Another thing to think about....

[IluvBarnabas]

SPOILERS AHEAD:


When Barnabas, Julia and Professor Stokes go through the stairway in time and return to 1971, they return to a time where the whole family is alive and sane, there had never been a Gerard and Daphne who had haunted the house.

Well there have been many theories on how their trip to 1840 should have changed other things throughout the years....I always wondered if maybe the three of them didn't necessarily return to the Collinwood of 'normal' time....maybe they returned to a Collinwood where nothing had to be changed because there had truly never been a haunting.

I agree that Barnabas and Julia inadvertedly had to have screwed up more than a few things in present time because of their saga in 1840....I never quite believed that everything was good and rosy when they got back.

No one had any control over where they could wind up when they went through that staircase....Julia and Stokes just both lucked out that they got to where they wanted to go. (Well, I don't think Julia expected to go to 1840 but I digress).

So couldn't the three of them just ended up at an 'alternative' timeline instead?

[MagnusTrask]

Yes, anything's possible, providing that you want to invent alternate realities which can be accessed only by conduits that have only served to propel people through regular time up until now.... yes I know they went from parallel 1970 into regular 1995....

A good rule of thumb is that normally other weird dimensions don't come into play.    Besides, I'd really like to maintain my possible delusion, that every bad unhappy thing got fixed in 1971.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

The thing that has always puzzled me about the return to 1971 is that Liz acts as if Barnabas, Julia and Stokes had never been gone - even as if she's been seeing them regularly. Who knows what the writers were thinking with that? I doubt it was that it was actually an alternate Collinwood. But the idea that Barnabas, Julia and Stokes were actually in an alternate Collinwood could explain that. And it's also only due to the way everything around them appears that Barnabas, Julia and Stokes gain the impression that Gerard and Daphne had never haunted Collinwood. But how fascinating might it have been that their ghosts had never haunted that Collinwood because it wasn't their Collinwood. And how even more fascinating might it have been had the trio made a quick trip to the Old House before going to the opening of the historical center only to discover a Barnabas and Julia who were already there and getting ready for the opening themselves. I'm honestly surprised I've never heard of someone writing a fanfic with that premise because it just cries out to be written. 

[Gerard]

This is the biggest conundrum of the whole series.  Since they changed the past so radically, the family they know should not exist since the lineage has changed.  As I've mentioned before, I've done my own Charles Deleware Troll version and in mine when Barnabas, Julia and Stokes return to 1971, they do find an entirely different family descended not from Gabriel and Edith (originally) but through Tad Collins.  There is no Elizabeth, Roger, Carolyn, David, etc., but all new folk.  In my plot line, our heros eventually do return back to the past to set things right, especially after the different family is terrorized and then killed by the ghost of Tad Collins (who haunts Collinwood for a very specific and evil reason).

Gerard

[michael c]

from what i understand(and someone please correct me if i'm wrong)by the time of the brief return to 1971 the show had already been canceled and curtis and company had decided to go out in a parallel time period with little or no thought to the characters they had introduced five years earlier...

so they probably didn't care that the continuity would be thrown out of whack(since they'de never be returning to the "present" again anyways)and just wanted to wrap things up quickly before they moved on to the final time period.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

DS hadn't been canceled yet - that was still a bit in the offing. And, indeed, the writers had made some plans for what would happen when the show shifted back to '71 after 1841PT.

[MagnusTrask]

But they were about to begin an 1841PT vampire story first, in fact they did just barely begin it in the last episode... does anyone know any details on that?

Didn't Gabriel's and Edith's children survive?

Yes, it's a problem, the fact that Liz knows them all in 1971... BC and JH at least should not ever have arrived at Collinwood in the first place in 1967.    Once you get past that though, it's not a problem that Liz acts as if they never left.   This part actually makes sense.   They'd created a new timeline where there was no Gerard haunting, and that new timeline included themselves.    They never had to go back to 1840 in the new timeline, and stayed at Collinwood living their lives.   So, Barnabas, Julia, and Elliot did make plans to go this event with Liz, and they were there the day before the return from 1840, and the day before that, etc..

Your guess is as good as mine or theirs as to how the paradox gets straightened out, after this point.    My pet theory is that in returning from the past, they begin to reintegrate with their new timeline selves.    If they'd all used I Ching it would be so much simpler, but they physically walked back from 1840, so they're not physically re-occupying their present day bodies... and it would seem that there would be two sets of these people walking around in 1971.   That doesn't appeal to me.   

What I want is for the three of them to begin to have memories of both timelines, of having lived through both of them.    They then go on as those people who did make plans to go with Liz to whatever that shindig was.   (I've never said "shindig" before.)

Avoiding the physical duplication is the problem for me.

[Doug]

I'm watching the 1840 saga right now. But when I was watching the 1995 saga where Barnabas and Julia
traveled to the future with the first appearance of the ghost of Gerard Stiles, it made me wonder did
the ghost of GS knew about the ghost of Quentin when he haunted the west wing in 1969.

[MagnusTrask]

I'm not sure where to post this, but as I try to sleep, which is a big chunk of my time, I often go over things that happened online in my head.    It occurred to me that when people quite reasonably complain about things such as Gerard never establishing that relationship with Tad and Carrie that explains their link to him in the afterlife, you know, plot elements they seemed to place importance on in 1995 then drop in later 1840.... Why couldn't it be that all those 1840 events "happened" considerably after the time of Quentin's execution, in the "original", uninterfered-with time-line?

Gerard Zachery has Q#1 hanged, then retires to live the life of a country gentleman (in Maine?).   He's in charge of Tad and Carrie, and has a lust interest to bully into loving him, Daphne.... maybe the Java Queen even enters into things.    Life would have been difficult and weird under Stiles' authority.    I suppose he gets the children killed, and Daphne, or it may even have been suicide, perhaps explaining why their souls aren't at rest.

(The Java Queen... was that a ship Stiles was on before the ship with Quentin?    If so, why did it wreck in Collinsport, a place Stiles had had no connection with?    I'd say it was so Stiles had a zombie supply when the time was ripe --to make the house his?-- but that was Zachery who would have wanted a zombie army....?)

[LeFanu]

I just finished watching the 1840 storyline last night, and am definitely among the confused.  The way it looks to me, the Collinwood to which Barnabas, Julia and Stokes returned would almost have to be a parallel time 1971. 

If they changed the way 1840 had originally happened, creating a new future, wouldn't the old timeline have to still be in existence somewhere?  I can't remember which cousin posted about this - it was a long time ago - but basically they thought that the 1795/6 that Victoria Winters visited had to be a different one than what Barnabas remembered, since he remembered Phyllis Wick (not Vicki) as the governess, even after Vicki's return from the past.

[Spoilery]

Similarly, since Angelique gets killed in 1840 and Roxanne does too, neither of them can have been around in the regular present day storyline.  That changes the storyline so much that a present day without Cassandra/Angelique or the vampire Roxanne would have to be a parallel timeline, since they figured pretty heavily in what had come before on the show.

It's pretty mind-boggling because if Barn & co. really changed the past that much, so that the present day Collins family had no memory of Gerard (or Daphne, whom 1970 Quentin was in love with, remember?) how could the 1971 we saw be the same as the one they left?  It would be so altered, a viewer would need a score card to keep up. 

In this "new" 1971 Collinwood, what happened with Dr. Lang and Adam in 1968?  Who knows?  Angelique wasn't there to affect that.  Is Tom Jennings still alive?  He must be, there was no vampire Angelique.  What about the Leviathans?  Angelique was a major help in defeating them.  Is Maggie at Wyndclyffe?  She shouldn't be, since it was her victimization by vampire Roxanne that finally drove her over the edge.

Really, it's just too much.

By the way, Mysterious Benefactor - you said upthread that the writers had some plans for what they'd do with "present day" Collinwood after they'd finished with PT1841.  Do you know what those plans were?

[Gerard]

This is my take on what happened in the unchanged time which brought about the haunting of Collinwood by Gerard/Judah in 1970.  Gerard/Judah solidifies (in 1840) his plan of revenge against the Collinses for what happened in 1692 through some of the manipulations we had seen, particularly framing Quentin allowing him to be executed.  Now he is lord and master of Collinwood and tries to take complete control.  Since Tad is the heir apparent of the estate, being the son of Quentin, Gerard/Judah must deal with him, but Tad resists, joined by Carrie and their governess Daphne (did Gerard and Daphne actually marry in the unchanged past? - debateable).  In an effort to isolate them, he takes them to Rose Cottage where some sort of battle goes on, resulting in all their deaths.  The lineage now passes to the next son, Gabriel (and his wife Edith; remember that there would've been no need for either to die the way they did without things being altered), and his children.  From them come the descendents leading down to Elizabeth, Roger, Carolyn and David.  The spirits of Judah/Gerard, Daphne, Tad and Carrie remained in a sort-of "stasis" until a catalyst allowed Gerard/Judah's enraged ghost - along with Daphne's, Tad's and Carrie's - to become active so Gerard/Judah could again exact his incompleted vengance, in this case the catalyst being the arrival of Hallie Stokes (well, Hallie arriving anywhere would drive anyone into a rage).

Gerard

[arashi]

I can't remember, did they actually come out and say vampire Roxanne from 1970 was Roxanne from 1840, or did they only imply it?

I for one have a hell of a time trying to wrap my head around all the time travel business and the paradoxes it creates. So I'll just go along with the show and say, Yep. They saved everyone. Move along to the next story, nothing to see here.

[MagnusTrask]

I can't remember, did they actually come out and say vampire Roxanne from 1970 was Roxanne from 1840, or did they only imply it?

I for one have a hell of a time trying to wrap my head around all the time travel business and the paradoxes it creates. So I'll just go along with the show and say, Yep. They saved everyone. Move along to the next story, nothing to see here.

I LOLed at that last bit.... but despite all the look-alikes on DS in various time periods, two Roxanne Drews in two eras, one's a vampire, the other becomes one, and vampirism is definitely a way to live for centuries.... it's not just implied, that has to be the same person, unless they'd want to pull a huge surprise on us, like hitherto unknown identical vampire twins.

[PennyDreadful]

 My theory about Roxanne is that she was the same person, but that someone *else* (possibly Judah/Gerard) turned her into a vampire during the non-Barnabas 1840.

[barnabasjr]

My theory about Roxanne is that she was the same person, but that someone *else* (possibly Judah/Gerard) turned her into a vampire during the non-Barnabas 1840.

PennyDreadful, I'm inclined to agree with you. I've been meaning to ask for peoples' opinions on this very topic. I'm currently deep in 1840... I'm not sure what I thought previously but I think this is the first time that it's occurred to me that the 2 Roxannes are one and the same. I've seen MUCH chatter about it in the past but is this the only Roxanne paradox people squawk about? TIA.