1840 Questions!

[Brandon Collins]

What I meant to say in my post was that there wasnt any need to explain Angelique looking like Cassandra to Professor Stokes.  They should have just let him believe that Angelique resemble Cassandra

This is what I was getting at. I guess in trying to think about it I actually just screwed my own words up more, lol. Byt this was basically my point, that they should've just let Stokes believe Angelique looked like Cassandra. If he was smart enough to figure out that Angelique and Cassandra are one and the same, then he should most definitely notice Judith's resemblance to Liz (or whatever. I'm not sure which time period he was in during the past and who the characters are).

I guess I am one of those people who don't see the point in Barnabas and Julia explaining it to him. Ah well.

[BuzzH]

The only other characters who got noticed as a lookalike was the Trasks of 1897 & 1840.

Actually that's not true, Roxanne was someone Barnabas recognized as being the same Roxanne from PT, or at least thought looked the same in the summer of 1970 (post 1970 PT) and several ppl thought Ned Stuart looked remarkably like Jeff Clarke.
 

[IluvBarnabas]

Just want to put my own spin on the whole lookalike scenerio: just because Barnabas didn't say anything about Edward looking like Roger (or Joshua for that matter), Judith looking like Elizabeth (and Naomi) or Carl looking like Willie doesn't mean he never saw the resemblances....unlike Vicki, Barnabas had the intelligence not to go blabbing "hey you look like someone I know" everytime he saw a lookalike to the people he knew in 1969.

[BuzzH]

Just want to put my own spin on the whole lookalike scenerio: just because Barnabas didn't say anything about Edward looking like Roger (or Joshua for that matter), Judith looking like Elizabeth (and Naomi) or Carl looking like Willie doesn't mean he never saw the resemblances....unlike Vicki, Barnabas had the intelligence not to go blabbing "hey you look like someone I know" everytime he saw a lookalike to the people he knew in 1969.

Excellant point ILB!  

[Brandon Collins]

Just want to put my own spin on the whole lookalike scenerio: just because Barnabas didn't say anything about Edward looking like Roger (or Joshua for that matter), Judith looking like Elizabeth (and Naomi) or Carl looking like Willie doesn't mean he never saw the resemblances....unlike Vicki, Barnabas had the intelligence not to go blabbing "hey you look like someone I know" everytime he saw a lookalike to the people he knew in 1969.

Not to mention that he was smart enough not to go blabbing about "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" because a projector that puts people on a screen would no doubtedly have caused a rile up, not to mention the fact that everything in the title of that picture would've caused some commotion.

[MagnusTrask]

I'm somewhat alarmed at the fact that I have no idea what that previous post meant.    My comprehension may be much more impaired than usual.  I'm not being sarcastic.   I often blank out and miss the point of things for neurological reasons.

I'll offer this one last idea on the issue... I say the 1897 characters weren't all exact look-alikes of the 1969 characters, because that kind of thing just doesn't happen.    If we looked through some family history of ours, we wouldn't see photos of ancestors who looked exactly like ourselves and members of our present-day families.

If the past were filled with exact duplicates, that's one great big supernatural phenomenon that could not fail to grab anyone's attention.    Barnabas on his own in the past would have no one to comment on this to, but once Julia was there, it had to come up.  I suppose she could have showed her shock at the duplications offscreen, but really, any major bizarre phenomenon like that deserves to be reacted to and dealt with onscreen, and would be.

[IluvBarnabas]

I am just as glad they didn't have Barnabas and Julia dwell on the whole duplicates from the present thing. It got very annoying to watch Vicki keep on doing it again and again in 1795. I think it was wise of the writers not to inflict that on us again.

[BuzzH]

I am just as glad they didn't have Barnabas and Julia dwell on the whole duplicates from the present thing. It got very annoying to watch Vicki keep on doing it again and again in 1795. I think it was wise of the writers not to inflict that on us again.

ITA w/this.  Besides, it harmed my 'suspension of disbelief' when watching this remarkable phenominon of someone ACTUALLY going back in time.

[Raineypark]

Oh for heaven's sake!.....Soap Operas have ensemble casts because the viewers need to care about the characters.  The have to invest in them or they don't keep coming back every day.  And when a character has to be eliminated, the loss of the actor can be as real a problem for the production as the loss of a character.  So they keep the actor, and create a new character.

Dan Curtis obviously liked working with an ensemble cast of "regulars" and used them the way they would have been in a theatre ensemble.....always available to take up the slack, fill in the empty spaces, and be who and whatever was needed.  And the less said by the characters about look-alike characters, the easier it is for the audience to keep dis-belief suspended.

[Lydia]

If the past were filled with exact duplicates, that's one great big supernatural phenomenon that could not fail to grab anyone's attention.

There's a thought: a Santayana Curse.  Those who do not learn from history are condemned to relive it.  Perhaps if anybody ever wrote a Collins Family History that contained the truth from beginning to end, suddenly all the Collins generations would look different from each other.  It would blow the Dan Curtis Productions budget, of course, but that's a minor detail.

[michael c]

the show was rather schizophrenic about when it acknowledged that a particular character strongly resembled another character played by the same actor.

for instance they decided that this was a very big deal with the 1795 storyline.so much so that vicki remarked upon it with every encounter(in a nice nod to continuity she was frightened of ben stokes who of course looked like matthew morgan who had tried to kill her over a year before this)and it was announced in every voiceover.however by the time of the telling of the 1897 story for whatever reason they decided this was a nonissue and it wasn't mentioned(barnabas did recognize laura as his uncle jeremiah's first wife...but that major continuity gaffe is another issue all together).

as has been pointed out everyone noted the resemblance between jeff clark and ned stuart and also jeb hawkes and sebastian shaw.but while julia and barnabas recognized instantly angelique rumson carolyn and liz did not.
no one seemed to pick up on any resemblance between eve and megan todd but then again the characters were styled so differently.

[MagnusTrask]

Those characters who looked remarkably alike were spoken of that way by other characters.   If they weren't, they were only look-alikes to us.    Some may have resembled later characters a bit because they were related, but just in the same way your ancestors may have looked a little bit like you.

My problem is with the occasions when they went out of their way to call attention to resemblances with no logical reason for them, or explanation later.   You don't raise mysteries and forget about them.    That's sort of, well, rude.   We could have just lumped that Pennock psychic guy in with the other very different characters who just happened to be played by one of the same ensemble had they not pointed to the resemblance with neon letters.

[Joeytrom]

They probably had to mention the Sebastion/Jeb resemblence as Jeb was carolyn's husband and she was still in mourning.

[MagnusTrask]

Not if he didn't "really" look like Jeb.

[TNickey2003]

I have some 1840 questions of my own:

1)  Barnabas travelled back in time to 1840 via the i-ching to save Julia (just as Julia had done to 1897 to save Barnabas, a neat Barnabas-Julia reciprocity here).  Yet when Barnabas and Julia return to the present, they BOTH do so by the stairway through time. Why didn't Barnabas return from 1840 via the i-ching just as he had gone there, and what happened to Barnabas' physical body in 1970 in the i-ching trance?  Did his i-ching entranced physical body mysteriously disappear when he and Julia traversed the stairway through time to return to the present?

2)  The ghost of Gerard (aka Judah Zachery possessing Gerard's body) is haunting Collinwood in 1995 and in the present, and brings about the destruction of Collinwood in the present.  Questions surrounding Gerard:  Did he become master of Collinwood in the UNALTERED timeline? If so, for what did he need to exact revenge on the Collins' in the present, if he got what he wanted in 1840? Also, why did he wait until 1970 to destroy Collinwood?  If he became master of Collinwood in the unaltered timeline, what eventually happened as far as the Collins' family history timeline is concerned?  Did something happento depose Gerard as master of Collinwood in 1840?

If he did not become master of Collinwood in 1840, then what was it that Barnabas and Julia sought to change in 1840?

3) Angelique, as 'Miranda' in 1692, testified against Judah Zachery in court, leading to his execution as a warlock.  What eventually caused Angelique's turn to evil ways as a witch ( obviously she was one before she met Barnabas in 1795 and became jealous over him)?