Discuss - Infamous Ep #0938

[Watching Project]

Robservations Infamous #938

And if you'd care to look back, the first WP discussion topic for this ep:

Re: Discuss - Infamous Ep #0938

[MagnusTrask]

Whose VO?  The guy who played Merle Oberon?  (I always call him that.)  That was the only newly-shot scene from the past, I think.  This is the story-so-far recap episode.  It was apparently promoted as a chance for (new) viewers to catch up. 

Barnabas and Julia excange all their information.  Julia breaks her promise to Angelique, to keep her presence secret, without hesitation or regret.  We get a new scene at the cairn in 1796, with Oberon making the threat also made later by the later Leviathan.  Barnabas is then supposed to push it out of consciousness, but still be affected by it. 

Welcome back,"Sheriff Davenport"!!  (As his gravestone puts it, no first name.)

[DarkLady]

Yes, MT, the VO was by Peter Lombard, who played (not Merle) Oberon. 

I love the opening scene at the Old House. The drawing room is completely dark except for the bright fire. Barn and Julia sit opposite each other. It couldn't be more romantic, but Barn's narrative is far from romantic. DS Wiki has a beautiful frame grab of the scene.

And yes, I think the scene with Oberon is the only one that was reshot, so that Oberon could use the Leviathan box to revive Barnabas. Apparently he never learns that Kitty/Josette gave in to despair and took poison when he didn't return to her. I suppose someone came to the Old House and found her body--because nobody mentions finding a skeleton in Josette's room.

Julia does break her promise to Angelique, doesn't she.

Apparently Sheriff Davenport loved his job so much that he wanted "Sheriff" on his tombstone.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

It was apparently promoted as a chance for (new) viewers to catch up.

Actually, it was heavily promoted as a possible way to lure back viewers who had abandoned DS because of the Leviathans storyline, as delivering the answers to many questions that had been left dangling (like the fate of Petofi), and as finally revealing "the real story of the terrifying Leviathan plot" - but the ep never really delivered as promised. All it did was recap what loyal viewers already knew. Which is why so many fans were less than pleased with the ep and why they wrote letters such as the ones I shared back in '03 in this post:

Re:1970 program announcement

Apparently Sheriff Davenport loved his job so much that he wanted "Sheriff" on his tombstone.

Well, that explains it, then!! 

[Uncle Roger]

It was very, very unusual to see DS (or any daytime serial) promoted in prime time and those commercials were everywhere.

It was rather frustrating to see them bring up old plot threads, like Petofi and Josette for no real purpose. The Josette angle is dealt with later on. Sort of. But the Petofi thread never is. It would be interesting to see where the Leviathan story was going to go, had it not been derailed by extreme viewer dissatisfaction and the impending movie.

As for Sheriff, I think we've all seen stranger first names than that. There was someone who worked in my agency whose actual fbirth name was Major. And that was no Catch 22!

[Gothick]

It's fascinating to read those old letters from 1970.  I actually enjoyed the Leviathan storyline at the time.  Nobody I knew watched the show at that point so I watched in my own weirdie bubble.  I was already a Lovecraft fan at that point so I actually thought bringing a touch of HPL to DS was cool.

I do remember the announcements regarding this episode.  I was somewhat puzzled because the "revelation" turned out to be a re-cap. 

G.

[Uncle Roger]

Given the turn around time in magazine publishing, it's quite possible that the Leviathan story was over and done with by the time the magazine hit the newstand.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I have no idea when it comes to the other magazines, but After Noon TV was about two months or maybe even less behind real time because I remember a letter about the fire staged in Ep #693, which aired on February 19, 1969, being published in the issue that hit stores in April. So, given however long between the time the person wrote the letter, mailed it, it arrived at the After Noon TV offices, it was read, it was selected for publication, and the issue with it hit stores, that would have been about the delay time between real time and the issue hitting stores...

[michael c]

given how far out the previous storyline...1897...had been I don't really get why everyone was so up in arms about this???

from 1968 on the show was completely over the top plot wise.

[Uncle Roger]

In 2015, it is kind of hard to see what all of the fuss was about. In 1969/70, it was quite different. A large portion of the fan base (at least the more vocal part of fandom) clearly didn't want to see Barnabas as a bad guy. Frid actually did some of his best work during the early part of the story. But it wasn't what the fans wanted to see.

Perhaps if the story had been structured differently, it might have been better received. For example, if Count Petofi had popped into 1969 with the Leviathan box, with Barnabas, Julia and later Quentin battling him, the story might have been more successful.

[Gothick]

I actually thought Chris Bernau and Marie Wallace were wonderful in their work as the Todds.  I think the people who wrote those letters may have lacked what we used to call "maturity"--my Mom would say "Don't be so immature."  The Todds were very different from what kids were used to seeing on the show at that point.  The whole set-up was an unexpected step in a very different direction.  I still think the first five or six weeks were really good, some of the best episodes the shows produced. IMO it got bad when DC was told that the ratings were dropping and, more significantly, had to figure out how he was going to do the movie while the series was still in production.  Whoever hit on the whole Parallel Time shtick really should have gotten a bonus because it was a brilliant concept to achieve that goal--have some actors carrying on with the series while most of the heavy hitters were in Tarrytown.  It meant that the wind-up of Leviathan was really speeded-up, though.  I do feel for the writers being given those targets and having to come up with stuff that hadn't been properly planned.

G.

[DarkLady]

Uncle Roger and Gothick, I love your posts! I think it would have been brilliant to have Petofi arrive in the present (1969) with the box. We never did get a showdown between him and Quentin in 1897, and it would have been fun to have one.

I agree that Chris Bernau and Marie Wallace were utterly convincing as the Todds and really engaged me as their story progressed--or, I guess went downhill. They were tragic figures and I felt for them both. Then again, I didn't watch the show when it first aired. I was much older when I finally caught it on local public TV and then on the old SciFi channel in the 1980s.

It seems that whenever the ratings started dropping, DC would freak out and start plundering various sources (Dorian Grey, Orpheus, whatever, not to mention Dracula and Frankenstein) for plot lines. Most of the time, the writers did amazingly well at concocting stories, and when they got the chance they wrote some dialogue that was brilliant and even sensitive.

True, the Leviathan story speeded up toward the end, but by then it had gotten totally out of control and I was glad to see the end of it. I'm sure not everyone would agree, but I loved the whole parallel time thing.

[Uncle Roger]

Thank you so much, Dark Lady. A story that engages the characters engages the audience. Perhaps if the head Leviathan had been a shape shifting Count Petofi, the threat to Carolyn might have seemed more real to the audience.

From here on out, the show gets even crazier, shifting from one era to another. Daytime serials, at least in that era, were not meant to be seen on a daily basis. Other shows did a lot of recapping and used flashbacks a lot more. If you missed an episode, let alone a week of Dark Shadows, you may well have never seen the story you were watching be resolved.

[michael c]

certainly 1968, and one could argue much of 1897, were told from a rather "adolescent" sensibility. it was the stuff of lunch boxes and bubble gum cards...


the introductory weeks of 'leviathan'...a young couple establishing an antique shop in town, paul stoddard's return from the abyss...definitely had a more "adult" sensibility. there were days when it seemed more like an episode of 'edge of night' than a show that had become synonymous with monsters.

which is actually what I liked about the period. it was wonderfully dark and atmospheric before it started to go off the deep end. and the todds were great, epically tragic figures in the whole thing. unlike some other figures in the story they didn't "sign up" for any of it but paid the ultimate price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[Gothick]

Dark Lady, I actually love PT 1970.  It is the last storyline with a plot that has a coherent development, and a finale that draws together all the loose threads in a satisfactory conclusion. Granted there are speed bumps--notably Aunt Hannah's abrupt disappearance once Hoffman comes back (she was evidently viewed as a surrogate for Hoffman, as Alexalique's co-conspirator), and the whole Claude North thing (I wonder if Brian Sturdivant just failed to show up for work one day--that's what happened with Craig Slocum).  I also enjoy getting to see Edmonds, Bennett, Thayer and others play such way-out characters.  John Karlen played an alcoholic writer, but Will H. Loomis was still more with-it than his previous characterizations--though I will always love Willie best of all his roles.  The Jekyll/Hyde plot isn't all that interesting to me, but every storyline has something that I feel the urge to fast forward through (in 1795, it's the Vicki/Peter stuff and Vicki's endless trial scenes).

The final weeks of Leviathan are memorable for that awful "Shadow" "special" effect.  Ah well.

G.