Yeah, there's nothing wrong with telling a story with pace, but it shouldn't be done at the expense of clarity, which is what increasingly happened on DS.  If an audience member is left without a clue from missing a couple of episodes, that's bad storytelling.

Yeah, all that stuff would have been fun once in a while - at times, I think "Dark Shadows" really needed to be more of a conventional soap.  The fantasy stuff was great when it worked, but it was a mistake thinking that it was the be-all and end-all.

One of the sad things for me was the way increasingly they lost a sense of the day-to-day stuff for the characters - I think it's a massive failure that the show never really did a death that counted.  I can't think of a single time where I got a sense of the grief and pain that situation should bring, or the long-term effect it should have on the people it touches.

When it worked, the fantasy element really did enhance the drama and underlying themes of the stories, but as time wore on it seemed to anaesthetize the emotional side, leaving it unrewarding  by default.  Never confuse incident with drama, I guess.

At times, just simple things like giving gifts at Christmas, or sharing a family meal could have done a lot to remind you that this was a (mostly) normal family, and brought some identification for the audience.

Christmas at Collinwood could have been amazing - can't you just see the foyer with a massive tree and decorations everywhere!  What a sight that would have been...

Far from detracting, I think the juxtaposition of the festive ambience with the usual DS horrors could have been extremely memorable.  There are so many opportunities it presents to delve into the macabre - I can just picture Satan - no, that's not a typo - leaving a gift under the tree, or some ribbon-festooned present oozing blood or whatever

With the exception of 1795, one could easily have incorporated the holidays any other year and still kept business as usual.  I don't know about the US soaps, but UK ones like "EastEnders" never seem compromised by the festive season - indeed you can usually count on their Christmas installments to deliver death, misery and backstabbing aplenty...  Nothing makes a better backdrop for something grisly than a bunch of people forced to enjoy one another's company, usually

It sounds as if Craig may have added more material since then, and, hopefully, made some corrections.

Very little of the original text remains unchanged - it's a pretty extensive rewrite, and the structure and tone is also very different.

I always have mixed feelings about the Leviathan jaunt - I've never bought it as the complete turkey it's purported to be, but I think that it just came at a time when the overall nature of the show was shifting, along with its priorities.

For example, I'd say that most of 1968 is just as silly and illogical, and in great chunks just as dull.  I think the real problem lies in the increasing shift to plot-driven drama, and perhaps a general boredom with the present day scenario.

One of the problems with 1897 long-term was that it went on way too long - it really did disrupt the present-day continuity in a way that 1795 didn't.  Part of me wishes that they'd simply stayed in 1897 and built a new show from there - I think they had generally had a community of characters of equal quality, and the Victorian backdrops fitted the show's ambience in a way that a miss-mash of Gothic meets Orhbach's never could...

The one thing Leviathan gets totally right is demonising Barnabas - the nice guy thing had really worn thin for me and it was an ideal way to extend the character (bear in mind that a lot of the viewers wouldn't have been watching the initial Barnabas story).  In many respects, Barnabas the villain was enough story - and it was a better starting point than the abstract Lovecraft rip-offs.  In 1967, Barnabas was electrifying - he was dangerous, a plausible liar, an arch manipulator, beyond trust - he just made for great storytelling.  If they could have recaptured half of that essence, it could have been amazing.

The problem was that the main attraction became lost amidst a fairly underdeveloped story that didn't really use its characters - which brings me to plot.  There seems to be a real disparity between being true to the dramatic situation and giving the audience a perceived want...  Take Quentin for example - In 1897 he had purpose and drive, but in the present he simply has nothing to do and meanders.  He should not have been reintroduced without a proper story or purpose, and it damages both the character and show in the process.

Likewise, there seems to be a lack of faith and enthusiasm for the story itself - characters chop and change roles as the story demands and you lose a sense of immediacy and belief.  Admidst this major loss of faith comes a bunch of dodgy additions aiming for nostalgia - Nick Blair, Angelique's bizarre Samantha Stephens-esque jaunt into suburbia, etc.  And while this is going on, the writers seem to miss huge opportunities to get the audience back on track.

Carolyn's wedding always bugged me - weddings are such a soap staple, easy money in the bank.  It irritated and disappointed me so much that one of the original characters was married off so forgettably with zero emotion or romance whatsoever - a real case of DS forgetting that it's a soap opera.  A week-long wedding story, with some genuine happiness, with the threat of darkness lurking beneath the surface, could have been fantastic I think...

Leviathan is a story I want to love in spite of myself.  Beneath all the mistakes there were some major opportunities, but they're lost amidst a lack of conviction - if there's one thing the story lacks creativity, it's joy.  It seemed to have stopped being fun for the makers, and inevitably, viewers usually follow suit.

According to the SG update Tim just posted, what's ending is the 3-day convention format.  Yet the festival site calls the next one "the final DS Festival".  If you ask me, the spin they're putting on these announcements is terribly confusing.

TBH, I think there's a more than a little back-pedalling going on here.  I guess the fan reation was stronger than they expected and the new, less definite tact is an attempt to placate a lot of upset people.

I disagree - sure, a convention isn't the be-all and end-all, but the festivals made a tremendous contribution to the show's overall profile, and it was largely their support and cross-promotion that fuelled the PBS syndication drive throughout the 1980s.  Without that contribution, it is highly doubtful that the show would have made it to Sci-Fi or home video.

Like it or not, Dark Shadows and its fans owes a helluva lot to that "disorganized event and insensitive committee"