Lydia et al:
When accounting for time I think we have to take into account the fact that time didn't pass for months in the present-day storyline, while the viewers were seeing 1795. I know we don't all agree on that. Anyway, if we accept it as being 1968 during Casselique, perhaps what we saw as 1966 was really 1967. I've never seen early DS, and don't know if they said what year it was back then.
Re Victoria's regeneration: For the second time with this viewing, I've been struck by how the character of VW changes overnight when the actress changes, but believably. The recasting caught Victoria at a pivotal moment in her life. the very first scene with BD: she and Maggie are discussing Maggie's marriage plans, and VW is laying into Nick mercilessly. Alright, my thought was, does she even know anything about Nick? Apart from that knot though, this is the perfect moment for her to wake up and adjust to the obvious fact that the world around her is full of supernatural events, and that there's no going back, in her view of the world.
Up until then, she'd made a strange half-accommodation with having memories of 1795. She half-believed it, but was in half-denial. (You can't continue to live that way, you go nuts, I think.) Her world-view was still generally the old "sensible" one, where what people on TV like to call "rational explanations" account for everything. She was reluctant to step off the cliff into loony-land I'm sure, despite the overwhelming evidence of her eyes and ears.
Betsy Durkin is a new Victoria who's adjusted to all this, and who goes charging off into Halloweenland without a net, and without hesitation. Her first act in office as New Vicki is to have a showdown with Nicholas Blair. Someone tell me please, did BD ever utter "I don't understand"?
