quentin,david and amy

[Willie Loomis]

there seems to be a theory that since barnabas prevents quentin from being killed in 1897 than his ghost never haunted collinwood in the present and thus only barnabas,julia and "we" the viewer recall these events.

so, when barnabas discovered why quentin was cursed, he should have gone back in time to prevent quentin from killing jenny racosi collins, thereby avoiding the curse.   but it was more important to go around bitting little blond girls on their necks.    what a maroon.

[MagnusTrask]

Another post-1897 issue has always been confusing to me: did the family realize Barnabas actually traveled through time & changed history? I remember Elizabeth thanking Barnabas shortly after he returned to the present, but did she & the others really understand what he did?

You know, as far as I recall, I don't think they knew exactly what he did.  Even Barnabas himself didn't know he'd wind up traveling to the past when he tossed those I-Ching wands.  Considering his penchant for utter secrecy, I doubt he told them much.  They just knew he helped in some way.  Barnabas, Julia & Stokes were probably vague about the specifics.

I suppose the Collinses are used to just lertting the "help" get on with things, without getting too involved in the distasteful details....

[michael c]

willie...

so true.since barnabas began to travel back and forth in time with the frequency that some people go to the dentist,and always with the intention of preventing some or other "disaster" and where he invariably becomes distracted by some s.y.t.,you'd think that he'd try and prevent the grand daddy of all collinwood disasters,his own curse,but then again he wouldn't be alive in the 1960's and we would have no show.

as for quentin,it's true that before barnabas and julia entered 1970 parallel-time they weren't quite sure how to fit quentin into the proceedings...but when they returned the writing for quentin had changed and they tried to act like he had always been one of the gang at collinwood.

a sloppy piece of storytelling and continuity that always irritated me to no end for some reason.

[markyboo]

The writers were focusing on too many characters & storylines during the Leviathan saga. In addition to the main plot about the Leviathans, you also had the return of Quentin, the return of Paul Stoddard, the return of Amanda Harris, the return of Nicholas Blair, the return of Charles Delaware Tate, the return of Willie AND the return of Angelique. Also, there was Chris & Sabrina & all their baggage & the introduction of the parallel-time room! Oh, I almost forgot that Barnabas became a vampire again & ended up turning Megan Todd into one. I'm surprised the writers didn't work in Mrs. Johnson attending a '70's-style key party. I wish that when Barnabas returned to the present (69/70), the Leviathan storyline would have unfolded a bit more slowly. It would have been nice to have gotten to know "normal" Philip & Megan for several weeks before they became "parents". During that time, Quentin could have been reintroduced into the storyline & the writers could have gotten all that Amanda Harris/Olivia Corey nonsense out of the way. By the time the Leviathan storyline got cooking, Quentin could have been more involved with his new cousins & would have been more apt to defend them from the Leviathans & then not just seem an afterthought like when Julia "drafted" Quentin to battle the Leviathans

[Brandon Collins]

Spoiler: In 1967, Vicki's trip through time changed nothing, thereby creating no circular paradox. In 1968, some characters recall what occurred at Collinwood before Barnabas altered Quentin's history, so Barnabas' earlier motivation to visit 1897 remains reasonably intact. In a later storyline, however, Gerard's haunting was apparently totally averted, so there would have been no need for Barnabas, Julia and Stokes to visit 1840 in the changed timeline, and therefore Gerard's ghost would be free to wreak havoc as it did originally...

Under this logic, Barnabas and Julia would have to continually go back in time to avert the haunting caused by Gerard, so they'd be replaying the same loop over and over. Can you just imagine?

Barnabas: This really is getting old. 
Julia: I shouldn't have unpacked from the last time.

And since Quentin came to the present,  can we then assume that the events that happened to him in the past would've still happened but at the point of his death he instead was thrown forward through time to the present day, thus averting his ghost ever haunting Collinwood in the first place, except for the original time we saw it happen?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: paradoxes are confusing.

[Gerard]

Yes, as wonderful as 1897 (and its prelude in the present time) is, what a mess from Barnabas going back in time.

SPOILER HERE!

In 1968, Quentin is haunting Collinwood (plus his body, having been shot by Beth, was found in the sealed-off room by David and Amy), so obviously he was dead.  But then Barnabas goes back in time to change things.  What really changed things wasn't so much his going back in time, but Petofi showing up and having Tate make that portrait which basically makes Quentin immortal.  He can't be harmed, because whatever harm comes to him goes to the portrait.  So if he was shot by Beth, he'd have a momentary "heart burn" and then the fatal wound would appear on the portrait, so he ain't dead.  So how could he have croaked and ended up haunting Collinwood?  Did Barnabas' arrival change it all?  If Barnabas hadn't've showed up, would Petofi?  Well, maybe, maybe not.  Magda was all out of sorts when she found out that by cursing Quentin she had cursed her own descendents, so she went to get Petofi's hand in order to cure Quentin.  But would she have done so if Barnabas had not been there?  Maybe he cajoled her more into trying to repair things; if he had not shown up, Magda might've just bemoaned what she did and let it go at that, so she would not have gone to get Petofi's hand and Petofi would not have shown up and had Tate make that portrait.  But Petofi did show up and made Quentin immortal, so he was more responsible for stopping the haunting than Barnabas was.  And yet a body showed up in Quentin's room - Trask's.  Is that what the kids found in 1968?  Or was history changed in a paradox that skeletons were switched?  Now that would've been an interesting haunting:  Quentin's spook is banished, but now there's a really angry Gregory Trask.  So here we go again.  Like I said, what a mess.

Gerard

[Lydia]

So if he was shot by Beth, he'd have a momentary "heart burn" and then the fatal wound would appear on the portrait, so he ain't dead.  So how could he have croaked and ended up haunting Collinwood?

So, for a while the portrait would show a decomposing corpse, and eventually just a skeleton.  Neat!

Now that would've been an interesting haunting:  Quentin's spook is banished, but now there's a really angry Gregory Trask.

The thought of Gregory Trask's ghost getting his ectoplasmic hands on David and Amy makes my skin crawl.

[MagnusTrask]

I wish that when Barnabas returned to the present (69/70), the Leviathan storyline had unfolded a bit more slowly.

mm-- That sounds scary at first, considering how slow it all was already, but all the other story threads are what make that period worth watching to me.    I could have done with no Leviathans whatsoever.    Not too many threads, for me, but the fact that they all revolve around the Leviathans.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

all the other story threads are what make that period worth watching to me.    I could have done with no Leviathans whatsoever.

Exactly. I often distinguish between the Leviathan period and the Leviathan storyline for the very reason that I find all the elements apart from the actual Leviathan storyline to be far more interesting. And probably needless to say, they hold up much better.


But getting back on the main subject here, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that Roger also remembers Quentin's haunting. The look on Roger's face in Ep #958 when Quentin pretends to be the ghost lumbering into the drawing room is priceless.

And as for trying to reconcile the time travel conundrums on DS with how time travel is handled in other stories/mediums, well, I don't think it's really necessary. As I said recently in another topic, apparently the DS writers expected the audience to accept and to go with the concept of time in the ways they laid it out. DS is quite simply a show with many of its own unique rules. And I have absolutely no problem with DS making up its own rules for its supernatural elements (well, so long as they remain consistent within the same storyline). It's certainly wasn't the first show to do it - and it certainly won't be the last (I mean, just look at how Moonlight has redefined vampire mythology  ).

[MagnusTrask]

To understand this, it helps to have been a science-fiction-minded kid in the 60s, when SF was a sort of underground genre that dumbfounded the average reader or viewer.    Hardly anyone knew how to deal with SF ideas such as time travel, when it got the least bit complicated.    Ideas like these were all "new" in a way.   I get the impression that DS writers and producers were more of the mainstream sort of mindset as regards time-travel, still stuck (much of the time, not always) in the mode that stubbornly sees "later", "now", or "earlier" in everyday, normal terms. 

For them, anything can happen in 1840, such as Ang ending and Barnabas never getting back into the coffin, because this is all happening "now" for these characters (and the producers), and 1897 and 1967 happened "before" on the show, so why would we have to worry about all that?    It may have been just that simple.    I remember how people couldn't even start to think in a non-linear way.

[loril54]

Did they plan to have Quentin, to be such a hit??

If Quentin hadn't been a hit, he could have been a wereworl
that was killed. That wouldn't have changed the story line.

But when Barnabas didn't go back to his coffin as a vampire.
There would have been no Maggie kidnapping, Julia hypnotizing, Dr Lang and so on. Now that was confusing.

[Joeytrom]

The original plan for 1897 was probably for it to end with Quentin dead on the chair & sealed in the room.  When he became so popular, they had to come up with an alternate scenario.

[markyboo]

Spoiler:

Maybe it WAS Trask's remains that David & Amy found in Quentin's West Wing suite. And since Trask had been trapped in there with Quentin's exstensive library of books on black magic, do you think Trask's spirit might have perused those books throughout the decades and learned  a thing or two? Who knows, maybe Trask, wanting revenge on the Collins family, conjured up Quentin & Beth's spirits from the grave , took control of them & forced them to do his bidding by haunting Collinwood. Also, maybe Trask's evil spirit created a replica of Cassandra & sent her to punish Elizabeth with the buried alive curse. I could see Trask taking great pleasure in such a nasty deed - after all, Elizabeth did resemble the woman who caused his downfall - Judith Collins!

modified by admin

[MagnusTrask]

The original plan for 1897 was probably for it to end with Quentin dead on the chair & sealed in the room.  When he became so popular, they had to come up with an alternate scenario.

They really didn't, and it's always seemed strange to me that they thought they had to.   There were plenty of changes they made to the "time-line", many events which un-happened, such as Q never having been a ghost.    Yet, in that BC-JH-QC conversation the day after Petofi's having saved Quentin, Q asks "Then whose skeleton was in that chair in 1969?" or something.    And instead of telling Q that this has now never happened, along with all the other things in 1969 which have now never happened, Barnabas says he doesn't know, but that there is some explanation for the skeleton.

There didn't have to be.  What after all explained the ghost that looked like Quentin hanging around 1969 Collinwood?    Did that have to be a ghost imposter, since they now know Q survived?   No.  It just didn't happen in the DS world... "anymore".

If there was a solid reason for their feeling compelled to come up with an alternate explanation for the skeleton (rather than just time-travel naivety on the part of the writers or DC), then I suppose it was that they'd already thought of a cool and ironic means to end Gregory.

[Joeytrom]

If there was a solid reason for their feeling compelled to come up with an alternate explanation for the skeleton (rather than just time-travel naivety on the part of the writers or DC), then I suppose it was that they'd already thought of a cool and ironic means to end Gregory.

What is funny is that they even went so far as to explain away the brick wall Judith used to seal Gregory in (there wasn't one in the present, it was sealed with wood) by having her write a letter to Tim Shaw to remove the bricks and reseal the doorway with wood panels!