It's hard to imagine what DS would've been like if Alexandra had not left the series permanently. She had to leave because she was pregnant, but let's just say she decided to do so only temporarily until she was up and about to return. Okay, we're talking about quite a few months, if not almost a year. That would mean keeping her character in play and that would mean having an "Icky-Vicki" taking over temporarily. there would only be so many scenes they could do with her standing in front of furniture or being shot from bosom-up. So let's complete the pre-Quentin-haunting storyline. Vicki would marry Jeff and he'd be taken away to the past (good). Vicki would be inconsolable. Weep, cry, try to commit suicide at Widow's Hill, blah-blah-blah. Since DC knew that AM would return and the IV (Icky-Vicki) would be only temporary and not bring up the ire of the viewing audience, there would be no need to get rid of the character, hoping the audience would hang on. So IV would stay as the story switched to the Quentin haunting as it did with IV still in residence. That would mean that TLATKLAS won't have to give up her job slashing hash and paying the bills for her cottage and take the position as governess at Collinwood. And that would mean that the character of Maggie would become, what? What was left for her? So IV would remain governess as the Quentin/Beth hauntings/possessions would continue. IV would find Mr. Juggins, not Maggie, so forth and so on. IV would go to Collinwood to try and find David and Amy and would she be found by the others dressed in Victorian garb and claiming she's Rachel Drummond? I imagine by this time that DC and the writers would've decided that Miss Drummond was the first reincarnation of Josette, but Vicki was not the reincarnation but Maggie was. Well, maybe Maggie remained as so and somehow when she got bored slashing hash got involved, but where would that leave Vicki? The story proceeds, and DC still insists that "Vicki is Vicki" and Barnabas goes back in time. Or would it, again, be Vicki? Does she get sucked in by the I-Ching? Like when Gilligan overheard the Professor trying to hypnotize Mary Ann when she fell and hit her head and thought she was Ginger and now Gilligan thought he was Mary Ann? Well, that would be a repeat of 1795/96 but I don't think DS would've been lazy enough to do that like he did with the 1840/41 storyline. And, besides, there would've been no Barnabas, the star of the show, to be in 1897 unless he decided, after a long time to go back into time to somehow save Vicki and everyone else. Until then, there would've been nothing for him to do. By that time, AM would've been done dealing with the trials and travails of being pregnant, giving birth and seeing to a proper nanny to care for her child to return if the audience had held on long enough with the temporary IV.
I just don't see how it could've worked. The best thing, from hindsight, is that it was good that AM got preggers and left. We had a couple IV's and then the character was written out. Other than repeating a Vicki-going-to-the-past again plot so she can remain Vicki as DC wanted, what was left? What worked once doesn't mean it would work again. DC tried to emulate the Quentin/Beth haunting with the Gerard/Daphne thing and that fell flat. Doing a Barnabas/Vicki thing with a Quentin/Vicki thing, in my humble opinion, would've done the series in rather than giving it the highest ratings it ever had.
Gerard
