Thanks for everything, MB!
Natalie is at the cliff's edge, changing history (except none of this was written down with any detail or accuracy and then only for the family so is it history?) by having it not be Barnabas, because of a Natalie-Barnabas conversation which I'm not sure we witnessed onscreen.
DS time travel, unlike other TV time travel, involves only one "version" of a character at a time. So a "duplicate" from the future can't just decide not to meddle and go back. There are no duplicates, just the future version stuck in the shoes of the original. So he has to consider every moment, changing what should be changed, re-creating every act that needs to happen. Nerve-wracking.
So much for reformed Barnabas... he bites Natalie without hesitation just to stop her from interfering with him and Josette meeting. In fact, the effect of 1897 has probably been to "teach" Barnabas that you can get away with that sort of thing without causing a disaster to a basically nice person... if he's remembering Beth. The bitings came to be used almost casually as an interrogation technique. And who cares if it harmed Dirk, he was an enemy.... Perhaps he's even managing to overlook his having been totally exposed and made a fugitive by having turned Dirk into a vampire, since he turned that around with his ressurrection stunt (which he convinced two women who were lovesick for him to pull off so he could romance a third). So he might be feeling pretty bulletproof by now, or at least less questioning of his own vampiric actions, seeing them as mere tools now.
Interesting though, seeing which directions Barnabas is being pulled from moment to moment by his vampire impulses, and how it affects his decision-making. There's a decent person in there somewhere; he just has enormous trouble achieving any real perspective on how to deal with events and human beings.
I liked Grayson's very individual response to the bite, as if it was the biggest defeat imaginable, and something she could never, ever come back from... whereas for Barnabas, it had just been an expediant. He probably stays clueless as to how it affects her. Well, he has other concerns starting now.
[spoiler]I have to reorder all the 1795/6 redoings properly in my head... I've viewed them out of sequence. Since Barnabas is about to jump back out of 1796, does that re-establish the events of his first meddling, from that moment onward... with 1968 BC in 1796 BC's body's head clearing, saying to self, well, better get back to my 1968 plans now (as opposed to the 1969 meddling we've just been watching)? With all that concluding with Ben killing Natalie and Nathan Forbes in the mausoleum?
Maybe, but I guess that would involve Natalie suddenly ceasing to be a vampire victim, when 1969-in-1796 BC is replaced by 1968-in-1796 BC. How does this affect her subsequent actions? She could be one of those victims who conveniently forgets...
I like how this means Barnabas has just inhabited himself inhabiting himself.)
Barnabas only ends up pushing Josette past her limits, with all his clumsy talk about other times, and not asking why. He's pulled her reality up by its roots, taking away any anchor I think, probably encouraging precipitous decisions. He fails to meet Kitty/Josette, and a reasonable possibility such as "he was just held up temporarily" doesn't occur, in this new, highly emotionally charged fantasy she seems to be stuck in. She takes poison. Good poison-acting from KLS.
This time around, it's much clearer to me that the Leviathans just simply were lying about holding Josette a sort of prisoner. I'd thought it was probably the truth, with her prison being someplace between life and death. This time, it's clear Barnabas just didn't know she'd taken poison, and if the robed people knew at all, they didn't tell him. That's all.
Barnabas is laid out on the cairn, end. By Sam Hall. I'm glad Violet Welles was assigned to finish out 1897, while the other writers worked on the new storyline. The usual DS pattern was to put the best people to work on the coming storyline, letting the conclusion to the presently-airing storyline go a little (or a lot). 1897 deserved to go out well.
