DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '14 I => Topic started by: dom on May 09, 2014, 06:15:15 PM
-
The recent topics re: L. Richards & T. Crawford had me scrambling to remember 1897. I couldn't remember if Rachel Drummond & Lady Hampshire were in the same storyline (I knew they were but I doubted myself for a split second). It made me question having KLS play two different characters in the same storyline. I also found myself picturing AM in 1897 and how fantastic it would have been had she been able to make her triumphant return in said storyline; but as who? My first thought was as Rachel, the orphan (that would have been SO Curtis Shadows). But there's no way AM could have returned in such a short time. I really like the idea of her being cast as Kitty Soames though. I am guessing that by the time Kitty showed up AM would have given birth to her child, Adam, and able to return. I think that perhaps Kitty, though not 'evil' as AM stated she would like to play, did have a hidden agenda or ulterior motive that made the character a 180 from Vicki Winters. I also like that this would have played well into the Victoria Winters/Leviathan connection, as the storyline would later have it. I'd even have accepted Carolyn Groves in the role though it would have been less spectacular than having AM return. I have to wonder if the fans would have revelled in it or pissed and moaned as they did with T. Crawford returning as the youthful Edith Collins (as was so remembered in that thread). We know Dan Curtis didn't think the fans would buy it. I believe the only change would have to have been the Lady H./Josette connection.
-
Rachel and Kitty were in 1897, but with a gap ofd time inbetween. Both were mooned over by Barnabas as Josettes. I suppose he could have mooned over either as a Vicki...
-
despite Dan Curtis' insistence that he'd *only* use Alexandra as Vicki the fact remains that she had a five year contract...
SO he would have had to find something for her to do for the remainder of the series had she not departed under the circumstances that she did. just randomly plunking her down in all these different time periods would have stopped making sense at some point(Vicki in 1840???)so the story would have ended up being structured differently *or* he'd have had to relent and write a new role for her.
it's just the logistics of the situation.
-
Are you going to have tapes again at any point during the WPs watching of 1897, dom?
-
It's hard to imagine what DS would've been like if Alexandra had not left the series permanently. She had to leave because she was pregnant, but let's just say she decided to do so only temporarily until she was up and about to return. Okay, we're talking about quite a few months, if not almost a year. That would mean keeping her character in play and that would mean having an "Icky-Vicki" taking over temporarily. there would only be so many scenes they could do with her standing in front of furniture or being shot from bosom-up. So let's complete the pre-Quentin-haunting storyline. Vicki would marry Jeff and he'd be taken away to the past (good). Vicki would be inconsolable. Weep, cry, try to commit suicide at Widow's Hill, blah-blah-blah. Since DC knew that AM would return and the IV (Icky-Vicki) would be only temporary and not bring up the ire of the viewing audience, there would be no need to get rid of the character, hoping the audience would hang on. So IV would stay as the story switched to the Quentin haunting as it did with IV still in residence. That would mean that TLATKLAS won't have to give up her job slashing hash and paying the bills for her cottage and take the position as governess at Collinwood. And that would mean that the character of Maggie would become, what? What was left for her? So IV would remain governess as the Quentin/Beth hauntings/possessions would continue. IV would find Mr. Juggins, not Maggie, so forth and so on. IV would go to Collinwood to try and find David and Amy and would she be found by the others dressed in Victorian garb and claiming she's Rachel Drummond? I imagine by this time that DC and the writers would've decided that Miss Drummond was the first reincarnation of Josette, but Vicki was not the reincarnation but Maggie was. Well, maybe Maggie remained as so and somehow when she got bored slashing hash got involved, but where would that leave Vicki? The story proceeds, and DC still insists that "Vicki is Vicki" and Barnabas goes back in time. Or would it, again, be Vicki? Does she get sucked in by the I-Ching? Like when Gilligan overheard the Professor trying to hypnotize Mary Ann when she fell and hit her head and thought she was Ginger and now Gilligan thought he was Mary Ann? Well, that would be a repeat of 1795/96 but I don't think DS would've been lazy enough to do that like he did with the 1840/41 storyline. And, besides, there would've been no Barnabas, the star of the show, to be in 1897 unless he decided, after a long time to go back into time to somehow save Vicki and everyone else. Until then, there would've been nothing for him to do. By that time, AM would've been done dealing with the trials and travails of being pregnant, giving birth and seeing to a proper nanny to care for her child to return if the audience had held on long enough with the temporary IV.
I just don't see how it could've worked. The best thing, from hindsight, is that it was good that AM got preggers and left. We had a couple IV's and then the character was written out. Other than repeating a Vicki-going-to-the-past again plot so she can remain Vicki as DC wanted, what was left? What worked once doesn't mean it would work again. DC tried to emulate the Quentin/Beth haunting with the Gerard/Daphne thing and that fell flat. Doing a Barnabas/Vicki thing with a Quentin/Vicki thing, in my humble opinion, would've done the series in rather than giving it the highest ratings it ever had.
Gerard
-
you don't like the character...
we get it.
-
Other than Rachel or Kitty, the only preexisting character that I could see Alexandra being cast as would be Amanda Harris. While this was not the edgy character that she hoped to play, Alexandra's natural charisma would have made the character far less annoying.
-
I don't really understand the prevailing "either/or" line of thinking on this subject within the fanbase...
that somehow *if* Alexandra had not left the series than somehow that meant less, or even nothing, for KLS. Vicki and Maggie coexisted nicely for years. would Maggie have been taken on as Collinwood governess? no. probably not as long as Vicki was still around.
but there were LOTS of other storyline possibilities for both characters. and really, with her association with Josette being what it was KLS was pretty much guaranteed permanent employment in all time periods if she wanted it.
-
I don't think speculation among fans is necessarily an either/or situation if the character of Vicki remained, but how would the next storylines evolved if she did remain, meaning the character, not the actresses portraying her. We know Ms. Moltke left the series because she was pregnant. We also surmise that she wanted to leave the show because DS insisted that she would "always" be Vicki, no matter the plot or time period involved and she wasn't thrilled with that, finding it confining, shall we say.
So, it's just speculation how things would've turned out, especially in the Quentin/Beth-haunting/1897, had Vicki remained (even if Ms. Molke had returned). If DC adamantly maintained that Vicki would be Vicki in 1897 as she was in 1795/96, how would she get there? How would she fit in? What would she do?
Gerard
-
I always thought of Vicki-Carolyn-Maggie as the series' "ingénue trinity". a sisterhood of sorts...
when Vicki left that dynamic was broken irrevocably for me. there was always a void.
-
Michael, maybe DC could've thought of a spin-off series with the three ingenues and have them try to become glamorous entertainers while battlling a ladder-dexending starlet. That would be a new approach! They could call it...oh, wait, never mind. Let's just sparkle.
Gerard
-
If Alexandra had a five year contract, why didn't DC file suit and force her to return?
Not a nice thing to do, but he sounds like the kind of aggressive go-getter who would have done exactly that.
-
I'm thinking, David, that when AM got a bun in the oven DC knew he couldn't keep her on, at least not until she was physically capable of returning. That would last probably about a year. In the interim, there were replacement actresses that went over like a lead balloon so he had to write the character out. By the time AM could've returned, too much time had gone by so there was no longer any point. What's done is done.
Gerard
-
If Alexandra had a five year contract, why didn't DC file suit and force her to return?
Not a nice thing to do, but he sounds like the kind of aggressive go-getter who would have done exactly that.
who know the legal logistics of that situation? she was let out of her contract and that appeared to be the end of it.
-
if you interview her again you should ask her.
-
I'm trying to get an interview with her now.
There's a lot we don't know. She certainly deserved maternity leave, but the fact that she never returned to the show, the fact that Curtis killed Vicky off during the Leviathin story--after she had declined an offer to return--tells me that there may have been more backstage drama going on than we think.
-
perhaps...
but by the time she would have available to return to work in 1970, as the been said, the storyline had moved in drastically different directions.
and who knows by that point Curtis might have already had his eye on winding the whole thing down and it just wasn't worth the trouble.
-
Plus as was already pointed out, killing off Vicki was merely a last minute justification for Peter's ghost to be used because Dennis Patrick's Paul Stoddard was unavailable than it was an actual plot development that had been planned. Yes, Curtis could be vindictive - but I've never seen anything to indicate that was the case in that instance (where, say, it was with Marie Wallace being dropped from hoDS).
-
do tell mysterious...
what happened with Marie and HODS???
-
Marie was on a soap called Somerset when HODS was filmed--and Clarice Blackburn was on Where the Heart Is. Both were major players on those other shows, under contract, working several days a week, and couldn't get time off to do HODS.
It always sounded to me that Marie wanted to do HODS but couldn't, that it was amicable. Where did the vindictiveness come in?
Blackburn couldn't do HODS either but they got her back for three more DS episodes after HODS and a NODS cameo.....
-
(where, say, it was with Marie Wallace being dropped from hoDS).
Ditto Denise Nickerson, who has said (during one of the old DS Halloween parties) that she and her mom asked to be released from her contract to do Neon Ceiling, and Curtis did so begrudgingly and then cut her costume ball scene from HoDS.
-
Marie was on a soap called Somerset when HODS was filmed ...
It always sounded to me that Marie wanted to do HODS but couldn't, that it was amicable. Where did the vindictiveness come in?
We're getting way OT here, but Marie has said on many occasions that she was cast as Nancy Hodiak (Barnabas' second victim in the hoDS script). However, after it got out that she'd auditioned and won the role of India Delaney on Somerset, Marie was suddenly informed that it was decided that none of the Nancy Hodiak scenes would be shot and her services were no longer required for hoDS. And Marie has said she believed that DC made that decision not only because she dared to get a job with another soap, but also because she got a job on a soap that was going to go up against DS at 4pm.
-
I've heard stories of Curtis' dealings with NBC in 1991 and WB in 2004 that helped kill those shows.
I don't think he was a nice guy.
-
Some people have their own ideas as to what constitutes "disloyalty", and after having moved on to major involvements, DC may have thought it was presumptuous for some actors to feel they could just drop back into the "family" for short parts whenever they happened to be free. Fiction is full of characters with power who feel "betrayal" deeply. No, this is not a justification of DC.
-
coincidentally someone posted this week on one of the FB boards an article from one of the old "soap weeklies" announcing Moltke's then upcoming departure from DS...
interestingly at the time at least her exit was being reported more as "maternity leave" than a permanent departure with Alexandra "undecided" about whether or not she would "return to work" or become a full time stay at home mother.
in retrospect obviously her mind was already made up and she had no intention of coming back but back then that was how the story was being covered.
-
The show would have been a little different to some degree if Alexandra had stayed I don't think anyone can argue about that. But to what extent we'll never know.
I could see Alexandra as Rachel or even Amanda, but I don't think Dan would have casted her as Kitty, seeing as he truly believed that the viewers believed no one would ever buy her as anyone but Kitty (which I think is a bunch of bullocks myself).