Dark Shadows at 47

[Gothick]

Today 47 years ago, at 3:30 in the afternoon, viewers on the Eastern Seaboard (and elsewhere in the US in other time zones) first heard Alexandra Moltke's melancholy, poetically charged voice recite these fateful words:
My name is Victoria Winters. My journey is just beginning. A journey that I hope will open the doors of life to me, and link my past with my future... A journey that will bring me to a strange and dark place, to the edge of the sea, high atop Widows' Hill, to a house called Collinwood... A world I've never known, with people I've never met. People who are still only shadows in my mind, but who will soon fill the days and nights of my tomorrows...

Amazingly, by some kind of television miracle, 47 years later we're still hear talking about Vicki and the surprising places her journey took her... and far, far beyond Vicki's own journeys ... to the shadow of a tall dark man with tragic eyes named Barnabas Collins.

Happy Birthday DS!

G.

[DarkLady]

Happy birthday indeed. Thanks for the reminder, Gothick!

[michael c]

thanks g...


the way things turned out i'll bet vicki wishes she had taken sandy's advice and "gone out to long island and had a ball"...


as I do every year on this date I think i'll pop episode one in.

[Gerard]

I know I've recounted this before, but I'll do it again quickly simply because this is a happy birthday to DS.  I saw the very first episode, but it was the following day.  For some reason, our local ABC affiliate broadcast the show a day later, at 11 in the morning.  I just finished watching something, probably a game show, and the commercial aired saying it was coming on next.  The eerie music in the ad caught my attention, so, instead of heading outside to play which I intended to do, I watched.  And I was forever hooked.  Fortunately, by the end of summer the affiliate moved it to its correct broadcast time on the proper day (it aired the previous delayed day's episode at 11, and the new one in the afternoon) so I got to continue to watch it when school started.

Happy birthday, DS!

Gerard

[B.Collins]

well i wasn't around when it was 1st on so i don't have a great story like that. my 1st taste for the show was when the show was on the air in (1991) i can't remember if i watched the pilot in (1990) or not with my dad.  but him and me watched the (1991) revival together. and though now that i think about it, i don't think he watched it when it was 1st on back in the 60's/70's. my guess is that nothing else was on at the time and so he put it on. and i watched it with him. and fell in love with it. and than i would get pretty pissed about how it was scheduled. i was 12 at the time. i turned 13 a few months later. and than i was furious when it was cancelled. fast forward to a few years later in (1996) when i was visting my brother at Kent State i spent i think it was a week with him there?

which is really strange now cause i have really no relationship with him now. anyways, by than i was 18 and
when he was in class i would watch it on the Sc-fi channel. to this day i can't remember what era it was in.

it was i think in the late 60's and they were color episodes that i DO remember. i was hooked and yes i had heard by than of the original show and i was curious. but no place aired it. and we didn't have the channel at the time. the sci-fi channel and when we got it a year later. the show wasn't airing anymore. i was pissed.

yet again. anyways, thankfully we got it in (1998) and the 1st one that aired was episode #188 and i had no idea it was that episode until a couple years later when i found the right place to look. and it took me forever to get into the show. cause it hadn't started from episode #1 and it wasn't until a couple episodes after we got our vampire that i fell in love with it. and here i am almost 15 years later.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

the sci-fi channel and when we got it a year later. the show wasn't airing anymore. i was pissed.

yet again. anyways, thankfully we got it in (1998) and the 1st one that aired was episode #188 and i had no idea it was that episode until a couple years later when i found the right place to look. and it took me forever to get into the show. cause it hadn't started from episode #1 and it wasn't until a couple episodes after we got our vampire that i fell in love with it. and here i am almost 15 years later.

The Sci-Fi Channel first began DS on September 25, 1992 with Ep #1 (& Ep #2), and that first run concluded on March 17, 1995 with Ep #1245. But that same date also began their second run with Ep #1, and that run concluded on September 25, 1997 with Ep #1245 (& a bonus showing of Ep #1). DS didn't come back again to Sci-Fi until January 4, 1999, and that run began with Ep #189 (& Ep #190). That time Ep #1245 (& Ep #1244) ran on May 16, 2001. Ep #1 (& Ep #2) was then on Sci-Fi again on May 17, 2001 - but that last run ended prematurely with Ep #1227 on December 30, 2003, leaving the last 18 eps unshown.

There was also an attempt by Sci-Fi to show one ep of DS at 11:30pm ET, Mondays through Thursdays. That run began on July 10, 2000, again with Ep #189, but it ended very abruptly on August 3, 2000, with Ep #204, and obviously before Barnabas had even shown up.

[michael c]

my first exposure to the series was a late(11-ish)airing that I thought was in the late 1990's early 2000's...


I remember distinctly it was the episode where david locked vicki in the attic and she saw the ghost of bill malloy. the whole "what would you do with a drunken sailor" routine at the blue whale left an impression. I was living in a large brownstone in brooklyn at the time and sometimes watched television with my landlady and she must have seen this with me because when I started to watch the series in it's entirety she always asked me about joan bennett and "that girl that got locked in the attic".

what run would that be?

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Ep #84 (the one in which David first locks Vicki in the room) was shown on November 23, 1992, May 25, 1995, and July 19, 2001 - and Ep #85 (the one in which Bill Malloy's ghost appears to Vicki) was also shown on November 23, 1992, and then on May 26, 1995 and July 20, 2001.

After Sci-Fi brought DS back in '99, they played all sorts of fast and loose with its schedule. As I said, it started out on January 4, 1999 with two eps a day at 11/11:30am ET and with Eps #189 & #190. Then beginning on July 17, 2000 and with Ep #953, they changed DS to one ep a day at 9am ET. Then beginning on October 2, 2000 and with Ep #1006, they remained with one ep a day but at 10am ET. Then beginning on January 29, 2001 DS went back to two ep a day, starting with Eps #1087 & #1088, and it remained at two eps a day for the rest of its time on Sci-Fi.

I don't have any notations about other time slot changes after that, but it's quite possible that DS moved back to 11/11:30am ET at some point and I was just so sick of marking down time changes that I never bothered to mark it. By that point we were getting angered by the way Sci-Fi was handling DS, particularly how they seemed to love to take the show off the schedule for weeks at a time. (The worst example of that was how DS was off from Monday, November 25, 2002 through Friday, December 13, 2002 - and then for good measure for another week and a half from Monday, December 23, 2002 through Wednesday, January 1, 2003.      During that time Eps #740 through #749 were all that Sci-Fi deemed us worthy enough to see the week of Monday, December 16, 2002 through Friday, December 20, 2002. Lucky us.  ) If Sci-Fi hadn't preempted DS so often, there would have been no reason why they couldn't have shown Eps #1228 through #1245 in 2003.

[michael c]

then july 19th 2001 it was!


I swear it was late(11:00-ish)but maybe i'm remembering it wrong.

[Gerard]

Sci-Fi (now "SyFy" was such a different and better world back in the '90's and into the early 2000's.  DS was its crowning glory.  The network aired other fantastic classics, from Irwin Allen productions like Lost In Space to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Time Tunnel.  Don't forget The Twilight Zone (which, fortunately, still airs on occasion).  And what about Boris Karloff's Thriller?  Plenty of classic movies, especially the Edgar Allen Poe/Vincent Price ones, aired.  There were those short vinettes that were creeply fantastic.  Anyone remember one of its first special-produced shows called Trailer Park?  I think that's what it was called.  It showed classic horror/sci-fi movie trailers.  What a wonderful, fun and nostalgic program.  And then there were documentaries, including the one about DS on its 25th anniversary.  Sci-Fi was so proud of DS back then.  It also aired, several times, the '91 remake.  And didn't it pick up Mystery Science Theater 3000 after Comedy Central dumped it? 

"SyFy" is such a pale version of what it once was.  Don't get me wrong - it has produced some incredible and fine programming including the remake of Battlestar Gallactica of the highest, award-winning quality.  But it's not the same.  Today, it's all about "professional" wrestling (that's sci-fi? - I guess it is) and the typical, cheesey Saturday night movies about 20-something hunks and hunkettes in stained muscle T-shirts and dirty faces fighting a computerized monster that looks like a CGI cut-out until they blow it up in either a shack or a mine.  Same old drivel over and over again.  And all those "game shows."  When Sci-Fi first started airing, with all those classics and well-made documentaries, I watched it 24/7.  Now I turn it on maybe a couple hours a week.  I do watch Paranormal Witness and occasionally Ghost Hunters (they're both on SyFy, aren't they?).  But that's about it.  I miss the old days, especially with DS. 

Gerard

[B.Collins]

my mistake it was in (1999) i just know cause i was in high school at the time and i still have my notebook i used in school somewhere. my mistake. i was a year off no big deal. and yes syfy is a terrible channel. it recently i dunno when even stopped airing the monster of the week films on saturdays! did they change days? or just cancel it altogether ?  only show i watch on it right now is just Haven.  back in the day all i would watch is The Sci-fi channel non stop it would be on the entire night. and weekends as well. we've had it since (1997)  and it was great back than. now it's pure crap.