DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '12 I => Topic started by: michael c on June 17, 2012, 06:50:02 PM
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i am currently trying...for the third time and with limited pleasure...to get through the 1840 episodes.
i'm confused about ben stokes status. here he's still serving as some sort of manservant at collinwood...
but when professor stokes first showed up in 1968 didn't he tell everybody that ben had been released from his indentured servitude by joshua, granted a piece of land outside town, and lived out his old age there?
i suppose continuity is not the series' strong point(especially by 1970)but how did stokes' status change? this time period always has me at sixes and sevens. [ghost_huh]
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Sorry you're not enjoying elderly Ben, Daniel, and the Gabriel-Gerard sparring as much as I do. In DS rewritten time-lines are always a possibility, but you could easily say that after many years in town, Daniel invited him to live out his advanced old age (as opposed to his early old age) as a full member of the household at Collinwood. I don't think he works for them in any sense any longer. This is his retirement.
Since his time at Collinwood ends unpleasantly, it might have been considered necessary just to say he lived out his life in Collinsport. The family history isn't exactly accurate. If Elliot was also going by journals of Ben's, maybe the last few pages were torn out my the family, or maybe he lost interest inmaking entries by the time he moved into Collinwood.
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i'm also confused as to why daniel is so "aged" and "senile"...
by 1840 only about 40-odd years had passed since the events of 1795(96?97?)when he was just a small child.
everything about this storyline throws me off.
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Daniel could be about 60 years old. Even now, when people survive a lot longer generally, 60 is old enough to be considered "old" by plenty of people. He has a mental disturbance, but even if it was referred to as senility associated with age (and I'm not sure they did), that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what it really was. Maybe it's after-effects of traumas, from the events of 1795, or what happened with his wife. Or maybe it's medical, but not age-related. Or it IS senility/Alzheimer's, which has been known to affect people in their 50s.
Daniel doesn't appear to be infirm from old age. They keep him locked up, and there's nothing for him to do in that room but stay in bed, really. Once he's out, he walks around well enough.
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By late 1970, most of the DS personnel were tired of doing the show and wanted to move on. They were going thru the motions, but their hearts weren't in it anymore.
The writing was no longer what it had been, with established facts being routinely ignored.
The cast was phoning it in.
I wish they had simply stuck with it to the 5 year anniversary, given the show a proper ending, and then let it go.
DS, which reached heights of incredible brilliance during 1795, 1897 and The Haunting of Collinwood stories, has one of the worst final fadeouts in soap opera history.
A shame really, when one considers how great the show had once been.
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I really didn't see any contradiction in what T. Eliot Stokes said about his ancestor's history (having his own parcel of land) and Ben's living in Collinwood in 1840. I just figured that he remained on good, if not increasingly friendly terms with the surviving Collins family and interacted with it frequently, and by 1840 (or a bit earlier) he was too old to live by himself so the Collins of that time had him move in to help care for him. Being a proud man, he still wanted to help out around the house in exchange for their roof, food and care.
As for Daniel, he would've been at least 50 in 1840 which, at that time, was still an old age, even among the gentry. The geriatric effects would not be surprising.
Gerard
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i agree david...
the whole enterprise by this point just feels spent. stale. played out.
in the show's final year they covered five different time periods. at the end of the day i just don't care about yet another temporary cast of characters.
i'm just trying desperately to plod through it so i can say i finished the series.
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I think that after several disappointing storylines, starting with the falling apart of Leviathans, 1840 was where DS rallied, and brought the vitality and magic back, for awhile. I don't see how anyone can have endured through those previous storylines, and not feel relief and a certain amount of excitement, when Julia finds herself in 1840.
I'd have to include 1968 amongst those disappointing and ridiculous storylines. There had already been lots and lots of problematic DS by the point 1840 started. I have more appreciation of 1841PT than I used to, also. It's not really my kind of story, but I can now see that it was well done.
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1968 was for sure an unparalleled disaster...
but i actually have a certain fondness for the leviathan period(although, yes, it falls apart). i love 1970 parallel time. for me it's the final period on the series that feels energized and original.
things start to go south for me with the "summer of 1970" episodes. it very much feels like a retread. a feel that continues through this period.
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Say what you will about the '68 storyline, but I loved the whole VampAng aspect of it. It was such poetic justice for Angelique to have to suffer under the same curse she'd placed on Barnabas and for her to have to exist under Nicholas' thumb after she'd made so many people's lives such a living hell back in 1795/96.
And as for Ben, I've often thought that perhaps his presence at Collinwood could be related to Carrie's parents' deaths. Perhaps they all resided in the same house on that piece of land that Prof. Stokes spoke of, and perhaps after they died it became too much for Ben (and also Carrie) to handle, both emotionally and physically, so he and Carrie moved to Collinwood.
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For me, the stuff that happened in the Old House in 1970PT was more interesting, and the Collinwood stuff was very hard to get through. We only got Collinwood for a long time, of course, while Barnabas was incapacitated. Then always-drunk Tim Stokes comes along, and things get more twisted, in a good way.
1995 was interesting. 1970 with Hallie and David was painful. My theory is that someone in charge decided to give up even the pretense of new stories, and decided on a long term strategy of giving viewers a long, dragged-out reprise of all the elements that were popular in the past, recycled, just barely altered enough for viewers not to see obvious self-plagiarism. This was the extended storyline of 1995/Summer 1970/1840. They sort of got away with it....
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All soaps recycle storylines at some point. One Life to Live revisited Viki's DID disorder numerous times, eventually passing the DID to her daughter.
DS moved at a much faster pace than its contemporaries so it began repeating stuff much sooner than other shows. Barnabas repeats himself with virtually every KLS character than comes along. The writing was fresher then so it wasn't quite so glaring.
Daniel's senility in 1840 may have been accelerated by [spoiler]his murder of his wife. If I remember correctly, only Ben (and Angelique later) were aware that Daniel had offed Harriet. Sorry we never got to see them as a couple onscreen. They sound like one of the Collins' most dysfunctional relationships.[/spoiler]
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I agree that 1970PT was the last good storyline. I've never rewatched 1840 after seeing it for the first time (in the scifi run around 2000) as I felt it was derivative, absurd, and only takes away from earlier parts of the show, it doesn't add anything worthwhile. [spoiler]The ludicrous and disgusting way that Ben is later dispatched is one example, of which there are too many for me to list.[/spoiler] At times not even the actors could take it seriously anymore.
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I agree that 1970PT was the last good storyline. I've never rewatched 1840 after seeing it for the first time (in the scifi run around 2000) as I felt it was derivative, absurd, and only takes away from earlier parts of the show, it doesn't add anything worthwhile. [spoiler]The ludicrous and disgusting way that Ben is later dispatched is one example, of which there are too many for me to list.[/spoiler] At times not even the actors could take it seriously anymore.
The thing that semi-ruins most of 1970PT for me is that the two basic situations in the plot are lifted from "Rebecca" and Dr Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. Everyone knows Jeckyl and Hyde, but I wonder if 1970PT is great mostly for those who don't know the Rebecca story.
[spoiler]Ben's death certainly was disgusting, but that's horror for you. Judah taking control of Ben to decapitate him seems horrific to me,[/spoiler] and just what Judah would want to do, not ludicrous.
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I always thought that since Ben was so kind to Daniel in 1795, Daniel repaid the favor by inviting Ben to live in the Great House, where he would be well taken care of. I thought it was very touching that they let him have the portrait of Barnabas, which is in the place of honor above his mantel--another nice touch, because a servant normally might not get a room with a fireplace. [spoiler]The way he is dispatched is pretty awful, though, and pretty gratuitous.[/spoiler]
Daniel isn't only senile [spoiler]but also pretty thoroughly insane. It was sad that the little boy who wanted so desperately to go home to New York with his sister well again would end up decrepit and mad in a house he must have hated. I agree that when he murdered his wife it must have made his insanity even worse, but somewhere it's implied that he originally started losing his mind when Joshua told him about the thing sleeping in the coffin in the secret room.[/spoiler]
It's true that although 1840 isn't the best of the storylines, it's still entertaining to watch Gabriel and Gerard and Quentin and Samantha too.
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another thing that i think alienates from this time period is that it is so largely populated by the series' latercomers...
christopher pennock, james storm, virginia vestoff, donna wandrey, kate jackson, etc., etc,...
there's nothing wrong with these actors i just never bonded with them the way i did the early cast of characters. with kathryn leigh scott and clarice blackburn departed and joan and louis relegated to the sidelines i'm disengaged out of the gate. something about it feels very alien to me all these newbies traipsing about collinwood.
and this is the third time period in a row where they try and give the barnabas and roxanne the big buildup which for me was a flatliner from day one. roxanne is in every storyline a very weakly developed character and frid and wandrey have absolutely no chemistry.
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According to what Prof. Stokes says in 1968, Ben died in 1830.
I regard 1840, from what others on this board have theorized, as another parallel time caused by the staircase.
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i don't think we should really just chalk major continuity gaffes up to it being a "parallel time" issue...
more like sloppy writing.
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While the 1840/41 story was just a retread of 1897 with the addition of throwing in a whole mish-mash of "plot twists," the one thing I did enjoy about it was having Virginia Vestoff playing Samantha. Her seens with Quentin (especially when she intimates there might be some family, shall we say, "differences" regarding Tad) chewed up the screen in classic, soap-opera style. For me, the non-supernatural elements (few that they were) were much better and more interesting than the "spooky" ones.
Gerard
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Yes, Virginia Vestoff is amazing as Samantha. And Chris Pennock has so much fun as Gabriel that it's impossible for me not to thoroughly enjoy him in the role. And I've always thought that Kate Jackson makes for a great new ingenue with the just the right combination of vulnerability and spunk.
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But the story as written, with that piss poor ending and no explanation offered as to [spoiler]how the deaths of Angelique, Roxanne and Edith affected future time stories[/spoiler] was infuriating! No explanation as to how that stairway worked either. Nothing made sense and it was obvious that Curtis and Frid no longer cared.
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BTW, the Big Finish audio drama Path of Fate does explain how the stairway thru time works.
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I've always loved the journal entry of 1840 Quentin's which present-day Quentin read aloud in 1970. There is no such thing as time, there is only physical space. Impossible, but it makes me try to stretch my imagination to reach it and understand, which was the intent, I think.
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Yeah, I liked the whole Stairway Through Time thing, with Quentin at one point mentioning a professor at Nuremberg University or somewhere who first got the idea.
And thanks to the kind soul who fixed the spoilers in my post from yesterday. Sorry.... [ghost_embarrassed]
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I realize the repetition is wearisome, but I feel called upon to point out again that while 1968 boasts the dreary Adam storyline, it also features some of the series' best moments, such as the plotline MB mentioned, but also pretty much ALL of the Nicholas Blair scenes (I really think 1968 Blair was head and shoulders above all of HAA's divine characterizations), Cassandra Collins which is one of my personal favorite characters in the series, some great Prof. Stokes stuff (Stokes was one of the characters who first got me watching the show), and the original Chris Jennings werewolf storyline. Some of Eve's scenes were really quite juicy as well, I thought--Marie played her with such understated venom--and then there was Danielle Roget, "the most evil woman of the 18th century."
The parts of it that frustrate me the most are the endless winding-down of Vicki's trial storyline in the final part of 1795, and every scene involving Peter/Jeff; nearly all of Adam's scenes, although before Adam learned to talk Robert Rodan brought great heart to the role; and the interminable storyline involving Liz's curse to live in fear of death and being buried alive, a terrible betrayal of what was once a great character. The reduction of Vicki to a simpering idiot who just "doesn't understand" is a very, very disappointing end to another character who was the fascinating centerpoint of the entire story, originally. And finally, the unimaginative, dull scenario by which Joe Haskell was written out of the show, although Joe's final episode boasts one of the series' most compellingly bizarre and creepy dream sequences.
G.
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Gothick, I agree with you about 1968!
While I am not blind to DS's faults, and I agree with certain criticisms of the series, I tend to be forgiving and embrace all of it because my enjoyment far outweighs my frustrations. In 1840, I enjoy the scenes of domestic drama between Quentin and Samantha (I'm always drawn to stories about marriages falling apart), Christopher Pennock at his best as Gabriel, and I especially like seeing John Karlen in a romantic leading man type of role. I know I'm in the minority on this, but I'm also a fan of [spoiler]Barnabas's declaration of his love for Angelique because I see it as the final fulfillment of her curse and the dissolution of his ties to his past, thus clearing the way for him to build a future with Julia. When Barnabas and Julia take the final walk from the drawing room, I view it as the first steps of that journey.[/spoiler]
1841 PT? Many complain about the loss of Barnabas, but I applaud Frid's portrayal of Bramwell. I've never considered Frid to be sexy, but he positively smolders during these last weeks. And I recall a scene between Frid and Kate Jackson that was as good as any scene during the show's run. However, I do feel that storyline drags, but I suspect it's because the writers had to stretch out the plot to fill the remaining episodes because there wasn't time to introduce anything new.
--and then there was Danielle Roget, "the most evil woman of the 18th century."
Ah, yes! Erica Fitz, with her "drag version of Marianne Faithfull" vibe and bizarre line delivery. True, Adam could be tedious, but without him we wouldn't have had her.
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I also am very partial to PT 1840. I've always liked JF's work as Bramwell, and Kate Jackson's work too.
And yes, the whole Adam story got tiresome very quickly, but there are some nice scenes with him and Carolyn. And of course I wouldn't have missed Nicholas for anything!
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When I brought up 1968, I meant the story actually taking place in 1968, which leaves out 1795. Also, I think of Chris Jennings as 1969, and I think his first appearance is very close to the start of 1969.
I think I'm answering David with this one: If we're judging storylines by how satisfying the resolution of each was, I'm not sure we'd be left with more than one or two good storylines...
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part of the problem with 1968 is that it comes directly on the heels of what many consider to be the series' highpoint. 1795.
there the mythology and magic came to it's fullest fruition. then, out of the blue, it's a show about a bunch of really dumb and boring monsters.
and when i speak of "1968" i don't mean the tail end of 1795. and i really don't mean the chris jennings/quentin hauntings either. i believe that plot starts in december of 1968(during the unfortunate miss durkin's residency)but i always think of it as a 1969 storyline.
cassandra's a hoot. and julia and nicholas blair have a few memorable showdowns. but for most of the year it was just dumb. [ghost_tongue]
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At least 1968 didn't F with established facts as 1840 did.
And 1968 had Nick Blair, Eve, Angelique as a vampire, which are grand fun!
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At least 1968 didn't F with established facts as 1840 did.
1795 did that too, but people rarely complain about it. I complain because I think the original pre-time-travel story was more interesting. 1795 was very well done, but it changes everything.
I don't like 1840 much, but it's not the lack of continuity that gets me; it's other things. The percentage of truly unlikable characters is too high. Gerard, whom I find terrifically interesting, gets shunted aside. And Barnabas and Julia should have done things right and traveled back to 1692! Of course a trip to 1692 would inevitably have messed up continuity even further, but nobody really cares about that if the story is good enough - as was demonstrated with the 1795 storyline.
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One of the problems with 1840 is that there are way too many unlikable characters, especially among the Collins family. Unlike 1795 or 1897, there aren't really any Collins family members to root for other then Quentin. Flora isn't seen to much and isn't even part of the main family.
They didn't have to make both Collins wives, Edith and Samantha, unlikable. Edith could have been a matronly character as she was supposed to continue on to 1897. Perhaps have her husband off camera and away like their children were and have Gabriel be single.
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I still wanna know how three certain deaths in 1840 affected 1897 and the modern dress stories!
And yes, Edith was not the same character in 1840 as in 1897.
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[spoiler]Ben's death certainly was disgusting, but that's horror for you. Judah taking control of Ben to decapitate him seems horrific to me,[/spoiler] and just what Judah would want to do, not ludicrous.
The ludicrous part is that the Collins family are actually shown to beleive that [spoiler]He tried to kill himself by cutting off his own head.[/spoiler]
Overall, I didn't find it scary, just stupid. And bringing back a beloved character who already had a good ending to get rid of him in such a way is unforgiveable in my opinion. That's why I said in my post, that the storyline takes away, it doesn't give. Of course they did that a lot at the end of the show.
While some of the more recent actors did get characters that brought something different, there were too many rehashes for my taste; a cheap pansity-faye knockoff, another Trask, another Angelique, another Roxanne, another HAA warlock, another patriarch for Louis, another Quentin hardly distinguishable from the others... And in the one case where maybe a knockoff could have been fun (i.e. if Grayson had played Magda's ancestor) we had to watch Julia travel through time and waste Grayson's talents on the same-old.
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Of course we get another Trask and we get Angelique.... that's part of what makes DS DS, and part of the fascination and fun. There were new twists-- Julia knowing Ang but Ang not knowing Julia, and a Trask with no power and no followers, who was so haunted by his father's mysterious death that he became a mortician. With Roxanne we see not another Roxanne, but the same Roxanne's origin, which her 1970 appearance was setting us up for. Old Ben died too soon, but at least we got to see old Ben. And of-1840 Barnabas was classic.
Everybody gives examples of genuine flaws with 1840, but it seems to me that most eras have similar lists of flaws. We seem to be less forgiving about them with 1840.
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Magnus, I see what you're saying. It makes sense. But however forgiving i try to be, in the end I come back to: I just don't like 1840 much. When I'm watching it, I keep thinking how much i dislike the hair and the costumes. And that's totally frivolous. But if I liked 1840, then I would probably barely even notice hair and costumes.
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For me, the issue about 1840 is mainly that by that point in the series, I had enough of all the time travelling. Every new storyline was taking place in a new time period. I was tired of being introduced to all new characters who would be gone in a few months. I wanted to see Liz, Roger, Carolyn, & the rest of the present time characters. After 1897, the present time became a temporary stop over.
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For me, the issue about 1840 is mainly that by that point in the series, I had enough of all the time travelling. Every new storyline was taking place in a new time period. I was tired of being introduced to all new characters who would be gone in a few months. I wanted to see Liz, Roger, Carolyn, & the rest of the present time characters. After 1897, the present time became a temporary stop over.
But the present-day family had been reduced to a collective damsel-in-distress. Was there ever much of interest going on with them for most of DS? They never even had a clue what was going on, so they couldn't really take part or react.
1840 seemed to me to be a correction of a mistake the makers felt they'd made, in ever leaving 1897 at all. They never actually left the past, once they'd gone back to 1840, though there were vague plans to eventually. I can understand, if they felt this way. The past was when DS woke up, and the magic came back, no matter how many stumbles were made along the way.
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1840 seemed to me to be a correction of a mistake the makers felt they'd made, in ever leaving 1897 at all. They never actually left the past, once they'd gone back to 1840, though there were vague plans to eventually. I can understand, if they felt this way. The past was when DS woke up, and the magic came back, no matter how many stumbles were made along the way.
1897 was a great storyline but I don't see how they could have stayed there any longer. In it's last months, the writers were obviously stretching things out. They needed to beef up the present time characters more so that they wouldn't be "damsel in distress" like. Alternating with a regular time soap opera plot would have been a good idea like the first Barnabas storyline.
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Well, conceivably they could have started fresh and created new storylines in whatever era they were in. I think they regretted ever leaving the atmosphere (and ratings) of the past, not the events of the 1897 plot specifically.
I should add here, for purposes of complete disclosure, that on first run, I was drifting from DS in 1970 (including 1840). I do remember Collinwood being destroyed. I'd check in on it occasionally to test the waters, and then of course I was more and more confused each time I did that. Eventually, with 1841PT, it seemed as if they'd lost their minds. Was it the past? None of these events or characters belonged... Julia Collins? Uh... what? It didn't help that they stopped telling us in the VO that it was in PT. They were in the romantic, ratings-generating (they hoped) past, that's all that some of the makers and viewers cared about I guess.
Leticia Pansy was unforgiveable, but I'm going to guess that an irrational demand was made by DC or someone to get very popular character Charity Pansy back in there, no matter how crazy it was. They un-Pansy-Fayed the character as soon as Dan's attention was distracted by something else, I'll guess....