Dark Shadows

[DRW50]

Yes. I think Terry Crawford said that when Beth went off, she actually bounced on the mattress below, hilariously, although you can't see it oncamera. I can't remember which Gabriel went off (1841 PT maybe?)

I had forgotten about that last bit with Joanna. Odd. I do remember finding Lee Berry interesting to watch, and similar to the last Victoria (Joanna Groves...I can't remember her name, sorry), I wish we'd seen a bit more of her.

I know Virginia couldn't have stayed on DS anyway due to being in 1776, but her absence as 1840 goes along is a shame. I think she may have been David Selby's best female partner on the show, in terms of chemistry.

[Broderick]

A LOT of their stories got so convoluted, because there seemed to be little advance planning.  

That 1897 storyline, for instance, seemed to be pretty straightforward at first.  The goals seemed to be explaining (1) how Chris Jennings became a werewolf and (2) why Quentin Collins was hanging around Collinwood.  

By the time it was over, we had Count Petofi's hand, a witch (Angelique) trying to stop a phoenix (Laura) from staking a vampire (Barnabas), and the actor who played Chris Jennings had quit the show and moved on, negating the entire purpose of the whole storyline.  

Not saying it was a *bad* story but it just didn't serve its purpose, and it ended up veering into a convoluted mess.  

Same with Joanna Mills in 1840.  

[Vee]

In fairness, the Laura story was very early on in 1897. It's when it became a huge hit that they extended it for... I don't know, six to nine months? Long enough for Thayer David and KLS to have two separate characters. And actually, Don Briscoe and Chris stayed with the show for another year in the Leviathan and Parallel Time storylines until his offscreen LSD freakout.

[DRW50]

Don Briscoe did stay on for a little while after that, but it did feel like the story as a whole have shifted away from him. I think they extended the story because the ratings had increased. The later months of the story had many riveting moments, but the downside was trying to clear all that up and figuring out where to go next. And that was a mess, even if the Leviathan story is better than given credit for.

@Vee or someone else, not sure if I'm just hallucinating this, but wasn't there a claim that Dan Curtis and company were thinking of never really returning to present day? A part of me wishes they hadn't. You could see the lack of interest in the present day characters and stories and it just got worse and worse - I think the Quentin haunting story was the last hurrah.

[Vee]

I don't know of that claim at all. But while I still know much of the show like the back of my hand thanks to the old Sci-Fi Channel reruns, I haven't been active in DS fandom for decades. It could well be floating around. And yes, they were clearly just improvising wildly after a certain point in 1897. But most of it worked.

I would never have been happy about them not going back. To me the present era was home for the show and even when it was poorly served it felt right. I actually think both Leviathans 1969 and the very spooky Summer of 1970 storyline with Gerard, the summer eclipse, etc. are underrated. There is a real pall of doom and dread hanging over the relatively short Summer '70 story starting with the terrifying 1995 interlude, and it does not let up and then delivers with the pirate zombie apocalypse at the end of the story. At least, that's how I felt when first seeing it over twenty years ago, so grain of salt.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Vee

[DRW50]

I think the stories themselves are effective, but I feel like there's much less interest in the characters themselves. Liz, Roger, Carolyn lose any real personality (Maggie, bless her heart, never really had one, but it just gets worse). By the time of the 1970 story I feel like Carolyn just goes around saying "Oh Jeb." 

[Broderick]

Y'all are right ... Chris was still around when the 1897 story ended.  It was later that he vamoosed.  I just remembered Hoffman looking at the moon, rubbing her goozle, batting her eyes, tearing at her gloves, and barking  ... "And to think ... Chris is still ... out there ... somewhere, Barnabas." 

It's a shame the show couldn't wrap-up in the "real" present, with the "real" Collins family that we'd met in the first episode.   

[Soaplovers]

Maggie did have a personality in the first year (i've been watching it on Tubi).. she was a brassy/sarcastic waitress with a heart of gold with an alcoholic father.  She walked around in a daze after the Barnabas story.. but I always attributed that to Julia's hypnosis to wipe out Maggie's memories of Barnabas kidnapping her.. and Maggie never came out of the trance.

After the initial Paul Stoddard and the Laura/hit and run stories wrapped up.. Roger/Liz became just props.   And Carolyn inherited the Victoria Winters mantle in many ways (except with even less drive/agency then Victoria at her worst..imho)

 

[DRW50]

She did, yes, I just end up seeing that as a different person. Once she started getting stories she had no personality. 

[Vee]

Oh, definitely.

[Soaplovers]

I attributed that to being kidnapped/held hostage by Barnabas... then having her memories wiped out by Julia via hypnosis.

A good soap opera writer could have mined stories from Maggie resuming her life post trauma.. but she was just a void (almost like she was walking in a daze... which I assumed was because Julia didn't bring her completely out of her hypnotic stage).

[danfling]

Maggie also became a lot more like Victoria after the departure of Alexandra Moltke and the hiring of Maggie as the new governess.  This also lessened much of the personality of the old Maggie.

[Melroser]

I'm about half-way through the run. The "new" Victoria has just been reunited with Peter in 1796 because Barnabas helped her. The Quentin ghost has just recently come into play with David and Amy (obnoxious little kids).

I'm curious. Who are your favorite DS characters and why? I find it hard to really like any of the "regulars". So far, my favorites have been Laura Collins (pre-Barnabas) and Nicholas Blair. I find them entertaining. 

[DRW50]

Carolyn (in the 1967 period and especially 1970 PT), Roger, Victoria, Willie, Joe, Tony Peterson, Elizabeth, Chris, Angelique, Samantha, Julia, Leticia, Ben Stokes. 

[DRW50]

A copy of a UK Dark Shadows fanzine from 1999 has shown up on Archive if you want to read it - contains interviews, think pieces, fic, et al.

https://archive.org/details/issue-7-spring-1999-dark-shadows-journal