What also makes the Laura storyline so unique is that it features different characters who never appear again on DS afterwards- Dr. Guthrie, Frank Garner, Lt. Riley from Phoenix (played by two different actors with no announcement about the change to the viewers).
There is even a live shot of a Phoenix street as well as a morgue scene!

Seeing this storyline a second time, I didn't realize that Dr. Guthrie appeared in an almost uninterrupted run from his first appearance until his last, I think he misses only one episode.  I loved the live shot of his car in flames! 

He was featured so prominently, one would think he would have been kept on the show after this story came to an end, a Prof. Stokes type.   Removing him from the show was a huge mistake I believe.  If you're watching the syndicated series only like I was the first time around, you never would have known he was ever there at all.

Flora is indeed a mystery.  She can't be a closer relation to Quentin than a cousin, but surely if Joshua had had more cousins than Daniel and Millicent, then those additional cousins would have been invited to the wedding in 1795.  I toyed just now with the idea that Desmond's father was a son of Joshua and Naomi who came in between Barnabas and Sarah and who was off seeking his own, independent fortune in 1795, but that can't be right because it would have been mentioned when Julia came on the scene.  I always get the feeling that Flora is a blood cousin, which complicates matters even further, because, as DarkLady says, it is unimaginable that she would be an unwed mother, so Miss Flora Collins would have had to marry her cousin Mr. Collins, so now we have two branches of the family who were not invited to the big wedding.  Maybe the Mr. Collins whom Flora married was no relation to the Collinsport Collinses - after all, Collins isn't so very uncommon a name (which reminds me, it amuses me to imagine that Senator Susan Collins of Maine is a Collinsport Collins) - but that's another thing that would surely have been mentioned.  All I can say is, Flora's place in the Collins genealogy is just about as difficult to figure out as the question of how 1795 Trask managed to father Lamar Trask.

Perhaps her husband's side of the family was too far away to attend the 1796 wedding or they couldn't make it for whatever reason.  I always thought that Abner Collins may have been her husband.  Perhaps Flora & her husband came to Collinwood at Daniel's invitation sometime in the early part of the nineteenth century.

Peter Turgeon was in Airport from 1970, playing the infamous dumbest plane passenger ever!

In 1980, Addison Powell and David Selby were in a movie (Doctor Franken) together in a story similar to the Adam storyline in which the Powell character makes a body come to life.

Being so close to 1897 and as was stated Ned Stuart was a minor character, they really should have gotten another actor to play the part.  It's unfortunate DC liked him so much, he played too many characters IMHO on D S. 

He plays 2 characters in 1897 with the second appearing only two weeks after the first was written out and no one mentions any resemblance at all!

Once Peter & Vicky were gone from the story, so should he have been gone from DS.

Here's another link to Depp's Dark Shadows, looks like shooting will be starting in February:

http://movies.ign.com/articles/112/1126279p1.html

On the Vampire Diaries boards in IMDB, there is a debate on which type of werewolf is preferred, a real wolf or a wolf-man.  I posted something similiar there as I like the real wolf better, though on DS it would not have been possible to use.

I was wondering which version others on this board like better.

When Vicky first arrives in 1795, we are given a glimpse of the Old House as it was then.  It is all new and pink colored with flowers and in the daytime. 

was this the way that house actually looked or did they doctor the photo to make it look that way?