Discuss - Ep #0835

Robservations #835

Gosh! I'm the first one to post here, and this topic was posted over one week ago! I hope more people catch up. It's more fun when there are several people commenting on an episode. Anyway...

Major Milestones:
1. Edward scattered the I-Ching wands just as Barnabas's astral body was going through the door! The 1969 Barnabas disappeared!
2. This episode took place in both 1897 and 1969.
3. Edward forced Barnabas into a cell to face the dawn.
4. The time-traveling note episode. Barnabas wrote a note to Julia and placed it in the secret drawer in 1897. The yellowed note was "magically" discovered by Amy in 1969!
5. Julia and Amy went to Collinwood so that Julia could try to talk to Quentin about how he died.
6. When Julia and Prof. Stokes read Barnabas's note, they realized that the events of 1897 and 1969 were happening concurrently. It was the same date in 1969!

That was thrilling when Barnabas convulsed and disappeared in 1969! It made me wonder how he would get back! They both merged into one person. Very exciting and fascinating!

It was good to see Julia, Amy, and Prof. Stokes again. Julia really should have told Prof. Stokes about Barnabas's secret - and Chris's secret, too. Prof. Stokes was being so helpful, and Julia was being deceptive. Prof. Stokes could have been a bigger help if he had known.

It was wonderful for Julia to want to do anything to help Barnabas. Her love for him was obvious. She was being very brave by confronting Quentin like that.

I really love the "time traveling" note. Right after it was placed in the bureau by Barnabas, Amy accidentally found it in 1969. Neat!

----- Sally -----

I guess Leviathans was being planned for from this moment on, because [spoiler]they felt the need to have Barnabas completely in 1897 so he could physically travel to 1796 again afterward.   No mention of why it happened fictionally, or how Barnabas got to 1967 in the first place if he doesn't get back into the coffin...[/spoiler]

When Julia and Prof. Stokes read Barnabas's note, they realized that the events of 1897 and 1969 were happening concurrently. It was the same date in 1969!

I thought this was an interesting  development as  before in the glimpses into the present all we knew was that David was dying and lingering for quite a long time.  This is in total contrast to Vickie's trip to the past where she was only missing from the present for a few minutes.  
This was an exciting episode with the story running concurrently, and the statement that Barnabas Collins was dead.  It did not make sense that Edward could block the passage from the cell in the Old House.  I noticed that there was a gas jet lighting the basement of the Old House.  When did the family find the time to pipe in gas to a long deserted house and why?  And then in the present day the fake old fashioned light bulbs are still in the pole lamps in the foyer

I came up with a theory about this regarding Barnabas and the body switches.
I know there aren't anymore scenes in the Collins mausoleum in 1897, so I came up with the following:

1. Barnabas' 1969 body is drawn to 1897 reuniting with his 1969 soul self
2. Barnabas' 1897 body is reunited with his 1897 soul self and he is returned to the chained coffin
    (where he took the body over in the first place). The I Ching must have reset this point.
3. Barnabas is still a vampire with his 1969 body in 1897 because Adam doesn't exist yet, so he is back to being
    his cursed vampire self.

I really, REALLY wanted to smack Edward up on the head in this episode. He condemns Barnabas for making a pact with the devil so matter-of-factly, like he KNOWS for a fact that Barnabas chose to become what he is. Edward knows nothing about the circumstances under which Barnabas became a vampire. Barnabas himself said that he couldn't prevent what had happened to him, but Edward is too damn stubborn and unwilling to listen.

I am confused why Professor Stokes should automatically assume that Barnabas is dead because his body disappeared. Couldn't Barnabas' physical body simply have vanished into wherever he was, shouldn't that possibility have occured to Stokes?

It's a good thing that Julia got her hands on the letter or else they never would have known Barnabas was sill alive. I don't understand why Amy felt she had to hide it from her. She could have just handed it to Julia and said she found it in the cabinet.

A smug, know-it-all moralist like Edward would not be moved by anything Barnabas might say in his defense.  Such people have little regard for WHY a person might be a certain way; they're just convinced THEY would never be such a way so no one else should be either.

I really love the letter-across-time plot device, one of my favorites in all of DS.  In fact, I'd been waiting weeks for it to finally arrive (the device, not the letter, of course).   

It's always nice to see the old characters - kind of like going home again.

A smug, know-it-all moralist like Edward would not be moved by anything Barnabas might say in his defense.  Such people have little regard for WHY a person might be a certain way; they're just convinced THEY would never be such a way so no one else should be either.

Good point.

A smug, know-it-all moralist like Edward would not be moved by anything Barnabas might say in his defense.  Such people have little regard for WHY a person might be a certain way; they're just convinced THEY would never be such a way so no one else should be either.

Excellent point. Edward is so narrow-minded in addition to being a self-righteous know-it-all. In his mind people are either all good or all bad, in Edward's view people are either one or the other, no in-between, and that's not really how human behavior is. We are all flawed human beings, capable of being and doing good AND evil. We're not all good and not all bad.

I liked the way Barnabas was translucent when we saw him walking around while he was in the I Ching trance.  It added to the atmosphere.

Did Edward ever stop to wonder why Barnabas was never destroyed before?  It would have been so easy for the secret-holder to do it during the daytime.  Did he wonder if there was more to the secret than he had already guessed?  For all he knew, when Barnabas was destroyed, the whole Collins family would vanish in a puff of smoke.  Yes, I know, Edward thinks he knows everything already - but I still come back to: Did Edward ever stop to wonder why Barnabas was never destroyed before?

If, for Barnabas, the events of 1897 and 1969 are happening concurrently, then what would have happened if Barnabas had initially tried the I Ching trance a few months later, when the ghastly events of 1897 were already halfway finished?  Would the I Ching (loving Barnabas as it does) have come up with some other way to help Barnabas?

Julia mentioned something to Professor Stokes about Barnabas trying to help Chris as well as David, which surprised me, because Stokes didn't know that Chris was a werewolf, did he?  But Stokes didn't comment on what Julia said.

It was fun when Julia and Amy went to the empty Collinwood, and then Quentin's music started to play.  Suddenly we were back in the ghost story of six or seven months ago, and it was as if we hadn't seen anything at all of 1897.

It had to be the I Ching that "chose" (is it somehow a conscious being?) to run the events of 1969 and 1897 in parallel according to calendar dates, because after all, in ordinary life 1969 and 1897 aren't running "concurrently", they're just seventy years apart and that's that.   Maybe the I Ching would have dispensed with the parallel calendars thing, if Barnabas had tried a few weeks or months later.    Or maybe it has a supernatural connection with calendar dates, and couldn't.

It had to be the I Ching that "chose" (is it somehow a conscious being?) to run the events of 1969 and 1897 in parallel according to calendar dates...

Barnabas explained recently (I think in the previous ep) that the I-Ching works by freeing the mind and the will.  So wouldn't it be the user that is making the choices, not the I-Ching itself?

Julia mentioned something to Professor Stokes about Barnabas trying to help Chris as well as David, which surprised me, because Stokes didn't know that Chris was a werewolf, did he?  But Stokes didn't comment on what Julia said.

That was definitely a plot hole.  And I'd venture to say not the only one in the episode...

Edward proclaimed that Barnabas would not be able to get out of his cell, and confirmed Barnabas' statement that he thought of everything.  But in actuality, he hadn't.  Edward previously witnessed Barnabas disappearing in the police station.  Granted, Barnabas is unable to disappear as long as he bears Petofi's mark (and I'm assuming he lost the ability to turn into a bat as well, since he didn't turn into one now or right after receiving the mark), but Edward does not know this-- we witnessed his entire conversation with Petofi and it did not come up.  So Edward, like the Professor in Lydia's above example, behaved as if he had knowledge that he just didn't have.

More oddness--
Edward:  "Even with someone like you, I cannot force myself to kill in cold blood."
I'd have an easier time accepting this had Edward not bravely staked Dirk Wilkins.  Yes, Dirk was not a Collins, but considering that Edward preferred to return an hour before dawn to watch Barnabas die slowly rather than shoot him in the heart so that he could die quickly, I'm just not seeing the advantage to being kin if all it gets you is a more agonizing death.

As for this--
Julia to Stokes (about Amy):  "I don't think she has ever been in any jeopardy."
Okay, that's just stupid, but I'm chalking it up to Julia's desperation to save her man!!

Major Milestones: ...
2. This episode took place in both 1897 and 1969.

It was cool, but was it a milestone?