Political Differences Among DS Fans

[Gothick]

I could be wrong, but I don't think they started referring to the Devil or Prince of Darkness/Fire on the series until Cassandra showed up in the Spring of 1968.  While Cass is incanting over her favorite Dr. Lang doll/pincushion, at one point she exclaims "my powers were given to me by the Devil himself!"  If you go back and watch the original 1795 episodes, Angelique's original spells are all more like hedge witchcraft, involving herbs, object links belonging to the person, etc.  Demonology enters the picture when she creates the bat to be her servitor and spy on Barnabas but even then I don't recall her mentioning the Devil, though Hell may have been mentioned.   

I could never understand why they started up with the Satan stuff in 1968 but then it hit me:  Rosemary's Baby was big news so the writers decided to introduce that element.

I guess that even though the Diabolos sequences come across today as atmospheric but on the edge of a little TOO extreme (GREAT voicework from the guy who played Diabolos), the production unit never again revisited this particular terrain.  But it was enshrined forever in our memories because THESE were the episodes chosen for the series' Viewmaster reel. 

In the booklet that came with the reel, incidentally, "Diabolos" is referred to as Balberith.  I don't know whether that came from a DS script, or if whoever wrote the booklet came up with that name themselves.  There's a Wikipedia entry on Baal-berith (who, like many demons, started out life as a Canaanite Deity) but I quite like this site where he is described as "chief secretary of Hell"... which fits rather well with the DS representation of him, don't you think?

http://www.whiterosesgarden.com/Nature_of_Evil/Demons/List_of_Demons/B_contents/baalberith.htm

cheers, Gothique (rhymes with "eek!")

[Mysterious Benefactor]

In the booklet that came with the reel, incidentally, "Diabolos" is referred to as Balberith.

I believe it's in one or both of the PomPress DS Almanacs that Balberith was Diabolos' original name.

[BurkeDevlin]

It may have been.  That is the name that was used in the Dark Shadows Viewmaster Reel

http://graeme.t15.org/burkedevlin/viewmasterds/index.htm

And Viewmaster often worked with early drafts of scripts, that were changed by the time the show made it to the air.  (For instance, in their Star Trek Viewmaster reel, the original name of Raintree is still used for the security guard, but in the show it was changed to Galloway when David L. Ross was cast in the part).

[BurkeDevlin]

Chief Secretary of Hell is pretty appropriate, considering he has a DESK.  There are a few things DS did that I have a hard time believing were unintentionally funny.  I think a few things, like Diabolos' desk were deliberate funnies on somebody's part, that they thought nobody would notice.

[MagnusTrask]

BD-- Thanks for the information.   I'd say that DS's muddy morality made it PERFECT for the forming minds of kids, though.   It was certainly one of a few influences on me that saved me from acceptance of simplistic, dishonest morality.   The Trasks especially, and Barnabas, who has a definite good man inside him, somewhere, trying to get out, however much this may be distorted.

[BurkeDevlin]

Yeah, there's some truth to that.  A show where the Good Guys always and automatically do the right thing, and there's no question about it can be very facile.

You may know that Harlan Ellison and Gene Roddenberry had such a disagreement about Harlan's version of City on the Edge of Forever.  In the original version, the conflict is initiated when a minor crewmember named Beckwith is running drugs on the Enterprise, and kills a crewmemeber about to expose him, then escapes to the Time Planet.  Gene wouldn't go for it.  "Our people wouldn't act that way."  Harlan's attitude was if you stick 430 people on a tin can in deep space, doesn't it stand to reason that you might get a bad apple or two in the barrel?  But no, Gene had these ideas about the ultimate perfectability of the human race, and didn't want any non-Boy Scouts in his crew.

The end of the show had a similar problem.  In Harlan's version, Kirk is unable to bring himself to keep McCoy from saving Edith Keeler when push comes to shove, and so Spock has to do it for him.  In the aired version, whatever angst Kirk may have about it, you know he's going to fall in line and do it when the time comes, and he does.  I always found Harlan's version more believable.  Old "change the conditions of the test" Kirk wouldn't just accept that somebody had to die, and do it.  The way the problem was set up, it wasn't necessary for her to die necessarily, only to be prevented from forming her pacifist movement.  There are lots of way of doing that.  If Kirk were a real person, he would surely have saved her now, and worried about the other later.  The aired version is very facile compared to the story originally intended.

Dark Shadows is similar.  It's never a given that anyone is going to do the right thing.  When these deeply flawed characters do break through and do the right thing, it means something, because they fail as often as they succeed.  But still, I can sympathize with a parent who thought it wasn't a great show for children.  It might be good for kids, if the parents sat down afterwards and talked out all the issues that were raised, but many parents don't want to do that, and just use the TV as an electronic babysitter. 

[The Doctor and K9]

Gene had these ideas about the ultimate perfectability of the human race, and didn't want any non-Boy Scouts in his crew. 

Yeah we can't have a bad apple on the Enterprise.  It's OK though, for its sister ship, the Exeter to have a captain who sells out and is willing to commit murder for near immortality in "The Omega Glory". Ron Tracy was as bad, if not worse than Beckwith, and the script in question was written by Roddenberry!  I guess I won't dwell on Merrick of the SS Beagle. He sold his crew to the Romans in "Bread and Circuses", but he was a "spaceship commander" not the master of a starship. They went to great pains to make the distinction.  Still, he should certainly be consdidered more reliable than say your average yeoman.  Either Roddenberry changed his mind, or he was just being silly.

[MagnusTrask]

BD-- I agree, sort of, about DS morality.   I think it's good to show kids things questioning traditional morality though, as with the Trasks being bad guys.   It presented an opposing point of view to stimulate young minds, when so often parents wanted kids just to keep quiet, and obey mindless dehumanizing rules.   As for explaining it to kids, I got DS more than my parents did.

I'll PM you on Trek... 

[Gerard]

The reason why the characters on both Dark Shadows and Star Trek had angst came from the same source.  On either show, in the years both were on TV, did you ever once, just once, see a "restroom" in either Collinwood or the Enterprise?

You'd have angst, too.

Gerard

[Lydia]

You'd have angst, too.

Especially on Dark Shadows, where, if you decided to use the great outdoors, you could never be sure you weren't peeing on your own grandfather.

[Nancy]

 

[MagnusTrask]

Seconded, Lydia!

[loril54]

Do I say I third that.

[Nicky]

Doesn't 1795 Angelique admonish Jeremiah to return to his grave in the name of Beelzebub?  But I agree, Gothy:  1795 Angelique doesn't seem demonic until after she dies.  Maybe Nicholas got ahold of her at that point and Satan-ified her.

[MagnusTrask]

1795 Angelique doesn't seem demonic until after she dies.  Maybe Nicholas got ahold of her at that point and Satan-ified her.

Maybe Satan Satan-ified her.  I imagine that the two met shortly after she died.   You're just the kind of young go-getter I need in my organization, Satan probably said.