DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '26 I => Current Talk '05 I => Topic started by: Countess on March 25, 2005, 08:31:10 AM
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This is for us 'oldies' but anyone can join in. How did you learn about the cancellation of the original run of DS?
I was in the high school cafeteria when these really annoying twins happily chirped to me that they heard DS was being cancelled. They KNEW I was obsessed with DS. I spent the rest of the day in a daze (well, I admit that wasn't too unusual in high school ;)) When the series ended, I tuned in the following Monday hoping to find it was all a mistake but instead I found a game show. I kept vigil into week two without DS before I finally gave up. And I SWORE I would never get so involved in a tv show ever again. So, here I am forty years later still despising those nasty twins who relished delivering the bad news. Grrr! >:(
Okay, pity party over. Let's hear your stories!
Countess
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LOL...the original? I wasn't even being dreamed of being conceived yet. ;)
Though I must admit, when it was taken out of syndication on Sci-Fi, a tear was shed. :(
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LOL...the original? I wasn't even being dreamed of being conceived yet.
LOL! I'm right there with ya, bud. For all I knew in the early 90's, DS '91 WAS the original! ~DJ
Anyway, I'm on the phone with my Mom right now-- no big surprise-- and here's her answer:
When I found out that it was cancelled, I was in California then, it made me mad. I was watching the tv and (apparently) someone just said it was cancelled. Broke my heart. I was working at the time but would always look forward to seeing that during the week. ~DJ's Mom
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Countess, I was a younging, so I didn't hear about it. But, if I may go OT, I had a similar situation; some co-workers were 'bandying' about how Jerry Garcia had died, and I was devastated :'(
Patti
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I remember that I read about it. My memory is that it was a newspaper article, but it might have been this feature that used to run in TV Guide--these yellow pages at the front and back of the magazine that had what looked like manual typewriter font and were more or less little snippets of breaking news in the media/entertainment world. Back in the Sixties, there were far fewer fora for learning about such things--no such thing as Entertainment tonight; so I used to follow that feature fairly closely. I always checked through TV guide each week to see what films were going to be on. In those years (ages 10 to 12) I had quite an interest already in old movies, especially ones from the early Thirties (I was thrilled earlier today to see that 20th century just came out on DVD, in a very stylish looking package).
I never heard about the campaigns to try and keep it on the air. In those days, I did not know anything about organized fandom, although the clubs were mentioned in 16 magazine--for whatever reason, I never bothered to write and get DS penpals.
Like so many others, I tuned in on that Monday following, only to see Password in DS' place. I had enjoyed Password before then, but that particular event ruined that game show for me.
G.
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I heard about it while in study hall in junior high school. It was in the library (often used as a study hall during certain hours), and sat at a table, the only boy among three girls who shared it, and I and two of the girls were huge DS fans. All we ever talked about was Darkshadowsdarkshadowsdarkshadows. One day, about a month-or-so before the end, one of the girls sat down, rather numb, and gave us the bad news (I don't know where she had heard it). For the next several weeks, it was like a somber vigil waiting for that horrid last day.
Gerard
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Unfortunately I never heard about the cancellation because in that year my family was tossed out of our house and we became among the homeless.. we were all split up with relatives and I was picked to live with my grandmother who only watched her novella's. I was unable to watch the last episodes, :'(
although I later made up for lost time. :D
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I don't exactly remember how I found out, but I did tune in for that last episode. I had stoped watching the show by then and didn't have a clue as to who the characters were or anything. And until I saw it again all these years later, the only thing I could have told you about it was the last 3 to 5 minutes of the episode. That last scene and the epilogue did stick with me all those years prior to my second viewing.
I was thirteen in 71 and my whole world was changing, the cancellation was very symbolic for me.
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......I was thirteen in 71 and my whole world was changing, the cancellation was very symbolic for me.
In April of '71 I was closer to 18 than 17. I'd long since given up watching the show and was knee-deep in plans for College, Travel and Freedom From My Parents.
It problably was a good thing I wasn't aware of the cancellation. My childhood was coming to an end.....and it would have made me terribly sad to know that one more fondly remembered part of it was ending too.
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I was nowhere close to being born yet. Still a decade away from existing. ;)
My mom watched during the original run, but she hadn't been watching it near the end. She doesn't remember the 1841 storyline. I know she watched during 1897 and a ways after that, but I don't know when she stopped.
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i wasn't around at the time that the show was cancelled either.
but my mom was a fan and was pregnant with me during the later part of the show's run.the character that she most remembers is quentin.apparently she thought he was the cutest.
but she seems to be under the impression that he was on it from the begining(or close to it).sometimes when she visits me we'll watch it and she's like "where's quentin?" or "when does quentin come on?".i haven't gotten to his part on the show yet so i'm like "he comes on it later mom". ::)
she also remembers barnabas(natch)but watching it with me she definitely knows who victoria winters is and recognizes alot of the other main characters.soon i'll be into the quentin eps..she'll like that. :P
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Wow all you youngsters on the board1 my sister told me but as don was gone
i wasn't as sad as i would have been i also had found baseball players by then!
i did see the last episode in the end and did shed some tears thinking i would never see it again
it took a while but finally it did return!
jennifer(stiil Gidget at heart and still love some of those ballplayers Midnite you have DLO now!)
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I don't remember specifically how I learned about it, but I remember thinking at the end of the final episode, that they just couldn't end it here; there had to be more to the story. So, like everyone else, I tuned in on Monday, hoping it was all a bad joke or big mistake.
Nope.
I think it was one of the first times in my life I was ever really depressed. I was 11 at the time and had only been able to watch the show regularly since late 69; I figured everything that had come before in the show was gone forever, and I was destined to be deprived for the rest of my life.
I had to wait a whole five years before they started running it in syndication... ::)
--M
http://home.triad.rr.com/smrainey
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I had to wait a whole five years before they started running it in syndication... ::)
Well you're luckier than we were. We didn't get to see them at all until NBC ran them for a very short time in the early 80's then again until the Sci-Fi channel started up. I don't like Sci-Fi too much anymore, but back then what they did showing DS was like a wonderful gift.
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Like one of my previous cousins had mentioned, I learned about it in a TV Guide issue. It appeared about two weeks before the end of the series and I was devastated. DS was like a well guarded secret pleasure for me. No one knew how much I loved the series or the characters. I remember watching the last episode and feeling terrible afterwards thinking I would never get to see the series again. I followed the DS comic panels in the daily paper until those also were cancelled about six months later.
It wasn't until about fifteen years later that one of the local TV stations picked up the syndication and broadcast it around midnight. That only lasted a few months and they didn't seem to be playing them in order..
I remember flipping through the channels on a Friday the 13th evening in 1988 or 1989 and on a TBS station recognised a few of the DS characters so stopped to watch. It was then that I realised I was watching the Night of DS movie with David Selby and Kate Jackson. I checked the TV guide and found out TBS was running it as the second in a DS double feature. I had never seen the movies as a kid because my parents thought they may have been too violent. The following Halloween I closely monitored the TV Guide and found that TBS would again play them as a double feature. I taped them while watching and loved every minute. I probably wore those tapes out so thank God that the movies were released on VHS so I could get good copies of them.
And the best came in the fall of '89, I was reading through a TV Guide section that used to announce VHS releases and couldn't believe my eyes when a tape entitled the "Resurrection of Barnabus" from MPI was announced. I ran down to my local video story every week until one of the clerks could find ordering information for me. At the end of the first tape was additional information about upcoming releases. I ordered each one religiously and have never stopped watching them since.
This all brings back such great memories for me. Thanks cousins.
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I've shared these memories before, but why not again: I, too, read about the impending cancellation in TV Guide, in the "yellow pages" as noted earlier--specifically those about New York shows. I recall that I knew about it maybe a month before the end date on April 2, 1971 (34 years ago this week!) On the Thursday April 1st episode there was a possession (I won't say to whom by whom so as not spoil it for the younger folks on the board who may not know the ending yet) and remember going into the kitchen and telling my Mom that I didn't know how the show could end because ****** was just possessed (and on DS possessions lasted FOREVER ;)), and so it must be an April Fool's joke on us. LOL. Of course, it did end. . . :'(
It wasn't until the mid 70s that I saw some episodes on PBS, but by then I was in college and had no time for that "old show" from from youth. Then, sometime early in the 80s, I saw some episodes of the show on Channel 9 out of Cincy (I was in Dayton, OH, at the time) on my little B&W 13" TV (I had just started teaching and had NO money to spend on such things as a color TV--and cable was still in the future for us in Dayton.)
Then in the late 80s, I came across Kathy Resch's TWODS and Concordances, and Marcy Robins SHADOWGRAM, and the MPI home videos--and the rest is history. :D Bless Kathy and Marcy for "keeping the dream alive," and re-igniting my interest.
Brian