriously. Those speeches would have marked Burke as bad news had Mitch Ryan delivered them, but at least they might have suggested that he was going to become an interesting villain- coming from an actor as cold as Anthony George, they were just pointless nastiness. Vicki’s attempts to comply with Burke’s gaslighting campaign also did a lot of damage to her character in the audience’s eyes, presenting her as weak-willed and empty-headed.
But today, Gordon Russell doesn’t write Burke as a loudmouth or Vicki as an aspiring doormat. Instead, he lets George make a reasonable-sounding case in the quiet, detached manner in which he excelled, and he has Vicki surprise him with an equally quiet but unyielding disagreement. She tells Burke to hire all the private investigators he likes to use and tell them to search for Sarah. If they can produce the girl in the flesh, she will admit that she is mistaken. But she tells Burke that won’t happen, because “David is right- that little girl is a ghost.”
If we remember Vicki’s earlier attempts to submit to Burke’s gaslighting, this scene answers the riddle about her. She knows that there are a lot of Burkes and a lot of Lizzes in this world, and that if you want to get along with them you have to be able to present yourself as someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts. She is trying to teach David how to play the role of the practical-minded fellow who takes it for granted that what we can see in the plain light of day is all we have to concern ourselves with. If she and the other adults can shelter him from enough of the uncanny doings that she knows full well are afoot all around them, perhaps he might get through his childhood actually being something like that fellow. It worked out that way when David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, came to Collinwood to claim him- the storyline around her drew him deeper and deeper into the world of the occult, but once Vicki had rescued him and it was all over he didn’t remember anything about that side of it.
Upstairs, David is trying to sleep. Sarah appears in the corner of his room, lit from below. Laura stood on the same spot, in the same lighting, when she visited David while he slept in #150. His mother had called his name in a whispering voice and had a subtle message for him, but Sarah yells “David!” and says she’s ready to answer more questions.
David doesn’t ask her if she died. Perhaps when he told Burke that she doesn’t want anyone to know that she is a ghost, he meant that he has realized it is a sensitive subject for her. He does ask about the coffin he saw in his dream. She says she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He says it was in a room that he felt he’d been in before, and she says maybe it was. He says he doesn’t know where it is, and she tells him that’s good- she doesn’t want him going anywhere near it.
David keeps talking about the coffin, and it dawns on him that it is in the basement of Barnabas’ house. She insists that he stay away from Barnabas’ house, that it isn’t safe for him there. She won’t answer any of his questions about that, but she keeps insisting that he stay away from Barnabas’ house.
David asks Sarah if Barnabas’ servant Willie really was the man who abducted Maggie, as the police think. Sarah answers, “Oh no, poor Willie only went to Maggie’s house to warn her.” David asks what he was trying to warn Maggie of, and Sarah says that she has to go away. She repeats that he must stay away from Barnabas’ house. He pleads with her to stay, but she dematerializes in front of him. This is the first time we’ve seen a ghost vanish in this way since #85, when the ghost of Bill Malloy appeared to Vicki, sang a sea shanty, and then disappeared. It’s also the first time Sarah has let David see her dematerialize. Evidently, she’s more relaxed about these things now that she’s out to him.
Closing Miscellany
There is a particularly funny blooper 14 minutes and 20 seconds into the episode, when Burke comes out of the door that leads to the bedrooms at Collinwood, an off-camera voice calls out “Go in!,” he turns around, goes back in the door, then comes out again with exactly the same expression on his face.
Burke and Vicki have a little conversation about why Julia spends so much time at Barnabas’ house. Burke guesses Julia might have “a mad crush on Barnabas.” Vicki reacts as if this is absurd. The same idea had occurred to Julia’s old acquaintance Dave Woodard, MD, in #324, and Julia had been delighted to find that she had inadvertently acquired a cover story. That Burke came up with the notion independently leads us to wonder if we will be hearing more about it, and that Vicki regards it as so self-evidently preposterous reminds us of the times she has seemed more interested in Barnabas than in Burke. Perhaps the Vicki/ Burke/ Barnabas love triangle has a future after all.
Well-meaning governess Vicki walks in on an ugly scene in the bedroom of her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins. David is yelling a threat at his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger. Roger has come to the room to remove a painting showing David’s mother, the mysterious and long-absent Laura, naked and in flames. David says that if Roger takes the painting, he will never talk to his mother again.
Laura has recently returned, and wants to divorce Roger and leave with David. Roger is enthusiastic about this plan. His sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, is very much against it. Roger is dependent on Liz, not only because he lives as a guest in Liz’ house and works as an employee of her business, but also because of the whole psychological structure of their relationship. So he must appease her. Laura has agreed with Liz that she won’t take David unless David is willing to go with her.
Before Vicki entered the room, Roger had been trying to convince David that he doesn’t hate him and isn’t trying to get rid of him by sending him away with his mother. Had he been successful in that attempt, David might have tried to keep Roger away from the painting by threatening not to talk to him, but instead he brings up the idea that he might doom Roger to continue living with him. Faced with that prospect, Roger capitulates.
Laura enters. She and David leave the room. Laura and David continue talking to each other after they are out of the frame. We hear Laura’s voice trailing off as they leave. I believe this is the first time we have seen this done on Dark Shadows, and I don’t recall it in later episodes. I think it’s a nice touch. That characters fall silent the moment we can no longer see them tends to call our attention to how small the sets were. Hearing Laura’s voice gradually fade away makes it easier to imagine that the action is taking place in a huge mansion.
Roger and Vicki stay behind. Roger tells Vicki that he ought to be angry with her. It was she who brought the painting to the great house of Collinwood and gave it to David. Vicki says she can’t explain why she did those things- some unnamed force came over her. She connects that unexplained compulsion with other odd things that have happened since Laura came back. When Roger asks if she is suggesting that Laura is somehow responsible for these events, Vicki won’t commit herself one way or the other.
When Vicki fell under whatever unknown power drove her to ask for the painting and give it to David in #142, her face wasn’t on camera. As a result, the episode played out as a series of moments when Vicki kept doing bizarre things for no reason we could feel. The result was a day spent with Dumb Vicki, a version of the character who emerges when the writers need something done and can’t come up with a motivation for any character to do it. As the one who gets the most screen time, it falls to Vicki to take actions or deliver lines simply because they are in the script.
This remark to Roger marks the opposite extreme from Dumb Vicki. Vicki has surmised information that the show has given the audience, but there is no particular reason why she should know it. We tend to forgive protagonists for being absurdly knowledgeable when their knowledge moves the story along, but Vicki’s insight into Laura’s place at the center of a web of supernatural occurrences doesn’t advance the plot today. As a result, Clairvoyant Vicki is left in almost as useless a position as Dumb Vicki.
One story development we briefly hoped it might have led to would be a self-aware twist on “The Turn of the Screw,” in which the members of the household notice that the governess is banging on about ghostly presences and worry that this is a neurotic symptom that will make her a bad influence on children. That hope is disappointed a moment after Vicki has delivered her lines. She leaves the room and Roger tries to remove the painting from the wall. We see him struggle, as if some invisible being is pulling him away from the painting. He looks disoriented and gives up. Having been overcome by a force like the one Vicki says made her bring the painting into the house, Roger is in no position to question her fitness for her job.
Downstairs, Laura meets Vicki. Laura tells Vicki that David is avoiding her, that he seems to be afraid of her again as he was when she first came back. She asks Vicki to arrange a meeting on neutral ground between her and David, something Vicki had done a couple of weeks ago and that had opened a brief period when David was warm to Laura. Vicki demurs. She says that David is badly disturbed, and that she is afraid of doing anything that might disturb him further. She herself is extremely uncomfortable around Laura.
Vicki rubbing her hands nervously
David comes into the room. He reacts with alarm when he sees Laura, and clings to the spot furthest from her.
David seeks shelter from Laura
When Laura suggests they spend the afternoon together, David says he has homework to do. When Laura says that Vicki will let him do his homework later, Vicki says that it is up to David. When Laura touches the top of his head, David runs upstairs.
Vicki and David have become very close. They’ve spent a lot of time together and seen all the same ghosts. Vicki’s attitude mirrors David’s closely enough in this scene that we wonder what sort of connection is developing between them.
Maybe some kind of telepathy is starting to link David and Vicki. Or maybe the explanation is more mundane, and they are just growing emotionally dependent on each other. David’s father is dependent on his big sister Liz, and the show has been hinting very heavily from the first week that Vicki is Liz’ secret daughter. Perhaps these first cousins are in danger of recreating the Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother dynamic that has dominated their parents’ lives.
Whatever is going on between Vicki and David, Laura can hardly be expected to be happy with Vicki for bringing the painting to him. Now that Vicki is showing dread of her and refusing to help in her efforts to warm David up, Laura has an incentive to make Vicki look bad. Perhaps we will see someone accusing Vicki of thinking she is the governess in “The Turn of the Screw” after all.
Desperate to talk to someone about her feelings, Vicki slips into the town of Collinsport and visits dashing action hero Burke Devlin in his hotel room. Burke is Roger’s sworn enemy, and in his campaign to right the wrongs he believes Roger has visited upon him he is trying to destroy the whole Collins family. The last time Vicki went to Burke’s room was in #114, when she mentioned these facts as a reason she could never speak to him again. Since then, she’s been kidnapped and held prisoner by an escaped killer, and Burke went to great lengths to help in the search for her. So now they are back on speaking terms.
Vicki tells Burke everything she knows and everything she suspects about Laura. Burke doesn’t see what Vicki is driving at, but he does take note when she tells him that Laura and Roger are perfectly comfortable together. He has been hoping that Laura, who was his girlfriend before she married Roger, will join with him in his quest for vengeance, and has fondly imagined Roger quaking with fear of what she might do. Vicki’s report that Roger and Laura are quite relaxed around each other comes as a nasty shock to Burke.
While Vicki is in his room, Burke receives a phone call from Laura. Vicki listens to Burke’s side of the conversation as they arrange to meet at one of their old trysting places, a pier on the waterfront located right next to a fog machine stuck on overdrive.
Foggy Collinsport
Burke and Laura talk about old times. Burke wants Laura to tell him that David might be his son. This strikes me as an odd moment. Burke hasn’t been presented as someone suffering from amnesia- surely he remembers what he and Laura got up to as well as she does. He knows David’s date of birth. And he has been presented as a worldly-wise fellow who, even in the resolutely celibate world of Dark Shadows, very likely knows how babies are made. In #32, Roger mentioned that David was born only eight months after he and Laura became a couple. If that were fresh in our minds, we might suppose Burke wants to know whether David was born prematurely. Since the point hasn’t been mentioned in over 22 weeks, we are left wondering what Burke imagines Laura might be able to tell him that he doesn’t already know.
Burke asks Laura if she hates Roger. When she says she has reason to, he says that he hears she hasn’t been acting like she hates him. Laura asks who told him that, and he says it was Vicki. Laura is surprised that Burke and Vicki were discussing her, then says that she’s just putting on an act so that Roger won’t oppose her efforts to take David.
One does wonder why Burke revealed that Vicki was his source. Not only will that serve to prejudice Laura against her, the fact that Vicki has met with Burke and given him information about the doings at Collinwood is powerful ammunition she can use against Vicki when she talks to Liz and Roger.
Throughout the scene, Laura keeps an eye on Burke, gauging his reactions to everything she says. Burke is divided within himself. He wonders out loud why he doesn’t hate Laura and mistrust her when she did as much to harm him as Roger did, but also tells her that when they are together all his anger melts away and she alone is real to him.
Watchful Laura, divided BurkeBurke split by Laura’s shadow
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