I've been watching this period for the first time since original airing.   Comments:

Interesting how they made a point of making everything the same as 1967 when Victoria returned from 1795, for continuity, yet they sped ahead from that point on with updating the show, and improving 1968 to match the level of 1795.    New characters, more clever dialogue (such as from Elliot Stokes... I didn't get any clue as to what a great character he is from 1970), bigger jolts, faster plot, and suddenly Julia is out of the frumpy ugly hair/clothing and becomes "herself" as I know and love her.    It's as if they caught up abruptly with the time lost during the flashback, time that didn't pass for the characters but did for the real world.  I got the impression of DS suddenly becoming "modern".

The Frankenstein plotline has yet to win me over.   Doctor Who did it brilliantly, so it can be done.   A lot of the dialogue has gone back to being too simple and awkward, such as between Lang and Barnabas, which goes against what I said earlier, but everything is mixed and confusing so far.   I noticed JF is back to having more trouble with lines as before 1795... did he do it for continuity??

Maybe awkwardly said lines come from awkward or uncertain writing... maybe Frid was forced to keep stopping to think how he was going to deliver a line, because these new lines could be coming from a reforming character, or someone neutral, or someone who's still a villain... and the lines don't indicate any of this either way.   I've noticed JF using a villainous tone when the line is pretty benign.   One must blow lines if one has to stoip and think how to read them.

Lang... good pain acting.

All the photos from Caption This are coming to life before my eyes!

One episode break... Duelling Portraits!  (Barnabas's and Angelique's)



[spoiler]With Barnabas's sudden cure, 'my' DS starts.   I felt this especially when Roger was being drawn to Ang's portrait, to hurt Lang, with that music.  I don't know why.   Everything is smarter, really moves, is more vital.

As the Frankenstein monster's shroud is pulled away to show Barnabas, I instantly thought, Dracula Meets Frankenstein!

That "life force" idea worked back then, but it's now been used so often that it's become a lazy meaningless science-fiction premise.   How handy, a vague something that can be yanked out of one body and into another, like pouring liquid from one bottle to another...

Couldn't Lang have just stuck Barnabas's "essence" into Clark's intact body, without the fleshy crazy-quilt Lang just had to build?    How dare he claim to have created life, when he just took intact limbs and parts and organs and sewed them together?    Sure, reanimating is hard, but that intricate biological "machinery" was already built, and Lang or Frankenstein wouldn't have known how to even begin to build any of it from scratch.   Leave it to a doctor to steal God's (or who/whatever's) thunder.

Back later.
[/spoiler]

With this post I hit 1500.     And that Einstein thought he accomplished something.

What's with all the birthdays?    Some of these might just be prank birthdays, or hysterical sympathy birthdays, like when people get pregnancy symptoms along with their wives or loved ones.    Either that, or everyone's parents sure as hell got "frisky" the moment Spring hit.

I just had an urge as impossible to resist as the urge of a vampire to time-travel.... to ask the question that must be on everyone's minds, after they read this thread title anyway.

Does Roger Collins have a wedgie in his future?  Should he?   Would it be a justifiable wedgie?    Atomic, or not?   Would his face be capable of registering the degree of sheer outrage which would result?   Would he sprain his face trying?

Dignity has its price.   If I have anything to say about it, that is.

No DS yet, but I hope to do one or two.   Can't guarantee much because of my eye thing.    But I've gotten a handful of Dr Who etc. drawings done over the last few years, and for the first time they're someplace where people can see them.    I'd appreciate it if people could take a brief look.

http://visualdevice.blogspot.com/

I think I stole jokes from Penny Dreadful.    This only matters to me, probably, but it's gnawing at me, so I'm saying here and now that I think I said, in a thread I can't find anymore, something about townsfolk putting Barnabas on speed-dial and mooning over 8 x 10 glossies of him for no apparent reason, because he's lunching on too many Collinsport residents.     Some or all of this I subconsciously copied from an earlier PD post I think, one I haven't found yet.     I'm doing that more lately, repeating someone else's joke having no clue I didn't come up with it, and I hate it.    Sorry about that.

I thought I'd take a stupid tangent from the other thread and give it its own venue.    Now I'm thinking better of it.   Hit the post button, or not?

BD can eat if he wants, but doesn't need to.  (Maybe his body just doesn't process it.   He's a cadaver walking around thanks to a curse.)   To my mind, that makes more waste expulsion necessary, not less.   (Door slams.) Bad Barnabas: "Willie, they made me eat a whole turkey dinner at this holiday they have for... get this... thanking God... they asked me to say grace, how I managed to tapdance out of that one I don't know... of course, I'll be in the john for an hour squeezing all that out...."

Do BC's vampiric internal organs do anything?

It's a source of endless frustration to me, thinking about what horrific, blood-wrenching, gut-curdling supernatural phenomena may have been going on in the next town over from Collinwood.   Just maybe, wer're being ripped off, and don't know it.    Ever get that feeling?    So, maybe there's some burg just eight miles up US Route 1 or something, in the chilly wilds of Maine, where all the demonic action is.    Collinsport is Peoria by comparison.    What a gip.

Of course, if all TV shows took place quite near to each other, then we wouldn't have to go through all this paranoia about missing out on the very coolest in supernatural phenomena, that I'm sure I'm not alone in going through here, for Chrissakes.     If, say, Mayberry North Carolina, were positioned geographically about seven or eight miles up the pike from Collinsport, and if we occasionally heard remarks from the characters about goings-on with their less spooked relatives there, then people's concerns could be eased. 

Then again, easier said than done in my case.    I'd still be fearful that Nicholas Blair was somehow responsible for Aunt Bee's pickles.    Though, it'd be interesting to see Andy, Barney, and Gomer helping look in the woods for Chris Jennings.    Andy, don't give Barney more than one silver bullet, please.

By the by, there appears to be a set of disembodied Revolutionary-War-era trousers roaming mysteriously about my computer screen.   I suspect them to be Nat Forbes's.   Don't ask me how I know.    I was down on my luck, in need of doubloons.... anyhoo, somewhere around the end of the 18th century I lost my sanity owing to the resultant raging syphilis, and so I think I see pants bopping around my monitor.   It's a tragedy.   I brought it on myself, but care anyway.

I'm done now.