Tag Archives: necrobabble

Episode 885: Not in Canvas Anymore

November 1969, Sam Hall, , , , ,

“I want you to do nothing. Promise me that, and I will not use the coffins.”

Now, from Josette’s point of view, it’s a weird decision either way, but it gets weirder the more that you think about it, which personally I was planning never to do. But let’s take a moment.

Kitty Soames — a living human woman, in the year 1897 — has discovered that she is the reincarnation of Josette DuPres, who toppled over a cliff in 1795. Reincarnation means that it’s the same spirit, reborn in a new body. Right? That’s what this story point has done to me; it’s made me question what reincarnation means.

So Kitty is Josette, in some kind of fictional necrobabble way. And listening to Josette’s music box put her into a kind of fugue state, where she remembered being Josette. I’m okay with that part.

But now Kitty is trying to suppress those memories, because she’s worried that the Josette persona will take over. So she goes to Josette’s room in the Old House, and argues with the portrait.

“I’ve got to go away to live my own life, and you can’t come with me!” she says. “You’ve got to let me be myself! I’ve got to forget Josette DuPres!” And then the portrait sasses her back, saying, “It is Kitty Soames you must forget!”

Now, obviously, if she’s really Josette, then who is she talking to, but it’s metaphor, it’s stagecraft, it’s a vampire soap opera and who even cares. And then there’s the floating.

Continue reading Episode 885: Not in Canvas Anymore →

Episode 858: The Woman Who Wasn’t There

October 1969, Violet Welles, , , , , , ,

“You can’t just go on killing until you find the right hexagram!”

If the 1897 storyline has an overall theme — and it absolutely doesn’t, but let’s say it does for a second — then it’s this: Can villains build a better world?

It’s been about two years since the villains took over Dark Shadows, first with Barnabas and Julia stealing all the screen time, and then the rise of Angelique as the antagonist’s antagonist, reducing all the other characters to the role of chess pieces. By 1968, the continuing saga was essentially just the story of the Collins family enduring the intrusion of one monster after another — Adam, and Cassandra, and Nicholas Blair, and Danielle Roget, and a swarm of vampires, and finally a werewolf and a handful of angry ghosts. For the most part, the villains were the characters that drove the plot; they were the ones with story arcs. The would-be heroes basically turned into goldfish, swimming in circles in the background, as the villains clashed at stage front.

So as the 1897 storyline begins ambling towards a conclusion, the show is essentially asking, why do we even bother having characters who aren’t villains? If we assemble a diverse cast of gold diggers and grave robbers and spell casters, can they produce a long-term, productive storyline? Or does it all end with a big smoking hole in the ground, and a handful of singed survivors? At the moment, the smart money’s on big smoking hole, but stay tuned.

Continue reading Episode 858: The Woman Who Wasn’t There →

Episode 725: The Unrest

April 1969, Sam Hall, , ,

“Where is this uncle he thinks he is?”

Okay, let’s see if we can summarize.

Eccentric millionaire Barnabas Collins has traveled back in time to 1897, in order to stop Quentin from dying alone, sealed up in his bedroom, and then sitting around and stewing about it. If Quentin dies under those circumstances, then he’ll return as a ghost in 1969, to haunt the family and kill David.

We’re currently a month into this loosely-defined rescue mission, and Quentin has already been stabbed to death. Barnabas decides that this is a mission-critical failure for some reason, and he asks Angelique to use her magic and bring Quentin back to life. As an act of spite, Angelique brings Quentin back as a mindless zombie who attacks the governess and tries to bury her in his own grave. To make matters worse, Quentin’s spirit possesses the body of his nephew Jamison.

Once the governess is rescued, Zombie Quentin leaves the cemetery and goes to the Old House, bashing the door in and fighting his way past several gypsies to make it to the basement, where he sits down quietly in a chair and just kind of chills out. Barnabas and the gypsies try a seance to reunite his body and his spirit, but it doesn’t work, and the zombie leaves the basement, with Barnabas in pursuit. We finished yesterday with a shot of Zombie Quentin on his belly, dragging himself desperately toward his open grave.

Nope, it looks like we can’t summarize this after all. That’s a negative.

Continue reading Episode 725: The Unrest →

Episode 648: Astral Disturbances

December 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , , , , ,

“The letter M is very strong in this room.”

Yesterday, following Roger’s suspicious specter-assisted accident on the stairs, his sister Elizabeth found a tarot card on the drinks table in his bedroom. As everyone knows, discovering an unexpected tarot card is a sure sign of supernatural crisis, so she called Professor Stokes, the mad occult expert who is now making house calls at Collinwood on a weekly basis.

The Professor identified the card as the Tower of Destruction — the sign of the downfall of a great house. He agreed that this is extremely significant, and he promised to bring in a colleague who can investigate the unearthly events that have been piling up lately.

So here she is: Madame Janet Findley, the psychic sorceress on call. Apparently, things have gotten so bad at Collinwood that the occult expert is subcontracting with other occult experts.

Madame Findley walks into the drawing room, throws her hands in the air, and if there was ever a moment for somebody to say, is THIS your card? then this is it.

Continue reading Episode 648: Astral Disturbances →

Episode 642: Mind Over Manners

December 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , ,

“There’s not much point in being both rude and mysterious.”

Over the last couple of weeks, Christopher Jennings has murdered at least two human beings — I know they were only day players, but even day players are God’s children, presumably — and yet we like Chris, and we let him get away with being really quite skilled at covering up for his ongoing murder spree, because he’s sexy and polite and interesting, and what does that say about us? Probably something terrible.

Continue reading Episode 642: Mind Over Manners →

Episode 520: What Dead People Do

June 1968, Sam Hall, , , , ,

“And for your own reasons, you remained silent. You remained silent for reasons.”

Roger is pacing in the Collinwood foyer when Julia enters, bright as a button.

“Good morning, Roger,” she chirps. “Such a beautiful morning, I decided to go for a walk before breakfast.”

Yes, she’s currently engaged in a life-or-death struggle with an undead sorceress. But this is Dr. Julia Hoffman, and she does not give a shit.

Continue reading Episode 520: What Dead People Do →

Episode 508: Dream Beater

June 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , , , , , ,

“Why am I not opening your doors?”

What, when you get right down to it, is magic?

In the context of a story, anyone can have magic powers, and there really aren’t any hard and fast rules about how they work. Take Angelique, for example — a ladies’ maid from Martinique with reality-warping abilities, apparently granted to her by Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies.

Angelique started out with some rather modest household voodoo, choking a toy soldier to make Barnabas gasp for breath. But pretty soon, she was raising zombies from their graves, and turning people into cats, and generally wiping the floor with the Collins family.

By this point, she has a baffling assortment of abilities, including the power of getting really super old when somebody paints over her portrait. She doesn’t use that one very much, because it’s hard to weaponize.

Continue reading Episode 508: Dream Beater →

Episode 507: The Spirit of St. George

June 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , , , ,

“According to my calculations, only one more person must have the dream.”

I knew this was going to be hard. When I started this uncertain and frightening journey through Dark Shadows, I knew that the Dream Curse storyline was waiting for me, and it was going to test my endurance more than anything else on the show. But here I am, six weeks into the story, and I just looked at my episode guide, and I’m only halfway through. We’re currently at the beginning of June 1968, and the Dream Curse ends in mid-July.

I know I keep saying “Here’s the problem with the Dream Curse,” but here’s the problem with the Dream Curse: characters just saunter in and out of the storyline, and it doesn’t seem to matter. The allegedly terrifying chain-letter dream sequence moves from one character to another, and once they’ve passed the baton on to the next person, they drop out of the storyline.

Remember when it was a big deal that Mrs. Johnson needed to go to Boston, so she wouldn’t pass the dream on to Jeff? Or was that David? Or Julia. I’m pretty sure it was either Julia or River Song. No, wait, that’s Doctor Who. I’ve got this written down somewhere.

Continue reading Episode 507: The Spirit of St. George →