In Memoriam

[Gerard]

I usually post this every time on this day for the past several years.  It was on this day, a Friday, when those of us "growing up" watched DS and it all ended on this day.  I refused to believe it.  I hoped beyond hope that things would be different the following Monday, that ABC had made a mistake, but there it was, the newest version of Password in place of our beloved DS.  It was over.  There was still NoDS to hit the theaters, the comic books (awful as they were) and the comic series in newspapers (although our local one didn't carry it) and the Marilyn Ross books for about another year for our fixation.  But it was over.  RIP, DS.

Gerard

[Philippe Cordier]

I don't think I was aware of a specific day when this happened, and I hadn't been able to watch "Dark Shadows" during the last school year - I believe there may have been a time change with my local station and the show may have aired an hour earlier.

But I do recall a sense of loss from time to time. I never saw the movies until many years later, and nothing then or now has managed to replace the original "Dark Shadows" and the effect it had on so many of us as impressionable youngsters!

We never would have dared to dream that one day we would be able to watch, and own, the entire show ... and find plenty of people to discuss it with!

[michael c]

i'm sure if i had been a viewer at the time i would have been devastated...


but as a contemporary viewer i have found the five year cycle to be more than satisfying. 1225 episodes of anything is a lot to get through. and towards the end it really started to feel played out.


i really don't think i could have slogged through "1864 parallel time" or whatever the next time period/storyline would have been and another round of generic "Trasks", "Quentins" and Nancy Barrett cockney "Fayes". Joanathan, Grayson and Joan in particular seemed like they were ready to collapse from exhaustion during the final months. the freshness and energy was gone.

all good things must come to an end.

[Gerard]

I so agree, Michael, that it seems that DC just wanted to rehash old storylines over and over again.  It's like he lost interest.  Yet, there were so many plot possibilities.  When I did my for-fun what-if-it-continued synopsis, I came up with tons.  The first was having Barnabas, Julia and Eliot returning to 1971 after departing 1841 only to find that they so radically changed the time-line that the family they knew was gone, replaced by different, unfamiliar characters and somehow they had to fix it.  Rumor has it that DC wanted to incorporate a mummy plot, so I did that (and Laura was in it as well).  I composed a plot involving a scandal that happened during WWII when Jamison Collins along with that scoundrel Jason Maguire, fudged on naval contracts to make $$$ and built sub-standard liberty ships at Collins Shipping.  One sank on her trials during a storm and all crewmembers died.  Now their angry, vengeful ghosts were haunting Collinsport with deadly results.  I did an alien-invasion one that was somewhat based on The Invaders.  I even had a plot, with no supernatural elements, set in London with Elizabeth, Roger and Barnabas involved in a terrorist plot, harkening back to the show's original mystery, no-supernatural design.  There were many, many more I came up with.  If I could come up with all that, why couldn't - or wouldn't - DC?

Gerard

[Uncle Roger]

I always felt that one of the things that made Dark Shadows unique, the stories set in different time periods, eventually brought about its downfall. During the final year, there were five different settings (as well as one day visits to 1692 and 1680PT) and that had to be confusing to casual viewers who only watched once or twice a week. Hardcore viewers would watch no matter what but casual viewers help keep shows on the air.
There was certainly a lot of story potential left in DS but apparently they weren't stories that DC was interested in telling. Perhaps if he had let the writers actually write......

[michael c]

what had been unique innovations earlier in the show's run...concepts of time travel, parallel worlds and multiple characterizations...had by around 1970 actually become more of a crutch...


run out of fresh story ideas for "the present"?? just launch some characters into the past! it was like a costume change and different character names was supposed to provide the "atmosphere" and viewers wouldn't notice how repetitive it was becoming. when a story ran out of steam they just changed the time period. it wasn't fresh anymore.

for me 1970 Parallel Time was the last truly new or inventive storyline.

[Gerard]

Uncle Roger and Michael, you're both right.  DS descended into having the current time characters being haunted and then - BAM! - go back in time for months with unresolved plot-twists.  Even in the brilliant PT of 1970 (which could've been further explored), there were the elements of Damien's ghost that was never explained, and what the hell did Claude North, whether alive or dead, have to do with it?  Throw them in and then discard them.  Gerard and Daphne were just a rehash of Quentin and Beth, and the time-travel didn't answer much of anything.  That ship, the Raging Queen, or whatever she was called, was such a big thing in both present and past and then summarily dismissed. 

OK, like I said, I came up with lots of stories and plots to continue DS.  Along with the ones I mentioned, I had others, like Victoria's return (contemplating that Moltke would've eventually returned), a future Collins family member traveling to the past (ala the Charles Delaware Troll's brilliant what-if-it-had-continued synopsis) and it involved demonic possession that would destroy the futuristic family.  A return by Barnabas to the CT-PT world to rescue Angelique, who has been totally transformed and is exiled there, to find out what has happened to Quentin, Maggie, Daniel and the rest.  Collinwood is gone, being burned to the ground as what had happened in the OS, and the survivors are living in Loomis House and really bad things are going on.  A new, reluctant vampire has moved into Collinsport.  Petofi has returned, not as a ghost, but as a consciousness that left his body before he died in the fire in 1897 with lethal results.  A curse placed upon the Collins' back in 16th century Ireland explains why the family is so tormented throughout time and lead to its extinction until - yup, another time-travel story - Barnabas saves the day and brings the series to an end.  Again, if I could come up with all this, why couldn't DC?

Gerard

[Uncle Roger]

The other problem was DC. Whatever his merits were as a producer or director, he really didn't have the right sort of creativity to come up with story. He was, in effect, the show's head writer and geared the story towards what he wanted. Stories of his telling the writers to write it his way or else are pretty common.