1840 storyline....love it or hate it?

[IluvBarnabas]

Reading a post about 1840 made me think about the whole storyline in general.

PROS:

Possession of Gerard by Judah Zachery.
Blossoming romances of Quentin and Daphne and Desmond and Leticia.
The family feud over who gets the Collins fortune (mainly between Gabriel and Samantha).
Ditzy Flora (at least during the first half of the story).

CONS:
Barnabas' unimaginable declaration of love for Angelique.
The absence of Tad and Carrie for most of the storyline.
Edith's murder (when we know she should have been alive since she WAS around in 1897).
No explanation of how Roxanne originally became a vampire in 1840.

I myself thoroughly enjoyed 1840 despite the mind-numbing snags in the CONS I just listed.

[MagnusTrask]

I like 1840 a great deal.    I think DS revved up again and redeemed itself with 1840, after spinning its wheels painfully with the preceding few storylines.   

PROS:

Gabriel, and all the Gabriel-Gerard-Samantha intrigue, especially at the beginning

Ang fresh from 1795, instead of time-jumping Ang

Barnabas as his 1840 self

1840 Ben (we hardly knew ye)

Julia knowing more than Ang for once

Lamar's final moments

Lamar's ironic profession

Daniel

John Karlen mastering his mainstream accent, Desmond the hero in general

Anything and everything about The Head.... the nauseous horror of it, Desmond's cluelessness about whipping off the cover and showing it to everyone.... Flora's weak flustered sputtering about how she'll never believe that this disembodied head is just some innocent little knick-knack....!!!!   Julia as Frankenstein, only the "experiment" is genuinely scary this time.... GREAT new piece of music that accompanies the Head, especially that dark, surreal "swirling" effect at the end of that music....

The complicated, surprising resolution to the Barnabas/Ang story, with her reformation etc..  See elsewhere for any remarks of mine on why it worked.

Barnabas showing up in court after Trask had bricked him up.

The rationale behind the Staircase.   There is no time, only physical space.... that's fascinating.   I like trying to wrap my head around that.   I doubt that could be an original idea on their part, but it's the only place I've ever heard it.


CONS:

Continuity:  As always, Barney no go back in box at end.   That's just incredibly sloppy and crazy of them.    Ang killed in 1840, though that was dramatically great.   

Quentin being framed all over again.   Witchcraft trial again.   

Gerard while possessed.   I preferred Gerard the human scoundrel, and the real source of genuine horror, the Head, was out of the picture.

Backdating Ang to the 17th century.   After a century of witchery she decided to work as a servant in Martinique?

I'm sure I have more complaints, but can't think of them.  I like 1840.   The repetition of 1897 elements is annoying, but everything was stolen or reused ad nauseum on DS, I'm finding out, so I'd better find a way to deal with it.

The confusing origin of Roxanne as a vampire... we don't usually see the present-day consequences of Barnabas's actions in the past, before Barnabas has gone back and made those changes, in his personal time-line.   I like it, it's just inconsistent.

NOT A PROBLEM:  Lack of Tad and Carrie toward end.  Recently it hit me that all the stuff that made Gerard/Judah's ghost so bitter and caused all those ghosts to haunt Collinwood in 1970-- all that happened in 1841 or later, after Judah was master of Collinwood.   All that was prevented from happening... of course we don't see those events.   If we did, the problems wouldn't have been averted, and they were.

Roxanne being killed in 1840.    I'm not quite sure how this could be a problem.    Time-travel mission accomplished, that's what it indicates to me.   The problem with her as a vampire in 1970 is over.

[Joeytrom]

Gerards tombstone states he died in 1841, so the events regarding his death & Tad, Carrie, & Daphne could have happened well after Quentin's hanging.

[michael c]

i didn't love or hate 1840.i was just indifferent to it.

in fact i couldn't even get through it all.it just started to bore me.

starting with the 'summer of 1970' episodes the show started to feel warmed over to me.it had lost much of it's freshness and originality.

i always enjoy a switch to a new time period with it's corresponding change of characters,sets and costumes but a few weeks into 1840 it ran out of steam for me and i felt like alot of the actors(especially grayson and jonathan)seemed sort of worn out.

that's just my take on it.no offense to those who enjoyed this storyline.

[Brandon Collins]

I liked the 1840 storyline. I didn't hate it, I don't hate any storylines on DS, I just severely dislike some of them, or portions of the one's that I do like. 1840 wasn't very original because it was basically a new twist on the 1897 storyline that had already been done. I think the writers really missed a chance for an interesting story by not involving that ship (its name slips my mind) more than just a mention of it before the storyline.

I liked Angelique during this storyline (hell, I like her in any storyline--she made 70PT) as well as Barnabas. Flora was the all-time best character in that storyline because of her utter ditziness. And I agree with Maguns Trask about Gerard being better when he wasn't possessed, because I could actually hate him during that time. When he was possessed, I couldn't really blame him because it was Judah who was making him do that stuff.

Quentin's trial was a bore, I'll say that. I didn't really care for it after seeing Vicki's trial, even though that trial was so long ago. But we knew that Quentin wasn't in any real jeopardy, because they weren't going to kill him off. Maybe if he had've died it would've been worth it.

And I also like what Magnus said about the rationale behind the staircase. It is a very interesting concept, and would make for an interesting, yet perplexing, read.

[Gerard]

I was also, and remain, indifferent to the 1840 storyline.  It was basically, to me, a retread of both 1795 and 1897.  What made it watchable to me was Virginia Vestoff as Samantha Collins.  Everything about her was perfect, from her character, to her acting, to even her hairstyle.  She was the ultimate Queen of Mean.  If she had gone head to head with Angelique, she would've won hands down, and wouldn't have needed any supernatural powers to come out on top.  Too bad they had her flake out over the return of Quentin's undead past love. 

Gerard

[arashi]

I'm only half way through re-watching it, but it's been a damn fun trip so far.

[Doug]

The thing I remember about the 1840 storyline is when Professor Stokes found his way back to 1840 from
using the staircase and Barnabas and Julia were there when he came through. I was excited about that
when Professor Stokes was going to be a relative of Ben.

But after Professor Stokes entered Collinwood by introducing himself as a relative of Ben, I think that was
all they showed of Professor Stokes.

[MagnusTrask]

I was also, and remain, indifferent to the 1840 storyline.  It was basically, to me, a retread of both 1795 and 1897.  What made it watchable to me was Virginia Vestoff as Samantha Collins.  Everything about her was perfect, from her character, to her acting, to even her hairstyle.  She was the ultimate Queen of Mean.  If she had gone head to head with Angelique, she would've won hands down, and wouldn't have needed any supernatural powers to come out on top.  Too bad they had her flake out over the return of Quentin's undead past love.

Maybe this is what you meant with the "flaking out", but Samantha always struck me as someone who's not very bright or determined, who compensates for that with a lot of self-righteous bluster.    She acts very defiant right up until the point when someone actually challenges her seriously, then she plays victim.   She's a house of cards.    A good character, but not a "strong" one, to me.

As for 1840 being warmed-over 1897/1795, one definitely has to try to look the other way on that, to enjoy the storyline.        Maybe it's just me, but I can almost feel Jonathan Frid's weariness as he trudges through another long storyline taken from other storylines.    For me, it was a given that DS wasn't going to do anything original by this point, so the best we could hope for was one last hurrah, where they plunged us back into an atmospheric past era, and shuffled all the reused plot elements so that they weren't too close to the originals.

This beats Jeckyl-Hyde and Rebecca ripoffs and asthmatic invisible monsters and cheap insufferable pigs, I think.     (No disrespect to any fans intended.)   DS seems to "wake up" at that moment when it goes into the past, including 1840.    I get that "oh yes, I remember now why I like this series" feeling.    Mr. Frid gets reanimated, too.    At the start of these past storylines I get the sense that inside he's saying "Finally, something for me to sink my teeth into again!"    ...and now that I've noticed the pun in that sentence, I'm declaring it intentional.....

Wouldn't it have been fascinating for 1970 Barnabas to stay out of the picture, with Julia being asked to fix everything in spite of 1840 Barnabas?

[Joeytrom]

When Stokes first arrived in 1840, I thought he was meant to be the lawyer for Quentin & desmond, that would have been an interesting role.  Though they needed to have Barnabas as the center of the stpry.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I love 1840 for many of the reasons already stated , so I won't repeat them. What I will repeat, though, for the sake of new members who might not know is that back in the late '90s there was a DS group on AOL called Dark Shadows Online (which predated Craig Hamrick's Web site) which held a sort of DS Academy Awards called the Brandies, and 1840 was voted the third most favorite DS storyline among the hundreds of DS fans who voted. (1795 came in first, 1897 second.)

[michael c]

i find that quite surprising.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

It's true nonetheless. And 1840 initially competed with every other DS storyline. All of them were on the first ballot, and then the top three vote getters (in all the categories, like Farorite Actor, Actress, Severed Body Part, etc.) competed on the final ballot.
(The log of the entire Brandies online ceremony (hosted by Diana Millay) is posted in the Members' Archive. Though, of course, no one but Midnite and I currently have access to it.)

[MagnusTrask]

I was thinking of naming 1840 as my 3rd favorite... 1967 might be third for me, but there's more spinning of the wheels than i'm comfortable with...

[Garth Blackwood]

I liked 1840 basically but the main thing (aside from the obvious, such as the roxanne paradox) that I found problematic is:

What the heck happened in 1840 the first time around that caused the events of 1970?? In 1897 and 1795 it was clearly explained what happened the first time, and what (if applicable) things changed. In 1840 I have no clue what happened the first time around. How did Gerard die originally? Was Quentin originallly convicted and executed? If true, the second thing seems like Barnabas and Julia would have found this out with a little research in 1970 -- either from the family history or court records or something. What did the family history originally say about Quentin I?

I just don't think the 1840 plot had much to do with the 1970 events, and the connection between them was never even attempted to be explained.

Overall, I think 1840 was decent, but definately by far my least favorite plot of them all.