Julia's Lack of curiosity about Barnabas' ORIGIN

[Shadowsfan]

When Julia discovers  Barnabas' secret  she confronts him  and mentions the scientific reasons he is the way he is  but didn't she ever feel compelled  to ask him  HOW  he became  the " Living Dead"    as it was referred to in the beginning of the Barnabas storyline ..  He mentioned Josette alot to her but wasn't there another female worth mentioning  to fill Julia in  considering she knew the main SECRET already  ?

[McTrooper]

Good point.
Julia must have been an extremely accepting type not to question the whole situation.

Or . .  maybe she just didn't want to lose her chance to study Barnabas by being too nosey.

Julia asking and having Barnabas refuse to answer would have made a great scene. 

[michael c]

barnabas doesn't mention angelique to anyone in the present time until after 1795.strange.it's not until after vicki buys the painting of angelique that he thinks to mention it to julia.

months later julia says something to willie about ang and he'd never heard of her either(and,like julia,never questioned barnabas about how he became "what he was").

of coarse none of this had anything to do with the writers not knowing how he became what he was until probably a few days before the storyline started.

[Ryan Collins]

The original origins of Barnabas were a mystery up until the 1795 storyline. Barnabas does talk about his relationship with his Uncle Jeremiah and Josette and even that is completely thrown out the window. The reason as we know is quite simple. Barnabas became incredibly popular and sympathetic. The original story was the Barnabas stole Josette from Jeremiah and that she never truly loved him.

In true WWF fashion, the writers started to notice that Barnabas was getting alot of fanmail and thus decided to turn him into the reluctant hero instead of the villian. This lead to the 1795 origin that we know and love. It would be nice to see a revamped origin of sorts if the new DS show ever gets optioned. Their were rumours that the origin of Barnabas would be diff/ in some ways.

[Midnite]

Welcome, Ryan Collins!

WWF?  Is that a new abbreviation or a typo? 

[PennyDreadful]

I always imagined Julia asked him about it off-screen and he replied something to the effect of, "You ask far too many questions Doctor" then glared at her and turned without answering.  It would certainly have been in keeping with Barnabas' character at the time to have responded that way.

[CyrusL]

WWF?  Is that a new abbreviation or a typo? 

To my knowledge, WWF refers to World Wrestling Federation. Often wrestlers go from being "good guys" to "Bad guys" based upon fan mail feedback.
   vs  

Michael

[Midnite]

To my knowledge, WWF refers to World Wrestling Federation. Often wrestlers go from being "good guys" to "Bad guys" based upon fan mail feedback.

Ah.  Thanks, Michael. 

[CyrusL]

Interesting topic, in DS world, I've often had a personal theory that when Vickie went into the past, she actually went into the first "parallel time". This explains many inconsistencies, the date Colliwood was built, why Barnabas refers to Jeremiah as "an old man", the date of Josette's death (originally about 1820), and odd little things such as Barnabas referring to a "they" who made him "this way," and as stated, never a mention of Angelique, although she will often be discussed throughout the rest of the series. Now we know this is really because the writers never expected us to remember any of this, and just recreated the whole character relationships for 1795, not 1820s. (They couldn't vene keep 1795 consistent!)
    As a collector of vampire films, I can say prior to Dark Shadows, few ever approached the subject of how the vampire was cursed. A notable exception being the vampire western "Curse of the Undead" with Rawhide's Eric Fleming and Michael Pate as the black leather bloodsucker. I appreciate David Skal, authority on all things vampire and Dracula, who noted in "V is for Vampire" that Dark Shadows is significant as the transitional vampire saga, between the Draculas, where origins were never approarched, and the Anne Rice style of vampire fiction, where the vampire's personal lives are well explored.
    In the series, the only other explanation I would suggest is that Barnabas , ever so moody, never approached his past until Vickie stumbled into it. Then, as he began to trust Julia, he let her in. I don't think Barnabas had trusted Willy as he had Ben Stokes, until much later on.  Willy was his perpetual alibi for a while.
    I often wondered why Barnabas never got closer to Prof Stokes, as Ben's obvious direct ancestor. I would have written it to that direction.

Michael  

[Raineypark]

    I often wondered why Barnabas never got closer to Prof Stokes, as Ben's obvious direct ancestor. I would have written it to that direction.

I agree that it would have made perfect sense for Barnabas to take the Professor into his confidence because of the connection to Ben.......but I think for the sake of the story telling, it was more interesting to keep Prof. Stokes at arms length.  Julia was already privy to all Barnabas' secrets, while Prof. Stokes always had to keep probing and studying, investigating and reading.  Trying to stay one step ahead of him, while at the same time calling upon him for help, created a plot tension that would  not have existed otherwise.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

    I often wondered why Barnabas never got closer to Prof Stokes, as Ben's obvious direct ancestor. I would have written it to that direction.

That definitely would have been a fascinating way to go. I know I would have liked to have seen it (at some point). But at the same time I think the reason the writers never went that way might have been because it would have (eventually) required a change in direction for Barnabas' character that they weren't willing to take (at least not yet). Barn rarely if ever listened to the counsel that either Julia or Willie gave him. From that one could surmise that, even though Barn thought of both of them as friends, even close friends, he never actually thought of them as his equals. (No one treats an equal the way he often treated them.  ) However, if Barn truly let Prof. Stokes into his inner circle, I can't see Barn continually dismissing his counsel quite so easily. With Stokes in the mix, Barn would have had to develop a much deeper conscience regarding the actions he'd take to save himself and/or the Collins family. True, Stokes condoned the attempted murder of Eve - but one could easily say that being as she was an artificially created woman whose life force was that of one of the 18th century's most notorious murderesses, she was an exceptional case. It's hard to imagine that Stokes would stand for the level of killing and endangerment that Julia and Willie routinely put up with, and it's practically impossible to imagine that Stokes would put up with a death like, say, that of Carl Collins. Being as Stokes was a highly principled man, one can easily see the situation getting to the point where either Barn's behavior would have had to change or he would have had to deal with Stokes turning against him. And unlike the situation with Dr. Woodard, having Barn singlehandedly plot or conspire together with Julia and/or Willie to kill off Stokes would not have gone over well with the audience. We were willing to overlook an awful lot, but it's impossible to imagine how the audience would have ever looked the other way over something like the murder of an intimate simply so that Barn would continue to be his own one man judge, jury and executioner.

[Gothick]

In an episode about 3 or 4 weeks after Vicki's return to 1968 from 1795, Barnabas tells Julia something like "the past is constantly being relived and re-enacting, even as we stand in this room..."  When I've watched that scene, I've thought of it as the writers giving a wink and a nod to viewers who bothered to pay attention to the continuity, and an acknowledgement that quite a lot of Barnabas' backstory had been drastically changed in the wake of the 1795 storyline.

G.

[McTrooper]

To my knowledge, WWF refers to World Wrestling Federation. Often wrestlers go from being "good guys" to "Bad guys" based upon fan mail feedback.

It did for a long time.  But the WWF changed there name to WWE, because of a European charity organization.
By the way Ryan Collins that's a great analogy


So, related to the topic, how do you think the 91 origin story played out compared to this one?
Was it better that the story line was originally unplanned or planned?
Not just in terms of continuity, but the general feel of the story.

[CyrusL]

how do you think the 91 origin story played out compared to this one?
Was it better that the story line was originally unplanned or planned?
Not just in terms of continuity, but the general feel of the story.

While I had some problems with the '91 series, the plots I thought were tighter and had less inconsistencies, which I think helped by their reviewing the problems with the original series scripts.(Of course, they had one one-hour show per week, so it HAD to move more quickly) Some notable, I feel, improvements included Jeremiah and Barnabas being brothers rather than uncle and nephew, although they were about the same age, and having Vickie as Josette's reincarnation rather than Maggie. Now this did push Maggie into being a background character, who now was romatically linked to Roger. Joe Haskell was still with Carolyn as the series went.
    On the other hand, I didn't like the recasting of the present day caharcters into the past characters as much, as since I felt the people of Collinsport sort of had recurring themes in their destinies, I like for example having Roger being Joshua better than having Roger transmute into Trask. Now the reason they did this, was so Roy Thinnes could play Trask, which I think he liked better than playing Roger. Some people such as Jean Simmons had the same roles, Elizabeth and Naomi, and Dr. Hoffman was the Countess DuPres again, but Willie was now Ben Stokes. I could discuss performances and character differences, but thats another whole can of Collins packed fish. I mention it because I think it does affect how you relate to the characters.
      Another improvement, so to speak, in the '91 series, were that Vickie was a stronger character, while she was in Trask's trumped up charges, she was less an ingenue than in the original series. Stronger willed, less clueless. (Although, it should have been more obvious that the same Josette and Vickie were the same,  it sure was to the viewers.)

     By the way, is is just me, or when I see the show, with what look more like stage-like (or for that matter, the wax museum look and lit) studio sets, its more real to me than the movies or '91 when they were shot on locations?

 
Michael

[McTrooper]

Thank you CyrusL for that answer.  It's ineresting to know what it looks like from a diffrent perspecive.