DARK SHADOWS, EPISODE 462 (1968)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological*



Since I've just stated in this essay that it's problematic to review single episodes of the sixties series DARK SHADOWS, here I'll deal with the events of this episode as if they comprised a vignette, a narrative that barely has a middle, only a setup and a (sort of) resolution.

Most single episodes imply the mythic content of the show more than actually incarnating it. For instance, a few episodes previous, DARK SHADOWS spent about four months sending Victoria Winters back to 1795 (the same era in which Gothic novels became super-popular, by the way), where she encountered 18th-century versions of the Collins family. This is a fun long arc, but I wouldn't call it mythic, even though it does introduce the extremely important series-character Angelique.

In episode 461, Victoria returns to her 1968 milieu (I'll pass over the complications of her mode of time-travel). Confused as she is by the transition, Victoria can't completely distinguish between the 1795 Barnabas and the 1968 Barnabas, given that despite her temporal trip she never learns that the two are the same. But one of the young governess' first lines is her reflection that "I wanted to live in the past," which refers to her frequently seen tendency to enjoy the Old World culture of early America, the culture from which the Collins family sprang. For the months predating the time-travel storyline, Barnabas was planning to make Victoria his vampire bride, also for reasons of auld lang syne: because he thinks she's the reincarnation of his lost love Josette.

What's interesting about this vignette is that as a result of Victoria's trip to the past, she's fallen in love with a man who lived in 1795-- but it's not the Barnabas of any era. Instead of the middle-aged vampire, she's fallen for a young man her own age-- or, at least, someone who was Victoria's 1968 age back in 1795. When the governess returns to her own time and place, she's suddenly in the same position as Barnabas: being romantically enthralled to someone long dead. Later episodes give Victoria an "out"  that Barnabas is denied, simply because the actress left the show and so the Victoria character-arc had to be wrapped up as well as possible.

This vignette, far more than the actual four-month long arc, manages to capture the psychological appeal of being in thrall to the vanished past. Barnabas later tells his confidante Julia that "the past is constantly being re-lived"-- which may be an instance of the show's writers justifying their penchant for revisiting and revamping past story-continuity. Even Julia herself gets a hair-makeover to make herself "feel all new," and chastises herself for having indulged in the fantasy of escaping her troubled past.

The most overtly dramatic thing in the episode is that Victoria, despite being physically free of 1795, finds herself dreaming of a spectre from that era--one whom the viewers of the show witnessed, but whom Victoria never actually saw. She knew the living form of Jeremiah Collins, the young-looking uncle of 1795 Barnabas, but I don't believe she ever saw his ghost. Nevertheless, Jeremiah, who was slain in a duel with Barnabas, appears in Victoria's dream to warn her about Barnabas, though he somehow omits to tell her what she most needs to know: that modern Barnabas is a vicious vampire.

The strangest thing about the episode is that at the episode's conclusion, Barnabas finally does (apparently) fang Victoria for the first time, though the action is off-camera. This looks like the triumph of Old Death over Youth and Life-- except that by the time Episode 463 starts, Victoria not only doesn't act like a typical vampiric slave, she's still obsessed with the young man she met in 1795.
So the writers clearly decided to let Barnabas have his way, only to block him through the heroine's devotion to True Love. Indeed, early in the episode Julia tells Victoria that "death does not stop love," and thus, despite the problematic conclusion of the vignette, this single episode foreshadows the eventual resolution of the Victoria Winters plotline, in which her love does preserve her from the dominion of death, at least in the form of one 200-year-old vampire.

ADDENDUM: Since I already went outside the original episode being reviewed, I may as well add that in subsequent episodes Victoria falls under Barnabas' control somewhat more-- yet this too is a prelude to a development that will eventually lead to her escape from her aged suitor.