With so much going on at all times, I guess it was inevitable that the writers of Dark Shadows would occasionally drop a story line in favor of something more interesting or promising. I'm not talking about such major lapses as never completing the "Vicki's search for her origin" scenario that seemed to be the very premise of the show at the outset (or the way they left poor Chris Jennings hanging at the end).

I'm talking about more minor narrative dead ends, ones where it seemed like the writers had something bigger in mind then just let it drop. Two that come to mind happen early in the Barnabas story. One involves Sam Evans' attempt to put an art show together. Some larger-than-life woman from "the city" breezes into town for all of one episode to fawn all over Sam's skills as a painter and to get him all excited about gathering his work for a show. He spends a couple of episodes bugging Roger about the whereabouts of the paintings he gave him, then the whole thing is dropped without any further mention.

The second example is the house on the Collinwood property that Vicki falls in love with. Two episodes
involve trips by various characters to check out the house, then nothing much is done with it.

I'd be curious to hear from others of similar story lines that just petered away without explanation.

I wonder if there weren't times when the writers might have been able to move the plot along more effectively if they weren't tied down to the no-more-than-five-or-six-actors-allowed-per-episode rule set up by the show's producers.  Were there times when they had to delay a crucial scene to a later episode because it would have involved paying an additional actor or two?  It seems like it might have been a bit of a strain to have to work under such conditions.

Anyone ever read any comments on this topic?  Thanks.

At the end of one of the discs, one of the early cameramen states in an interview that occasionally DS had to be performed live because they weren't able to finish the filming in time for the actual airing.  Is this true and do we know which episodes he might have been referring to here?

Sorry if a thread already exists on this topic.

When Julia first moved into Collinwood, she at least had a false cover - that she was writing a history of the Collins family - as a justification.  But once that cover was blown (after the seance), what reason did she still have for staying?  And, why didn't Roger, in particular (who never took too kindly to outsiders in the first place) not eventually throw her out on her keester?   I mean it takes a lot of chutzpah for someone to just worm her way into a permanent place in the area's most lavish and impressive mansion with, one assumes, free board as well (unless she was slipping Mrs. Johnson a weekly stipend for her meals).  Maybe they kept her around for all those sedatives she was so generous about passing around.   

I was thinking that if all the people whom Vickie meets back in 1795 resemble people she knows in 1967, why doesn't Barnabas notice those strange similarities when he wakes up in the future?  I mean, wouldn't it freak him out that Elizabeth and Roger looked so much like his mother and father, or that Dr. Hoffman was a dead ringer for the Countess Du Pres?

I sometimes wonder if the original actors ever felt slighted by the direction the show took after the arrival of Barnabas.  Not only did they receive much less camera time than they had had previously, but many of their characters were relegated to that dreadful state of perpetual ignorance (the kiss-of-death for any actor), while other characters (like Barnabas, Julia, Willy etc.) always seemed to be "in the know"  and, thus, got all the best scenes.

I know that, in "Lost in Space," for instance, many of the "lead actors" became unhappy when, by season two, Dr. Smith, Will and the Robot had become the de facto "stars" of the show and everyone else receded into the background.

I realize that a show has to go with its strengths if it is to survive, but I still can't help wondering if there were any hard feelings about it all (I know that Alexandra Moltke may have had some).

I just noticed that in the 1841 parallel time story, one episode goes all the way back to the late 1600's to show how the "curse" came onto the Collins family.

However, in "our" time band, the great house wasn't built till the time of Barnabas more than a hundred years later.

Just another one of those quaint inconsistencies we DS fans treasure so highly!