Uncle Roger and Gothick, I love your posts! I think it would have been brilliant to have Petofi arrive in the present (1969) with the box. We never did get a showdown between him and Quentin in 1897, and it would have been fun to have one.
I agree that Chris Bernau and Marie Wallace were utterly convincing as the Todds and really engaged me as their story progressed--or, I guess went downhill. They were tragic figures and I felt for them both. Then again, I didn't watch the show when it first aired. I was much older when I finally caught it on local public TV and then on the old SciFi channel in the 1980s.
It seems that whenever the ratings started dropping, DC would freak out and start plundering various sources (Dorian Grey, Orpheus, whatever, not to mention Dracula and Frankenstein) for plot lines. Most of the time, the writers did amazingly well at concocting stories, and when they got the chance they wrote some dialogue that was brilliant and even sensitive.
True, the Leviathan story speeded up toward the end, but by then it had gotten totally out of control and I was glad to see the end of it. I'm sure not everyone would agree, but I loved the whole parallel time thing.