Where the writers missed the mark, especially with the 1795 storyline, was not giving us enough time to relish the trip to the past.
I don't know if one can say they missed the mark because they were severely handicapped by the fact that they only had 6 episodes to deal with a lot of story. And blame NBC for the limitation because the 1790 storyline was originally supposed to last 10 eps, but before production even began NBC cut the show's order back to 13 hours total.
Incidentally, there's an episode outline in Kathy Resch's
SHADOWS IN THE '90S: The Dark Shadows Concordance 1991 for one of the originally planned 1790 eps which, among other things, reveals that Bathia Mapes [spoiler](in what might please you to know was originally intended to be an episode that partly dealt with the aftermath of the duel, instead of having all that dealt with in the one ep)[/spoiler] was to arrive on the scene long before Barnabas' "death" with an offer of help to Ben, whose conscience was greatly weighed down by the fact that everyone believed Vicki was the witch, but he knew otherwise and couldn't do anything about it. It was intended that Ely Pouget would play Bathia, and IMO THAT would have been quite interesting - and certainly a major departure from the original Bathia.
But alas... (Another big twist: Angelique was to be pregnant with Barnabas' child!!
)