Thankfully the YouTube version of the pilot didn't mess with what is one of my favorite sequences. But before we get into it, let's go back to two posts I made in the pilot's slideshow topic:
As for the new sequence, the script explains it all as:
INT. VICTORIA'S BEDROOM - COLLINWOOD - NIGHT
Blue moonlight filters through the window as Victoria slips on her nightgown. She's just pulling back the bed-covers when she stops, as if SENSING SOMETHING. Curious, she goes to the balcony doors...
EXT. VICTORIA'S BALCONY - COLLINWOOD -. NIGHT
She steps out and looks across the dark grounds. CUT TO:
BARNABAS' NIGHT-VISION POV.
Watching Victoria from a distance. Eerie, deep blue.
But nothing like that plays out in the pilot. What does happen in the pilot is actually far more interesting. However, before I get into what does actually happen, I need to track down an extra I want to include in my post to better illustrate it. But I will throw in two bits of trivia now:
1) The sequence was the first that Alec Newman shot after being cast as Barnabas.
2) It's the only sequence in the pilot in which Barnabas is seen with fashionable stubble. And that's because TPTB didn't like the look after they saw it on film. But time ran out and they were never able to reshoot the sequence.
So, what does actually happen in the pilot? Well, later in the night after Vicki has already gone to bed Barnabas actually shows up at Vicki's bedside, and it's at that point that today's quote -
Page 36 - Barnabas: 'Josette. You've come back to me.'
- is delivered by Barnabas (though it is scripted in other circumstances that I'll wait until tomorrow to get into). However, as Barnabas prepares to bite Vicki, as in similar scenes in both the original series and the '91 DS, he can't bring himself to go through with it. In the pilot Barnabas cries out mournfully, startling Vicki awake - but he flees from the room before she sees him. But the really interesting bit comes after Vicki has awakened and looks to see if anyone is in her room and what the audience sees is Barnabas hanging upside down and clinging to the exterior wall of Collinwood above Vicki's bedroom window and out of her sight (very much in the style of Louis Jourdan's Dracula in PBS' 1977 Count Dracula). And out there Barnabas laments "Josette" before the scene comes to its end.
And to help people who haven't seen the pilot to better picture Barnabas in this scene, here are two shots of Alec Newman from when he played a vampire on NBC's Dracula this past November:
Sure, Newman is almost ten years older, has a different hairstyle, and is wearing different clothes - but the shots are a good way to approximate Barnabas' look in the scene, right down to his fashionable stubble.
Observant members who've seen the pilot at the Fests or on YouTube may have already noticed that this sequence makes up more than half of this month's background for the pilot. That's how much I love it. And here are some selected captures from it - some that I used for the background, but presented here in their natural state (meaning not colored blue) - and some that I didn't use for the background because they wouldn't have worked well for it:
Considering the way things play in the pilot are not the same as what appears in the script, it would be very interesting to know who conceived things as they appear in the pilot... But I suppose we may never know...