Tag Archives: junior detectives

Episode 743: Stand Next to Barnabas

April 1969, Gordon Russell, , , , ,

“I don’t understand it any more than you do, but I believe it.”

Okay, let me see if I have this right.

There’s a God — a Great Sun God named Amen-Ra — and he really exists, because it turns out the ancient Egyptians were right on the money. Tens across the board for the ancient Egyptians. They looked up into the sky, and they said, the sun is a boat, and Ra crosses the sky every day and looks down on the world that he created, before high-tailing it back over to the east so he can do it again with the moon. The moon is a boat too; they’re both boats. Everything in the sky is a boat.

Also, there’s a giant serpent named Apep that lurks just below the horizon, who tries to attack Ra’s solar boat, stopping it with his hypnotic stare and threatening to eat the sun. Luckily, every evening, the serpent is defeated by Set, the god of the desert, as described in The Books of Overthrowing Apep, which includes chapters on Spitting Upon Apep, Defiling Apep with the Left Foot, Taking a Lance to Smite Apep and Putting Fire Upon Apep. That will teach Apep a thing or two, is the basic attitude of the ancient Egyptians.

And according to the vampire soap opera that we’re currently watching, all of that is totally true. That is the way that the world works. The boat, the snake, the left foot, everything.

Well, I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. With all due respect to the ancient Egyptians, there’s something about that story that doesn’t quite ring true for me.

Continue reading Episode 743: Stand Next to Barnabas →

Episode 697: The Young and the Restless

February 1969, Sam Hall, ,

“It seems that when there is a full moon, legend has it that possessed children are extremely restless.”

On this night, the great house of Collinwood stands deserted, more or less. The Collins family has fled the premises, driven away by the spirit of Quentin Collins, an ancestor with an attitude problem. Now they’re all crashing at Barnabas’ place, as Quentin lures them back to Collinwood one by one, for some hypnotically-enforced steampunk cosplay.

I’ll give you a for instance. Barnabas is currently on a recon mission in the spooky old mansion, looking for young David. He opens up the drawing room doors — and there’s Maggie, the Collins family governess, wearing a complicated Victorian dress and an even more complicated Gibson girl hairstyle. She’s sitting alone in the dark room, posing decoratively on a chair and doing needlepoint, just Gibsoning away.

When she sees Barnabas enter the room, she’s startled, and acts like she doesn’t know who he is. “I know no one named Barnabas,” she says, “now please leave here at once!” He insists, “Maggie, I know what’s happened to you,” which says a lot about how Barnabas’ mind works.

She says that’s not her name, but when she tries to remember who she is, she gets confused, shrieks, and crumples delicately to the floor.

When she regains consciousness, Maggie is herself again, and she has no idea what happened. “These clothes,” she gasps, “where did they come from? And my hair! Barnabas — why don’t I remember?” This must have been a pretty action-packed evening for her; you don’t forget a hairstyle like that in a hurry.

So it turns out that Quentin is really, really good at this. He must have a master’s degree in whatever the hell this is.

Continue reading Episode 697: The Young and the Restless →

Episode 686: The Case of the Lifted Ledger

February 1969, Sam Hall, , , ,

“Curious, so many hearts should stop in this house.”

Okay, new game: Why is it difficult to host a murder mystery dinner party when the main suspect is actually a ghost?

Well, ghosts can walk through walls, for one thing, so you can’t really do a locked room mystery. They don’t have fingerprints, or leave any physical evidence, really, except maybe the faint smell of jasmine or whatever. The victims all die of heart failure, including the one who fell all the way down the stairs and smacked her head on the hardwood. Also, there’s not much you can do with a ghost once you’ve caught him, and now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure they don’t even exist.

In fact, I’d say it’s impossible to attempt a murder mystery story about ghosts. And yet, here we are.

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Episode 683: The Very Last Ron Sproat Episode

February 1969, Ron Sproat, , , , , , , , , , ,

“I want you to tell me what you know of a tall blonde woman in a long, flowing white dress.”

On February 5th, 1969, ABC aired what is generally considered to be the worst half-hour of network television, the first episode of a sketch comedy show called Turn-On. The show managed to be both offensive and incomprehensible, which is quite a trick, and on at least one station, it was cancelled during the first episode.

The conceit of Turn-On was that it was produced by a computer, which spliced together lots of little shards of not-funny. The show didn’t have any sets; it was just filmed against a stark white background. An odd-looking character would appear and do something strange, and then they’d cut to something else.

Almost all of the jokes were about sex, and sometimes they just flashed the word SEX! on the screen, in various colors. They also flashed captions with jokey references to sex and gay people, including “God Save the Queens,” “Free Oscar Wilde,” “Make Love Not Wine,” and “The Amsterdam Levee Is a Dike.” Sometimes the screen would be divided into four comic-strip panels, and the sketch would be performed in discrete chunks, one in each panel. The ending credits were split up into pieces and aired throughout the show.

WEWS, an ABC affiliate in Cleveland, took the show off the air during the first commercial break, and just didn’t show the rest of the episode. I don’t know what they filled the extra twenty minutes with, but it was better than Turn-On, so it could have been literally anything.

And on the same day — February 5th, 1969 — ABC also aired the last episode of Dark Shadows written by Ron Sproat. ABC was just having a bad day overall.

Continue reading Episode 683: The Very Last Ron Sproat Episode →

Episode 678: Chris Jennings Must Die

January 1969, Sam Hall, , , , ,

“So we’re at the mercy of a ghost.”

Let us put aside speculation, and confine ourselves to the facts.

On Monday, the unresting spirit of Quentin Collins directed young David to remove a small vial of strychnine from his rolltop desk. The next day, an unseen spirit entered the cottage of Christopher Jennings, uncorked his whiskey decanter, and decanted several tablespoons worth of strychnine into it. Chris helped himself to a glass, and now he’s flat on his back, thinking things over.

At Collinwood, Julia’s sleep was interrupted by the ghost of a sobbing woman, who led her downstairs and out the front door. Picking up Barnabas along the way, Julia followed the ghost, who led them to the scene of the crime.

Now, I’m fairly certain that we know whodunnit — it was the muttonchops that walk like a man, last spotted fleeing the scene and shouting, “You’ll never catch me alive!” The questions that we need to resolve are more along the lines of whythehelldunnit.

#1. Why did Beth go to Julia, rather than anyone else?
#2. Why is Beth suddenly trying to stop Quentin’s plan?
#3. Why does Quentin want to kill Chris?

There are solutions to all of these mysteries, which regular readers should be able to work out for themselves, without resorting to time travel by way of the DVD box set. Don’t bother with the head canon; all the evidence that we need is right here in this room. As the man said, You know my methods, Watson. Apply them.

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Episode 673: The Shambles

January 1969, Ron Sproat, , , , , , , ,

“The blast from that gun should’ve killed any living creature. And it should’ve.”

Eccentric millionaire Barnabas Collins is out on the grounds of his family estate in the middle of the night, hunting for werewolves by the light of the full moon.

He hears something moving in the woods — and as the vicious beast advances, Barnabas lets fly with a rifle shot, smacking the animal right in the heart. But this is a supernatural creature with the raw power of whatever demon cursed its malignant soul; it shrugs off the gunshot, and comes back for more.

Thinking quickly, Barnabas tosses the rifle aside, and prepares to beat the snarling beast to death with his cane.

You know, they don’t make eccentric millionaires like this anymore. It’s a lost art.

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Episode 593: Missing Persons

Gordon Russell, October 1968, ,

“It is true that he tried to kill you, but he was only acting out of fear.”

Carolyn Stoddard is dead, killed by a freak mad science experiment. And that’s just the beginning; the evening gets worse from there.

Choked with rage and grief, Adam the enormous Frankenteen tells Barnabas that he’s heading straight to Collinwood, and he’s going to murder everyone he can find. Then Adam punches Barnabas in the gut, drops him like a bad habit, and makes for the wide open spaces.

Barnabas tries to stagger after the crazed killer, but he can’t even make it to the front door before collapsing into Julia’s arms. She leads him to a chair and tries to help him recover, but Barnabas is desperate. There are three people living at Collinwood — more than that, if you count the help — and they are moments away from being entirely massacred. There’s not a moment to lose.

And hey, you know what? This would be a great moment for somebody to own a fucking telephone.

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Episode 572: Junior Detectives

Ron Sproat, September 1968, , ,

“But it isn’t possible, Julia! He exists by day!”

Tom Jennings — local handyman, vampire, and one of the cutest guys on Dark Shadows — died yesterday, following a brief struggle with a main character. He was 28 years old, not counting the last two weeks.

Now, Tom was a fun character, with family and friends and an entertaining story point and several attractive hairstyles, so we would be well within our rights as members of the Dark Shadows audience to mourn his passing, but it’s just not possible right now.

Barnabas and Julia are as happy as could be, and so am I, because Tom’s destruction means that they get to play Junior Detectives again.

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Episode 557: A Race of Monsters

August 1968, Gordon Russell, ,

“When you see his neck, Julia, you will know at once whether or not I am right.”

Julia walks into a haunted house, and finds a vampire sitting in an armchair.

“Barnabas, you look exhausted,” she says, because this television show takes place in a world where people worry that the living dead don’t get enough sleep.

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Episode 521: Look Who’s Talking

June 1968, Sam Hall, , , , ,

“If Cassandra is still alive, why is Trask’s skeleton hanging in the basement of the Old House?”

Barnabas and Julia spent most of yesterday’s episode speculating like mad about whether the spirit of Reverend Trask actually succeeded in banishing Cassandra.

Today — as Elizabeth is quietly packed off to Windcliff, following a sorcery-assisted suicide attempt — the Junior Detective squad still continues to treat this question as an emergency stop-press concern.

“If Cassandra is still alive,” Julia says, “why is Trask’s skeleton hanging in the basement of the Old House?” The great thing about a question like this is that you can keep on asking it for days and days, and never get any closer to an answer. This is a good way to kill time on your television show, if you have one.

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