The show was really cooking on all burners at this point.  One great episode after another, this one included.

I love the scenes of Julia hypnotizing Vicky.  The line is a great example of a paradox: two essentially contradictory ideas that when put together create a third reality.

The only question I have, though, is why on earth was Carolyn in this episode at all?  All she did was pour coffee (and make an unlikely nasty comment, especially considering that poor Vicky may have just lost her fiance in a plane crash.  I'd think she'd be more sensitive at a time like that).  I'm surprised they didn't just save the money on Nancy's paycheck that day and do without her.

Otherwise, another fantastic episode, especially with Barnabas' uncontrollable euphoria at the prospect of the experiment working.

One more point, though:  why does Vicky suddenly act like she wants Barnabas to stay when she has been hypnotized into fearing him?  That seems like a gaffe of sorts to me, strangely  inconsistent.

This has to be one of the great DS episodes of all time, utterly perfect in its tone and mood - and DH is phenomenal in his poised, understated performance.  He makes the whole thing work.

Interesting, too, that all of the characters in this episode (except Sarah) were around at the start of the series.

As to Sarah, I think her telling David about Dr. Woodard's death actually added to the overall spooky nature of the episode.  It gave David information he could have gotten in no other way except through the supernatural, since no human saw fit to inform him of the fact.

In many ways, I think this may be the single "darkest" episode of the whole series.  Watching Julia so completely betray the Hippocratic Oath the way she does here is genuinely disturbing.  Pretty heady stuff for daytime TV.

Thanks for all the great comments, everyone.

I've always just found it interesting that in on-going mysteries, one set of characters seems to have to be perpetually "in the know," while another have to be eternally "in the dark."  It's just strange that the latter category in DS was actually filled by the original cast of characters who launched the series. 

This episode has one of the great closing scenes of all time, so well done.

I love the complete shift in tone that occurs in the scene between Barnabas and Julia when, after all his bullying and bragadoccio, Barnabas suddenly drops his voice and says "I'm frightened."  What a fantastic "humanizing" moment for the character.  This is why DS was such a hit in its time and still lives on today.

The only hitch in Barnabas' plan to send David off to school is wouldn't that essentially eliminate the need for his dearly beloved  Vickie to continue hanging on at Collinwood?  She'd be out of a job and he'd have lost his best bet for a Josette replacement.

It's nice to see that Sheriff Patterson is looking like his old self again.   

Gotta love the scene of Dr. Hoffman lighting up a cig and smoking like a chimney in the room of a man who, until a few hours earlier, was being housed in an oxygen tent!  All those clouds of choking smoke headed straight towards the patient's bed.  Had hospitals NO standards back then?

And as for the dear pledge-to-do-no-harm doctor, she would appear to be more hypocritic than Hyppocratic these days!

It seems to me that the people at Collinwood are always re-inventing the wheel when it comes to accepting the existence of the supernatural.  After all the weird and inexplicable things that have happened thus far - the ghost of Josette helping to rescue Vicky, the phoenix going up in a burst of flames etc. - everytime someone even remotely hints at the possibility of a supernatural explanation for something, the characters' first reaction seems to be to pooh-pooh it as if the option were somehow unthinkable.

At least, in this episode, Vicky doesn't have that instinctive reaction.

It's been awhile since I've seen these episodes and I'd forgotten just how close the perpetually in-the-dark characters get to the truth about Barnabas.  I mean David's dream was pretty darn explicit, and it's a bit disconcerting to hear Burke and Vicky discussing Barnabas' rising from a coffin.  Even if they just dismiss it as the rants of a dreaming little boy, the fact is that that image has at least been planted in their minds.  Interesting.

Thanks, Lydia, what a nice thing to say!