DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '12 II => Topic started by: David on July 07, 2012, 07:12:40 PM
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Alexandra has addressed this in interviews--she would only come back to the show if Vicky could show her evil side. She hated the character as originally written because Vicky was so dumb, as she put it.
If Curtis would allow Vicki to go mad, become a vampire, or whatever, Alexandra would have returned, but Curtis wouldn't go along with that.
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Jeez, that's sad and pathetic, isn't it? Did Dan feel Vicki (or any character AM played) had to be kept "pure" somehow? And was being dumb somehow part of the "purity"? Of course I can't say I know that AM was able to play villains well, but I'm going to guess she could.
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I'm not sure how fans would respond to an evil Victoria. It's just counterintuitive. In this regard, I feel Dan's decision was right... unless Victoria became possessed by some evil force and did evil things as a result of that. But she'd have to go back to being good Victoria sooner than later. Maybe she should have been the chief Leviathan. Now that would have been some story! [ghost_wink]
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AM didn't want to play Vicki as evil - she simply wanted to be allowed to play a different character that had a dark side. But DC was insistent that the audience would never accept her as any character other than Vicki.
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And therefore she would have to play evil Victoria, as David suggests. [ghost_wink]
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Too bad they didn't compromise--sweet Vicki in "our time", evil Vicki in PT. Regardless, what Curtis did to Peter & Vicki in 1970 was lame--having Paul Stoddard's ghost appear would have made more sense.
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And therefore she would have to play evil Victoria, as David suggests. [ghost_wink]
But she didn't want to come back as Vicki. She wanted to play a different character, and she wanted that character to have a dark side. But when DC wouldn't hear of that, it was end of any possibility of her returning to the show. [ghost_sad]
And as for AM returning for 1970PT as a PTVicki with a dark side, I've always said that could have been a great compromise. But apparently DC wasn't up for that either because he was so insistent that the audience would only accept AM as the sweet Vicki of normal time. Short sighted on DC's part, if you ask me. But there's nothing anyone can do about that now...
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And as for AM returning for 1970PT as a PTVicki with a dark side, I've always said that could have been a great compromise. But apparently DC wasn't up for that either because he was so insistent that the audience would only accept AM as the sweet Vicki of normal time. Short sighted on DC's part, if you ask me. But there's nothing anyone can do about that now...
Yes we can. We can travel back to 1970 via I Ching, steal the scripts and rewrite them, while holding Dan prisoner in the broom closet. [ghost_grin] Let's do it!
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Yes, I know. But perhaps it is retrospect which makes me inclined to agree with Curtis. AM is Victoria Winters. She is so essential to the plot, to the story, to the lore. I don't know how she would work as another character. It's almost as if **gasp** Jonathan Frid were to play a different character... [ghost_wink]
I don't like Bramwell, never have. And I don't associate Jonathan Frid with having played him. Even if the story went on longer, I don't think I would associate Frid with Bramwell. I watch 1841PT for Kate Jackson and Grayson Hall, and the little we see of Joan Bennett.
And having seen Frid try out another character on the show (a part I saw as Barnabas in PT), I don't know how AM would have worked out, unless she brought some radically different performance to the table. It would have been a hard nut to crack.
I still like the notion put forth of evil Vicki, though. That would have been cool, as long as there was the aforementioned regression or the PT time component.
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We can travel back to 1970 via I Ching, steal the scripts and rewrite them, while holding Dan prisoner in the broom closet. [ghost_grin] Let's do it!
If only! [ghost_wink]
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Accepting Alexandra as an evil character is no different than watching Joan Bennett switch from Liz to Naomi, or Nancy Barrett's switches from Carolyn to Millicent to Charity/Pansy.
As long as the script makes sense, go for it, which is better than having a character stagnate.
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Short sighted indeed. Especially when you consider that Lara Parker, Nancy Barrett, Grayson Hall, Thayer David, Joel Crothers and Don Briscoe, to name a few, had all played characters with shades of gray. It doesn't seem like Alexandra was looking to play someone who would have given Danielle Roget nightmares, just a more rounded character. Someone who might have gotten the upper hand on occasion, someone who could get the last word in. A character like Dorian Lord. Casting Alexandra against type might have proven very effective. Would the audience have accepted her as that kind of character? Speaking for myself, hell yeah!! As long as the performance was good.
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And folks might have been able to see it that way during the first run, though having her play the same character in 1795 seemed to cinch the deal. But, now, the decision - to me - seems to be a decent one, and makes her role even more important.
Like I said, I think the problem with having AM play different characters came with the decision to have Victoria be herself in the past. She was Victoria in two time periods. And, if she had still been around, I'd loved to have seen her go back to 1897 to save the day. Barnabas could have met her there. It would have been fascinating.
But I'd much rather have had Vicki stagnate than have her brought back up in the crude fashion she was during the Leviathans. [ghost_wink] So, if anything, we should go back and change it so that never happened.
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while i can understand motlke's desire to play a more complex character i've always found vicki's placidity a nice, and necessary, counterpoint to the over the top, scenery chewing characterizations that happen elsewhere on the series. she had a soothing onscreen presence and moltke's quiet, even rather flat, acting style and slightly aristocratic bearing gave a gravity and seriousness to some outrageous situations.
rather than complain about it all the time alexandra could have made the most of a prized position in the story. still, she was pregnant, and would have had to leave sooner or later anyways.
that said i've always thought, just for fun, a vain, glamorous and pleasure seeking victoria would have been fun for a few months in 1970 parallel time.
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Too bad they didn't compromise--sweet Vicki in "our time", evil Vicki in PT. Regardless, what Curtis did to Peter & Vicki in 1970 was lame--having Paul Stoddard's ghost appear would have made more sense.
You mean the grinning photo of Paul Stoddard's ghost, dont you? (for ultimate lameness) [ghost_rolleyes]
Petofi
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NOT THE PHOTO!
[bnghd]
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I think the audience would've accepted a darker character on the part of Alexandra Motlke, whether as some other form of Victoria or as another character. For me, the characters of Pt1970's William Loomis and his wife, Carolyn Stoddard Loomis (a lush, no less) were far more complex and engaging than their original ones, what little we saw of them in PT1970.
Gerard
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that said i've always thought, just for fun, a vain, glamorous and pleasure seeking victoria would have been fun for a few months in 1970 parallel time.
Ha! I had the wonderful opportunity to witness something along those lines several years ago. An absolutely amazing improv group in Chicago called Free Associates (sadly no longer in existence) had a DS spoof called Back in the Shadows Again. They took audience suggestions and created "full length" episodes which were usually side-splittingly hilarious. The one that I found most funny had Vicki in charge of Collinwood while both Liz and Roger were away, and the power was going to her head. At one point she even had the gall to move the brandy bottle to another location in the drawing room!
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[pointing-up]
[rofl10]
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I think that after a considerable gap where AM was absent, they could have brought her back and done anything they wanted with her. By the time of PT, half the audience wouldn't know the character, as new viewers came in.
Was the clueless true-blue character she became really so wildly popular toward the end of her time on the show, that the public would have insisted on no changes? Hadn't they actually been trying the audience's patience with her more and more, making changes necessary for continued public acceptance?
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If AM could only play Vicky, then would they have sent her to 1897 instead of Barnabas?
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That's a very interesting question. But if she didn't, apparently with DC's attitude about her playing characters other than Vicki, AM would have had to sit out that entire storyline. [ghost_rolleyes]
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DC- And he thought RD was such a versatile actor. No one will ever know what was on his mind.
If AM is in 1897, what about Barnabas? Does his present self do the same thing with the I-Ching?
BC would probably have Vicky believing he is a Victorian Age ancestor of present time BC!
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in terms of DC's belief that alexandra could only play victoria 1897 is really something of a wild card...
there's really no way he, or the show's producers, could have justified paying a contracted player(had she not become pregnant when she did)for nine months and not utilizing her. something would have had to give.
alas we'll never know.
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Actually, wasn't her son born in April of '69? So, considering that would have coincided with the beginning weeks of 1897, it might have been possible for AM to have taken a maternity leave of absence and to have given birth to and then to have taken care of her son for several months before coming back in November '69. Many other soap actresses have done something similar.
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the timing of her pregnancy is what's critical in this discusion...
let's say she had NOT become pregnant in the summer/fall of 1968, but at an earlier or later time or not at all, then curtis would have had to find something for her to do during the 1897 arc.
THAT'S the question we'll never have answered.
that said rachel drummond was enough of a vicki-type character, a wide-eyed and clueless ingenue governess, that perhaps she could have been some earlier incarnation of vicki and that would have satisfied curtis' beliefs about the actress/character. but again we'll never know.
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The audience seems to have written in complaining bitterly en masse about Frid's portrayal of coldly evil LeviaBarn, so I suspect the reaction to an evil Vicki, or even Moltke playing a well-written evil character, might have been equally unsophisticated.
It's interesting to note that the weeks of the introduction of the Daphne character in the 1840 flashback (not, be it noted, the character's original role as a ghost, and then somehow returned-to-life human, in 1970) present Daphne as a woman with a ruthless edge about her and a mission that certainly suggested her moral code was not in line with what the Standards and Practices office would have expected for a heroine. And Daphne was the closest they ever got to having a Vicki-like character return on the series.
G.
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when david and hallie need to find some "modern" clothing for daphne to wear when she, um, materializes i guess in 1970 they find a trunk of vicki's old duds and give them to her.
i believe it's the final reference to the character on the series.
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If the audience accepted Frid and Parker playing radically different characters in the PT1841 storyline, I imagine they could accept Moltke in a different role as well. I would have liked to see it happen.
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while i can understand motlke's desire to play a more complex character i've always found vicki's placidity a nice, and necessary, counterpoint to the over the top, scenery chewing characterizations that happen elsewhere on the series. she had a soothing onscreen presence and moltke's quiet, even rather flat, acting style and slightly aristocratic bearing gave a gravity and seriousness to some outrageous situations.
...
that said i've always thought, just for fun, a vain, glamorous and pleasure seeking victoria would have been fun for a few months in 1970 parallel time.
Word.
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If AM could only play Vicky, then would they have sent her to 1897 instead of Barnabas?
If that had happened, would Jonathan Frid have played a fifth Collins sibling? Or would Barnabas have followed Vicky to 1897?
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The more I think about it, given her pregnancy and DC's attitude, if AM had remained with the show, it really would have been likely that she would have sat out the 1897 storyline on maternity leave and then returned for Leviathans. Though that still leaves open the questions of what would have happened when it came to 1970PT, 1840/41, and 1841PT? But then, had AM remained with the show, who even knows if those storylines would have taken place because they may have written the show very differently with AM still a part of it. Leviathans may not have even taken place.
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Perhaps, like David Selby, she would have appeared in the different story lines as a marginally different character with the same name. He was always Quentin; she would always be Victoria.
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If AM could only play Vicky, then would they have sent her to 1897 instead of Barnabas?
If that had happened, would Jonathan Frid have played a fifth Collins sibling? Or would Barnabas have followed Vicky to 1897?
I imagine that purely-of-1897 Barnabas would have been freed, as in 1840.
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DC really didn't have any way of knowing whether or not the audience would have accepted Alexandra as anyone but sweet Vicki Winters. The audiences of that time might have just have been grateful to have seen her again at all.
I think Alexandra would have been great playing a more darker, if not totally villainous, character had she been given the chance. I say DC was being unreasonable not giving her the opportunity at least. He did so with Joel Crothers and the other actors as already mentioned. There was no reason he couldn't have done so with her as well.
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The ridiculous thing about all this is that DS used as a basic premise for a storyline (or two) the idea of intriguing the audience with opposite versions of familiar characters, with PT. Of course viewers are ready to see the actors play very different characters. Why on Earth would A Moltke be a special case?
The audience may THINK it knows what it wants, but it doesn't. They never would have known they wanted DS, until people decided to make it and broadcast it. You just worry about doing a good, surprising, inventive show. Do a show according to what viewers think they want, and you'll have no creativity and no surprises.