Where was the Secret in 1840?

[AndreDuPres]

Daniel notes that our favourite red-hedded physician looks just like his own wife, Harriet.  Do you think the writers might have planned to go back in the past to when Daniel was a bit younger and have Grayson play Harriet?  Probably not, but I can't help but notice stuff like this.  Also, I think DS missed a goldmine of storyline opportunities when they dropped the present day characters for 1841 PT:  as someone else noticed above, history had been *completely* changed, much more so than in 1897.  Virtually half the characters died in this storyline--surely that's got to cause some changes in the present!

[PennyDreadful]

Also, I think DS missed a goldmine of storyline opportunities when they dropped the present day characters for 1841 PT:  as someone else noticed above, history had been *completely* changed, much more so than in 1897.  Virtually half the characters died in this storyline--surely that's got to cause some changes in the present!

  There are two possibilities I can see with the 1840 alterations:

[spoiler]Possibility 1 - Barnabas' actions altered history to a tremendous extent.  The unseen ramifications of Barnabas, Julia and (to a lesser extent) Eliot's time-tampering would indeed have provided excellent material for a DS storyline in which Barnabas and friends realize that they should have been more careful when tinkering with the past.  I can imagine a situation where certain characters simply cease to exist because of their time-tampering.  Considering the fact that no one in 1971 seemed to remember the 1970 hauntings, the time trip to 1840 obviously caused some major changes in the present.  We never learned the extent of those changes, but we can assume Gerard/Judah and Daphne's ghosts never existed in 1970.  If such a major happening as the destruction of Collinwood ceased to take place, then we can also assume that other things were changed as well.  Odd Sidenote - Through some strange quirk (i.e. the writers) the present-day characters still remember the 1968 hauntings even AFTER the time trip to 1897!  Ah, the unfathomable mysteries of time-travel!

Possibility 2 - History rights itself, despite the changes.   The possibility that Barnabas changed history to such a great extent is problematic.  Edith's fortune and secret were the reasons Quentin came back to Collinwood in 1897.  Edith's death in 1840 might have completely nullified the 1968 haunting if Quentin never returned to Collinwood in 1897.     In fact, Quentin's very existence in the present may have been eliminated if he never came back to Collinwood in 1897.  He never would have had his portrait painted by Tate.  Luckily, on DS, history has a way of righting itself.  I like to think Edith survived 1840, despite her apparent death.  IIRC, she made a pact with Gerard/Judah before she died.  Perhaps, after/during her death, Edith appealed to dark forces in order to come back to life, thus enabling her to exist in 1897 despite interference from the time traveling trio.  Her existence in 1897 would then have allowed events to play out more or less the way they had done before the time-alterations took place.
     As for the Secret - Maybe Daniel's ghost, now freed from mental aberration, appeared to someone (Quentin I?  Edith?) and revealed the Secret to them.  This would have brought the Secret back to the land of the living.[/spoiler]

     A combination of both scenarios is probably most likely.  Certain events were completely changed, while other events righted themselves.

   I guess it's a good thing the writers left us with a variety loopholes and dangling plot threads.  There are endless possibilities for storyline speculation with DS.   

[Gerard]

On an AOL DS message board, I tackled the tricky thing about the massive change in history caused by Barnabas, Julia and Eliot in 1840/41 by coming up with a scenario (had the series continued).  It was a whole plot-line, along the lines of Charles Delaware Troll's wonderful website.  I'll keep it short so as not to bore anyone and not to violate our fantastic message board's rule about not delving into fantasy role-playing and storyline matters (there are other boards for that, as our illustrious webmasters point out).

When our three heroes return to 1971, they find that the family they knew is gone; they never existed, since the lineage had so drastically been altered.  Instead, there is a completely different Collins family (all played, of course, by the actors/actresses on the show).  Our heroes manage, as usual, to ingratiate themselves into the new family, wondering what to do now, finding themselves strangers in a strange land.  A severe haunting begins, which leads to the eventual deaths of virtually everyone in the family.  It turns out that the main spectre is none other than Tad Collins.  It's perplexing why he would do so (there are also some "minor" ghosts involved), since history records him as being a great man, involved in the abolitionist movement, dying in a tragic accident in 1860.  But he has a dark secret, one for which he will go to any length to keep hidden, even as a ghost.  There is a subplot intertwined with all this - since Barnabas sent back only his consciousness and not his body to 1840/41, when the three return to 1971, Barnabas in his 1840 body, they find his 1970 body a very much alive but mindless/soulless zombie (two Barnabas' for the price of one!).  To cut to the chase, the three go back in time to 1860 to find out what really went on and why the evil, enraged spirit of Tad Collins did such mischief in 1971.  They solve the mystery and get things straightened out, including restoring the "correct" family lineage, so when they return to 1971, there's Elizabeth coming into the drawing room, looking for Roger's speech which he needs to give at the history society meeting.  And away we go with all new adventures as DS continued on the air for years and years and years.  It was a lotta fun coming up with the whole story.

Gerard

[Joeytrom]

I always thought that it may have been Petofi's spirit haunting Collinwood in the present with his image presented as Quentin via Charles Tate's painting.  Thats why the present time family still remembered the haunting of "Quentin" and Beth.

As for Edith, perhaps she simply was unconscious at the time and suddenly came to, without the interference of the Dark Arts.  It was mentioned elsewhere she may have married a Collins cousin and he was the grandfather Judith and Edward refer to in 1897.

[Gerard]

I always thought that it may have been Petofi's spirit haunting Collinwood in the present with his image presented as Quentin via Charles Tate's painting.  Thats why the present time family still remembered the haunting of "Quentin" and Beth.

Oh, my goodness!  You know, I watched virtually every episode of the whole Quentin/haunting/back-to-1897 plotline when it originally aired back in 1969.  I was then just a very young junior-high-schooler.  But somehow I ended up with a bout of FDSMS (Faulty Dark Shadows Memory Syndrome).  I always thought, for decades after, that it wasn't really Quentin's ghost that haunted Collinwood, it was Petofi's, in the guise of Quentin's body (even his spectral one) because he confiscated it back in 1897.  I was positive that Petofi had been trapped in Quentin's body when, somehow, Quentin's body was killed in 1897.  Anyway, that's how I remembered it.  Finally, when I got to see the whole thing again in its entirety in the early '90's on the Sci-Fi Channel, all I could think to myself was:  No!  That's not how it happened!  I recalled it differently!  I know it was originally the way I remembered it!  Strange how strong FDSMS can be.  I even "remember" vividly episodes which were in my eskewed recollection of what I thought the story was all about.

Gerard

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I always thought that it may have been Petofi's spirit haunting Collinwood in the present with his image presented as Quentin via Charles Tate's painting.  Thats why the present time family still remembered the haunting of "Quentin" and Beth.

Interesting theory - but I'm not so sure it can fly. Unless Beth was deliberately trying to mislead Julia in Ep #836 (and that certainly doesn't appear to be the way things play out), the spirit that haunted Collinwood was Quentin because when Beth tells Julia why Quentin is so interested in David, she explains it's because Quentin's spirit loves David because he reminds him of Jamison. It seems unlikely Petofi would have had any such interest in either Jamison or David.

[Pansity]

Goodie more plot speculations!  My favorite thing!
Great responses, its SO hard to decide what to reply to.

LOVED the plot ideas put forth by Gerard and Penny Dreadful.  What we already know doesn't give me any reason to think they wouldn't work and be really interesting to see to boot.  A friend of mine loves this plotline, and the ins and out often drive her to refer to the infamous "Collinsport Dumbwater".  Characters drink that, and it explains all the lapses in logic, plausibility and reason that are unexplainable any other way.

As to Edith's continuance into 1897 -- well it kind of fits the period, oddly enough, like 1897 Q's family not thinking anything of him going zombie then waking up on the couch yelling he'd been stabbed.  Anyone remember an old Sean Connery movie called "The Great Train Robbery"?  Pivotal scene is when one of the scam artists is being a grief striken woman carrrying brother's body for burial.  The bell thing on the top started ringing convincing her he was still alive.  Liz's coffin alarm was nothing new. (And thank you History Channel for that bit of knowledge). Medical knowledge was still shaky back then, so people were paranoid about being prematurely declared dead and buried alive. Of course it helped, esp in 1840 that embalming wasn't invented till the civil war (Trask the undertaker not withstanding!)  After all, Gabriel didn't exactly wait around to make sure she was "really most sincerely dead."

 

[PennyDreadful]

Goodie more plot speculations!  My favorite thing!

Mine too!  One of these days I'd love to put together a fan publication of DS plot speculation essays, if I ever find the time.

Gerard, that storyline continuation you did on AOL sounds really interesting.  Do you have it up online anywhere? 

~Penny Dreadful~ 

[Misa]

I too would love to see Gerard's story. It sounds like great fun!

Misa

[Gerard]

Thank you for the wonderful compliments!  No, unfortunately it's not on-line anywhere, and the synopsis is somewhere on one of my countless unmarked zipdisks.  I'm one of those - you put stuff on discs and then say:  "I'll mark it later on," but never do and soon you have piles of them, not knowing what's on any one, so when you do have to find something, you fish through all of them until you find it on the second-to-last.  Of course, while doing that, you intend to mark them, but don't do it then, either.  The same thing is done with the pile of video cassettes.

Gerard

[Misa]

That's too bad, it sounded really good!

I've got lots of video tapes that  are like that, not marked. Some night I'll just have to have a surprise night and see what's on one of them.

Misa

[Angelique Wins]

I'm new here and, after having trouble navigating, got pointed here by Pansity.  Just wanted to say thanks for the 1840 thread.  I LOVE 1840.  You just can't think about it too hard.  As for the Edith paradox, their problem is that they didn't call for the coroner.  He was working two jobs and at that time, he was in Munchkinland.  So he could not have proclaimed Edith most sincerely dead, so apparently she was only merely dead, which, we all know, in DS, doesn't mean much.    

[PennyDreadful]

Welcome to the Boards Angelique Wins!  I too enjoy 1840.  As you say "dead" in Collinsport, doesn't always mean what it does everywhere else.