penny,

when i first looked at this the three characters that came to mind were sam evans,david collins and angelique.

did you really take these pictures at the carey mansion?

d.s. is anomalous in daytime soaps in that it became so reliant on a single character and the actor that played him.
it had a large cast and numerous sub-plots but everything always came back to barnabas collins and as a result jonathan frid as well.

as barnabas' bride pointed out any attempt to replace him would have crashed and burned.the audience simply wouldn't have been accepting of anyone other than frid in that part.
of all of the actors under discusion here he is unique because while i think the other actors would have been difficult to recast the show likely could have continued should thier character be written out(and indeed it did in the case of vicki).it would have been difficult to come up with a foil like angelique but it's possible.

i suppose quentin could have been groomed to become the show's lead but even that is questionable.it's impossible for us to know today what would really have happened should frid have decided to exit the show but i think that abc would have really had no choice but to cancel it.

barnabas' bride,

i love nancy barrett and kathryn leigh scott too.personally i wouldn't ever want to recast any of our players either.

but i was just thinking that at the time of the show's production if any of the actors had decided to leave if a recast would have been a possibilty or if the character would simply have to be written out.the six i mentioned seemed to me to be the most unrecast-able for the reason you mention.audiences wouldn't except it.

i know i'm asking for trouble but i just can't resist.

recent talk of recasts made me think.were there characters on the show that simply could not have been effectively recast?ever?
characters that had become so defined by the actors that played them that there just wasn't anyone else who could have captured the character again in the same way?

in my opinion there were six such characters:

VICTORIA.ELIZABETH.BARNABAS.JULIA.ANGELIQUE.QUENTIN.

to me too much of the actors' persona actually shaped these characters and no one could effectively replicate that.any attempt would have been futile.

as much as i love(adore!)nancy barrett i find it conceivable that another actress,well chosen,could have been a possiblity.it would have made for a different carolyn stoddard but under the right circumstances it could have worked.the same for kathryn leigh scott.
but could anyone else play julia other than grayson hall?or liz other than joan bennett?and try and imagine a recast for barnabas.they might as well cancel the show on the spot.

early on i think that there were a few good recasts(sam evans,matthew morgan,willie loomis).later not so good(vicki).but the actors i mentioned brought too much of themselves to the roles and it defined them.in some cases turning minor characters into stars.

so what do you guys think?could any of these actors be replaced?what characters not mentioned do you think could be added to the list?

i'm confused about this.

at the begining of each dvd there is a disclaimer saying something along the lines of their being unable to fix the glitches in the episodes without editing them and that mpi has decided to air them unedited.what is being edited out?

you're right mangus,

that was sort of my point.as originally conceived barnabas was a monster.but by the time the 1897 story was told he had become the show's protagonist and deeply troubled 'hero'.

as such i think the writers knew that having him do really yucky things like drink animals blood was unseemly and likely to turn off viewers and that's why it wasn't discussed at this point.

i wasn't thinking about what a real vampire might need in terms of blood but simply how the writing for the character had changed between 1967 and 1897.

good question misa.

they never really did explain who jeff clark was.vicki nearly ran him down very shortly after she returned to the present from 1795.but according to dr.lang jeff had been in his employ for some time and before that he was in some sort of institution for the criminally insane.so all this had been happening to jeff while peter was still alive in 1795?since vicki had only been in the past for minutes in the present was jeff in collinsport before the seance?would their meeting have had any signifigance if it happened before her trip to the past?

also they have jeff/peter return to the past during the betsy durkin episodes.i wonder if they knew it wasn't working out and just needed to wrap the character and the storyline up(with assurances to roger davis he would be almost immediately brought back as another character).if alexandra hadn't left i wonder if jeff would have remained in the present or if his departure was inevitable?