In all fairness, whenever DC was in town, he DICTATED the storylines to the writers. That's right, Dan Curtis was not only the producer, he was also the uncrowned head writer on the show. There were longish periods when Dan was in England or elsewhere pursuing other projects and in those periods, the stories actually managed to make sense. I think the first Laura Collins story (1966-67) was so well written because DC wasn't around to interfere--I believe he was in England throughout that period.
According to Sam Hall, if one of the writers tried to protest that what Dan ordered did not make sense, he would bark, "Are you writing the show or not? I can get a lotta people to write this show." So they would have to give in and do what he said, regardless of how loopy or incoherent.
In the final two to three years, the rhythm of the stories with all the cliffhangers and increasing avalanche of occulture meant that the writers themselves simply could not follow what was going on. Add in the fact that many if not most of the shows were taped way out of sequence.
The reintroduction of Quentin in 1970 was purely driven by the character's huge popularity. What I remember from what was revealed is that Frederick Thorne had been a previous alias adopted by Quentin before he assumed the Grant Douglas identity. Immortals have to keep doing this because otherwise, people become curious why somebody that old still looks so young. (It was before the invention of botox, guerilla plastic surgery, etc.)
cheers, G.
