Many Laura Murdoch Questions (spoilers)

[MagnusTrask]

FULL OF LAURA COLLINS SPOILERS...

I have only just now watched the first Laura storyline (1966-67) for the first time.   Most of the questions I assumed would be answered weren't.  So I'm asking here in case anyone has any ideas, but please keep in mind that I have yet to see the start of the second Laura storyline, since long-ago childhood anyway, and I don't remember it.  No too-specific spoilers for that, please.

(1)  My biggest question:   How can a human being be a mythological bird?   Was she born a bird, and just worked her way up the evolutionary ladder through stick-to-it-iveness?   

(2)  Does Laura *have* to go up in flames?   Why, if she's not old and in need of regeneration to survive?   Is it her nature to do it every so often just to keep going?

(3)  How often does Laura have to burn?   If every 100 years, then why did she burn in her apartment in Pheonix, Arizona, just weeks before this storyline?

(4)  Does Laura actually go to another world after burning?   Where is it?  Is it all black like people's visions of it, and not like her paradise-like descriptions?

(5)  What happens immediately after she burns?   Does she go to spend some years in this other world, or is she immediately re-formed (in a location of her choice?) in our world?   If the latter, why do it?

(6)  Why the deadline?

(7)  What role was David supposed to play in this process?   Why does Laura want to burn her offspring too?   *Does* she have to?   Does she get to take them to live in this other world?    Does she just think that she does?   (She's been through this often enough to know either way, you'd think.)

(8)  Is Laura really murderously psychopathic, on top of also being a genuine supernatural creature?   Is she taking her kids with her when she burns, out of crazy possessiveness, knowing they'll just die?   It's implied that she *did* become reborn at the fishing shack.   The uninvolvement of David didn't prevent this. 

(9)  Was there a sense in which Burke's girlfriend, pre-apartment-fire Laura, wasn't the same person as 1967 Laura?   She, the former, sounded much more "human".   Why did she go to a sanitarium?   Why did she allow it?   I thought it would be revealed that she was locked up for "believing" she was a Phoenix, or for being a firebug.   Why did she let Roger yell at her so much in Augusta?   Was all this just leftover "stuff" of the character of Roger's wife from the start of DS, that they couldn't work into the new story of Laura the Pheonix?

(10)  Was Laura a supernatural creature in 1956, during the Roger/Burke/manslaughter thing?   Did she grow up as 20th century Laura, in Collinsport (despite having lived before as an adult), or just turn up in town one day as an adult?   Why doesn't anyone remember noticing anything strange or spooky about her before now?   

(11)  Is 1967 Laura not connected to Ra at all?   There was a brief mention of the Sun and its life-giving properties at the fishing shack, but that's all.  Was the flame Quentin extinguished meant to substitute for burning and being reborn, sort of like a portable, continuous, ever-renewing Pheonix fire?   If so, that's pretty clever.   It's right at this point where my 1897 tapes start.   (There may be no way to answer this, without its being a spoiler for me.)

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I'm sure you're dying for answers to all these questions. But considering that the Laura storyline will be starting up next Wednesday as part of the Watching Project, it might be a good idea if we hold off responding to them until we get into that storyline. I, for one, have only seen the storyline twice, and I'm sure there's tons about it that I've forgotten. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. So, let's wait a bit on this topic for more people to begin to remember exactly what went down. And in that spirit, I've locked this topic temporarily. 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Now that the Laura storyline is practically done so far as the Watching Project goes, bringing this back to the top of the topic list. 

Discuss. 

[tragic bat]

Q5:  In 1897, it's strongly implied that she had no physical form and needed Nora to bring her back to the land of the living.   So at least in that case, she was in limbo for a time, though that might have just been the Egyptian Gods.   I think that, generally, she reverts to being about twenty years of age and goes off to start a new life cycle soon after burning (and attempting to burn any children she might have.) 

Q11: In my opinion, it was the events which happened when Laura and Quentin were in Egypt a year or so before 1897 that virtually enslaved Laura to the Egyptian Gods for that era; but she later broke free and became independant again by 1966. 

[Lydia]

(1)  My biggest question:   How can a human being be a mythological bird?

Many centuries ago, there was a huge controversy among Christians as to whether Jesus started out divine, or if he was born human and got promoted.  I assume people died because of it, because that's the sort of thing that went on back then.  Are you sure you want to pursue the question of Laura's exact nature?

(2)  Does Laura *have* to go up in flames?   Why, if she's not old and in need of regeneration to survive?

I recommend to you "The Deacon's Masterpiece", a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

(3)  How often does Laura have to burn?   If every 100 years, then why did she burn in her apartment in Pheonix, Arizona, just weeks before this storyline?

The fire in Phoenix makes no sense to me.  But maybe the Dark Shadows phoenix of 1967 acquires energy through being burnt, whenever it happens, but the fire that happens at the hundred-year mark is the jackpot fire.

(4)  Does Laura actually go to another world after burning?

I believe that she believes she does.  If in fact she doesn't, and if after at least two previous century-mark burnings she doesn't know that she doesn't go to another world - then - oh, dear, that's getting into deeper territory than I care to enter at the moment.

(5)  What happens immediately after she burns?

This is related to the previous question.  But if Laura is immediately reborn into our world, with no intermission in paradise, then what is wrong with that?  Life is good even if you're not in paradise.

(6)  Why the deadline?

Because that's the way it is in the Dark Shadows universe.  If you don't get home by midnight, your coach turns into a pumpkin.  If you don't burn up every hundred years, you lose your eternal life.

(7)  What role was David supposed to play in this process?

It seemed clear to me in the fishing shack fire that David's presence was not required for Laura to do her 100-year burn properly.  But the story says the phoenix builds a nest before igniting, so apparently the maternal aspect of the phoenix was important.  Maybe there is a strong, superhuman connection between the phoenix and her child, so that she feels he must be with her in the fire, but at a certain point, if the child is not there, the connection is destroyed.  I'm having trouble working the free will aspect into this scenario - i.e. Laura said that David must come with her of his own free will.  But I think it can be worked in, if you have a sharp enough shoehorn.

(8 )  Is Laura really murderously psychopathic, on top of also being a genuine supernatural creature?

I don't think so.  Granted, she killed Dr. Guthrie and knocked Elizabeth out of the picture.  But if she's a genuine supernatural creature, why should she display compassion to creatures who are members of a lesser species?  (Perhaps this is the time to mention that I have a new cat.  We haven't yet worked out which of us is the member of the lesser species, mostly because she'd rather play with my shoelaces than discuss weighty philosophical issues.)

(9)  Was there a sense in which Burke's girlfriend, pre-apartment-fire Laura, wasn't the same person as 1967 Laura?

The pre-sanitarium Laura was definitely different from the post-apartment-fire Laura.  More than one person noticed it.  I don't know about the interval between the sanitarium and the time spent in Phoenix.  As for the reason for the difference, I'll have to do a lot more thinking before I reconcile it with the whole phoenix legend.  Roger said that part of what put her in the sanitarium was feelings of guilt over the series of events that led to Burke going to prison.  Or he said something like that.  I think that when he said it, he seemed to believe it, but that doesn't mean it was true.  At any rate, he didn't say anything about her having an unhealthy relationship with fire.  He did, however, comment once on the strong, exclusionary bond that existed between Laura and David when they were in Augusta.  Conceivably (I'm thinking about my answer to question #7 here) that bond led to some display of weirdness that couldn't be overlooked, but which Roger, in the good old Collins tradition of denial, forgot as soon as Laura was committed.  As for why Laura let Roger yell at her - didn't Laura yell right back at him?

(10)  Was Laura a supernatural creature in 1956, during the Roger/Burke/manslaughter thing?

Again, I've got to do a lot more thinking about this.  It just doesn't make sense to me that she wasn't a supernatural creature at that point, or that she had forgotten her supernatural nature.  There's got to be a better solution, but I haven't come up with it yet.

(11)  Is 1967 Laura not connected to Ra at all?

I think that's correct.  As for questions about 1897 Laura...I think the answer is no, but it's been three years since I last watched that storyline, so I don't care to say.

[Gothick]

Once upon a time, William Mann, who is now a somewhat well-known author of celebrity biographies and novels, wrote an article giving a fairly plausible back-story for Laura Murdoch Collins, Phoenix of the ages. It was published in a 1990s issue of the old zine, Inside the Old House.  If the editor of the zine runs a website now (I have had no contact with him in well over a decade, but if I remember correctly, his name was Dale Clark), perhaps someday he could be talked into posting Bill's essay on the internet.  I didn't agree with all of Bill's ideas, but I think he did come up with the best solution to a number of your questions.

It seems fairly clear in both 1966 and 1897 that the pre-burning Laura was not a Phoenix, but that she was something of a playgirl (if I may be allowed to use a slang expression from the era).  After Laura's disappearance in 1967, Roger flatly informs Liz that the woman had walked among them during those fraught months "wasn't Laura."  Not the Laura he had known, at any rate.  There's a definitiveness to that scene that feels quite real to me.  And yet, Laura was able to play upon the emotions of both Roger and Burke in her attempts to take David for herself. 

If I'm remembering correctly, Bill Mann came up with an occult reason for why Laura was required to sacrifice her child/children in her second hecatomb.  I think it was the price for having "immortal life."  Not a price any normal mother would welcome.  I thought one of the incredible things about Diana Millay's performance was how she suggested Laura's inhuman nature in a very subtle way as the story went on.  The writing in the 1966/67 story was just a bit more subtle than the writing for her story in 1897.

I do think that there was some kind of Phoenix Paradise in which Laura's consciousness dwelt in between incarnations.  Her descriptions of it, particularly in the 1966/67 story, felt very "alive" to me, as if she were describing something she had really felt and seen.

Alas, the words of the spirit of David Radcliffe (was it David Radcliffe?) at that seance suggests that although Laura's progeny may go into the flames with her, she goes on to her Phoenixworld alone. (Am I hallucinating this scene with the spirit of the earlier David?)

This is about all I have the energy to write tonight on the topic.  The Phoenix and the Count Petofi story were perhaps the most original narratives DS ever produced, and the 1966/67 Phoenix story might have been the highpoint, atmospherically, of the entire series... well worth viewing multiple times.

G. 

[michael c]

agreed.

for me the 66-67 laura story is an absolute highpoint. a personal favorite.

convoluted to be sure. i've never truly been able to "figure it out" per se but atmospherically and in terms of it's pacing and tempo it's flawless.

and what can one really say about miss millay? mesmerizingly strange.