Discuss - Ep #0839

Robservations #839

The dogs are howling.  I haven't heard them for a long time.  Great special effect as the werewolf head appears to Quentin.
Julia is still out of it and Barnabas decides she is caught between time.  Then David is dead and David is not in a coffin.  Were they afraid it would be too scarry to have David in a coffin and the children in the audience might freak?  David awakens as he should since Quentin is no longer dead.    Quentin gets a second chance at life?  How many has he had already?  Now Barnabas refuses to leave to save Chris.  At least he has figured out that Chris is Quentin's family.  I love Julia's oh! so true line, "I always lose with you."     The credits say Daniel Collins again. 

Frankly, I don't know what Barnabas could have done for Chris at this point. Quentin is cured, yes, but the portrait is only HIS security from the curse, it won't help his descendants any.

Still there is Petofi to contend with, so I can understand why Barnabas would want to stay in order to deal with him.

I was glad to see David come back to life again, free from the control of Quentin.

Major Milestones:
1. Julia, caught between the past and future, told Barnabas and Quentin first that David was dead, and then that he was alive!
2. Quentin felt great remorse about something that he did after he left Barnabas and Julia.
3. Barnabas told Julia about Count Petofi and that Quentin must have been Chris's great-grandfather
4. Julia wanted to go back to 1969, but Barnabas, thinking he still had more to do in 1897, convinced Julia to stay and try to cure him again.
5. After visiting Quentin to try in vain to find out about the portrait and why Quentin didn't change into a werewolf, Barnabas went back to the rectory and found Julia gone with the place in a shambles.
6. After he woke up, David revealed to Roger (and, indirectly, to Julia) that Quentin and Beth's ghosts were gone forever.
7. Julia gave Barnabas his first injection in 1897.


It was great to see David wake up after being "dead". It was neat that Julia could report to Barnabas and Quentin about what was going on in 1969. She was very emotional when she talked about David lying there and Carolyn, Elizabeth, and Roger grieving for him. Once David was back to normal, so was Julia. Interesting... 

So, David was with Quentin and Beth in death. But then, Quentin and Beth did NOT die when they died before, so their spirits disappeared. If history was changed, making it so Quentin and Beth's ghosts were NOT haunting Collinwood after all, then wouldn't everyone at Collinwood have NO MEMORY of what happened before? Everyone still remembered Quentin and Beth's ghost in 1969. Mind-boggling! 

Julia's love for Barnabas was quite evident in this episode. I love Julia's line, "I always lose with you, don't I?" Poor Julia! She lost her backbone when she fell in love with Barnabas.

Now Quentin had a new lease on life, once again. It was funny how Quentin said that dead people don't come back to life. What about Barnabas? Even Quentin "came back from the dead" when he was a zombie. 

----- Sally -----

I love how Julia says she wishes she'd known she would need all her modern medical equipment - as if she could have brought it all with her back to 1897! Come to think of it, how DOES one pack for a trip back in time?  Heck, she didn't even think to bring period-appropriate clothing! 

Maybe [spoiler]if she'd stuck her medical bag underneath her astral coat that made it with her to 1897, she'd have had astral sedatives and an astral stethoscope to use.  Would they have worked?   Good thing their time travel doesn't follow Terminator rules...  [/spoiler]

Were they afraid it would be too scarry to have David in a coffin and the children in the audience might freak?

Probably not. Jamison was seen in Quentin's coffin during the zombie period. Although, that was in a dream...

It probably has to do with showing a child in a coffin..

[spoiler]During the Leviathan story, after Michael dies, he is shown lying without a coffin as well.[/spoiler]

Also, although the children in the audience may very well be scared seeing one of their peers in a coffin, any child actor would balk at being put into a casket before his/her time. I think that whoever was in charge of that decision was just sparing David Henesy.

So, David was with Quentin and Beth in death. But then, Quentin and Beth did NOT die when they died before, so their spirits disappeared. If history was changed, making it so Quentin and Beth's ghosts were NOT haunting Collinwood after all, then wouldn't everyone at Collinwood have NO MEMORY of what happened before? Everyone still remembered Quentin and Beth's ghost in 1969. Mind-boggling!

Yup.  Gotta love it!

I liked the idea of Julia being caught between 1969 and 1897.  Very interesting.  I noticed that Barnabas referred to 1969 as "the future" when he was talking to Julia, which has to have been confusing for her.

In the matter of coffins, I don't think David Henesy needed any sparing.  After all the body-switching acting he's done, I think he knows enough to make the distinction between acting and real life.  He would have been sort of small for the show's stock coffins, but the size of the coffins didn't bother anybody when they were jamming Jonathan Frid into them, so why should they worry if the coffin was too big for David?  They could have stuck some wreaths in to fill in the gaps.  It may be, however, that the touching coming-back-to-life scene was going to be clunky if there was a coffin coming between David and his father.  Meanwhile, in the Dark Shadows universe, I'm imagining the undertaker heading down to the bus station to pick up a specially ordered child's coffin from the luggage compartment of the Bangor bus, and Mrs. Johnson pulling out David's headstone from the pile of ready-to-use family headstones that was brought over from Collinwood when the great house was evacuated.

Excellent performance by David Selby today.  It was so clear that Quentin was hiding something from Barnabas and Julia, and trying to pretend he wasn't.  The drunk scene later on was also beautifully done.  I was wondering why Quentin didn't tell Barnabas and Julia what Petofi had demanded, but he was probably right to keep his mouth shut.  Barnabas was very full of himself today and would surely have come up with some harebrained scheme that would have landed Quentin back in the soup.  But does Quentin understand that Lenore's descendants are cursed as well?

What a great discussion topic!  Curses for everyone!!

Where else but on DS would you get a line like, "He has gotten through the day of his death and is still alive"?

I was thoroughly enjoying the scenario that individuals in 1897 could eavesdrop as Julia experienced a few moments in 1969, and because she was caught in time, a tweak to the past allowed us to witness the moment in which the ghosts disappeared in the future.  But then Barnabas had to ruin my fun by declaring, "David was never possessed."  Way to open a can of time-travel worms!  <sigh>

Quentin to Barnabas & Julia:  "Who would die in my room, and why would the room be sealed?"
Do you suppose the writers had already settled on a candidate at this point?

As soon as I saw Quentin drinking brandy from a plastic martini glass, I knew we were in store for a crushing.  And what a pathetic crushing it was!

Quentin must have been Chris's great-grandfather

I'm so glad they got around to dropping the extra "great"!

Weird, uncomfortable "smile" from Barnabas, as he delivers good news to Quentin (even though Barnabas is the one out of the loop, since he's been dead to the world)...  I'm sure the writers had an occupant in mind for Q's room, but they didn't have to.    They've already established that the future can be changed.