DS:TNG Mark II

[Zahir]

Been thinking--always a dangerous thing--and I came up with another scenario I thought I'd share about what could be a remake of DS for prime time.  The format is a weekly program a la Lost or Heroes, with an overall season arc as well as relatively self-contained episodes.

Let us call it Darker Shadows... 

The town of Collinsport, Maine in the year 2008 (or thereabouts).  What was once a sleepy little fishing village is now a little bit more.  Tourists have found the place, which has been good for the residents' wallets if not their privacy.  Also, the local college has expanded over the last generation and gained quite a reputation, especially under the patronage of Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes, whose funeral opens the series.

David Collins  heads the family now, and is a confirmed bachelor, an intense and sometimes frightening man in late middle age.  He has adopted a girl he named Victoria Collins  and is strangely protective of her.  Many in town believe the worst of David, and why he might have adopted this girl when she was two.  But she herself is fascinated by history, and the strange gaps in her own family's history.  An older husband and wife, Ezekiel and Gwen Wentworth maintain the Collinwood staff and estate, and have done for over twenty years.

The Old House was rented by some Collins cousins from New York, descendants of Thad Collins (1830-1903).  Dr. Owen Collins  is a medical scientist, married to Helena , a lawyer.  She is the more overtly practical and business-minded of the two, but both were good friends to Carolyn.  In fact, to David's anger, she divided her estate between David and her cousin Owen.

Owen and Helena have two children, a twin brother and sister named Steven  and Stephanie in their mid-twenties.  Stephanie and Victoria are close, whereas Steven has become involved with a local girl, Joanne Haskell, a little older than he and far more forceful.  She's the one who is sure some kind of valuable secrets await discovery at the Collinwood estate.  More, she has been in contact with someone who claims to be Nathaniel Collins, Owen's supposedly disowned brother and occult scholar (as well as convicted felon).  He is using her to help investigate an unsolved murder from 1975, the shooting of Barnabas Collins.  He insists that records show no such person ever existed, at least was never born or died, yet multiple eyewitness accounts place him across centuries.  He believes Barnabas had somehow become immortal.

Nathaniel does something reckless.  He digs up Barnabas' body and uses some of his bones to make a kind of potion.  In a weird ritual, he drinks the potion in an effort to become immortal, but instead (to Joanne and Steven's horror as they watch) grows old and dies!  But then his body youthens, and gets up again!  Yet now he seems different, very different.  And he insists upon wearing the ring they found on Barnabas' hand...

Of course, Nathaniel is indeed dead.  His body has now been possessed by the undead spirit of Barnabas Collins, and he is changing into a vampire as his memories fully return.  "Nathaniel" is greeted warily by Owen, but befriends others.  In particular, he proves useful as the ghost of Josette (or is it Angelique?) begins to be seen, warning of a strange danger associated with Eustace Island, a tiny bit of land just a few miles off the coast.  Carolyn owned it, and left it to David in her will.  Now someone wants to turn the old lighthouse there into a bed-and-breakfast.  But people have gone missing there before...

Comments?  Suggestions?  Ideas?  Criticisms?