DS 1991 30th anniversary

[Mysterious Benefactor]

January 1st:

Ep #1 - Victoria: 'My journey is just beginning.'

January 2nd:

Ep #1 - Carolyn: 'Poor Victoria Winters.'

January 3rd:

Ep #1 (Extended) - Elizabeth (to Roger): 'He needs a father.'

Anything that's indicated as "Extended" is from a scene that was restored on the MPI version of the pilot. Discussion about the restored portion of the scene featured for the 3rd begins in the pilot script topic with the following post:

... MPI restored the rest of the scene, beginning with: ...

And if you want to follow along with what was being said and/shared back when this slideshow first appeared for 2011th's 20th anniversay, check out

Today marks the debut of yet another new slideshow: the '91 DS Series 20th Anniversary Year Slideshow. ...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

January 4th:

Ep #1 (Extended) - Roger: 'If it would have saved her
sanity, I would have left him to die in that burning room.'

January 5th:

Ep #1 - Willie: 'I'll take it any way I can get it.'

January 6th:

Ep #1 (Extended) - Joe (to Daphne): 'Here's the boat - we're
gonna dock here right now.'

Discussion about the restored scene featured for the 6th begins in the pilot script topic with the following post:

... And that's when yesterday's quote was scripted to come up - but it's not at all that way in the pilot. ...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

January 7th:

Ep #1 - Elizabeth (to Victoria): 'Welcome to Collinwood.'

January 8th:

Ep #1 - Willie: 'Hope you like this freak palace, Miss Winters.'

January 9th:

Ep #1 - Willie: 'I know where the jewels are.'

[Mysterious Benefactor]

January 10th:

Ep #1 - Mrs. Johnson: 'It'll only lead to trouble!'

January 11th:

Ep #1 (Extended)- Roger: 'I think you'll find my son as much
a challenge as you can handle.'

January 12th:

Ep #1 - Willie: 'Lion looks at dove.'

Discussion about the restored scene featured for the 11th begins in the pilot script topic with the following post:

And onto the script's next scene (which is one that only appears in MPI's restored version of the pilot): ...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

January 13th:

Ep #1 (Extended)- Victoria: 'I thought I saw someone.'

January 14th:

Ep #1 - David (to Victoria): 'I don't want you here!'

January 15th:

Ep #1 - Victoria: 'David, I'm here to be your friend.'

Discussion about the restored portion of the scene featured for the 13th begins in the pilot script topic with the following post:

And starting off today's new scene: ...

[Gerard]

Hey, MB, how about just posting 91 sporadically and with just a moment's notice?  It'll be like original airing, when episodes were constantly reshuffled on the schedule because a war-or-something-or-other kept interrupting.  It'll feel like the good old days.

Gerard

[neiljohnson]

I concur, Nell.  It seems to me that the DS-91 Dave Woodard was a combination of the DS-OS Woodard and the HoDS Eliot Stokes (who died the same way 91 Dave did).  I'm surmising that the complete character of Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes would've been introduced later in the 91.  A fun thing to ponder is who could've played the part?  Actually, I'm picturing Carroll O'Connor.

Gerard

On another board, there was a suggestion that Professor Woodard/Stokes would not be needed again on the '91 series, because Maggie had been established as an expert on the paranormal, and that she would fill the role of Professor Stokes from TOS.   I suppose that's possible.  But Maggie, in 1991 -- despite her psychic abilities and apparent knowledge of the occult, had no academic training.  So wouldn't any assistance she attempted to provide in future storylines simply be "guesses", rather than knowledge Barnabas and Julia could count on???   

And by the way,  happy 30th anniversary to the 1991 version of Dark Shadows! 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Hey, MB, how about just posting 91 sporadically and with just a moment's notice?  It'll be like original airing, when episodes were constantly reshuffled on the schedule because a war-or-something-or-other kept interrupting.  It'll feel like the good old days.

Get ready for it to feel like the good old days later tonight because what I'll be posting will show just how much NBC changed the entire game for January 18th's premiere of the series and screwed a lot of potential fans...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Previews of the series:

And here are two promos that ran on Wednesday, January 16th when the Friday schedule was still as originally planned:

And then things got thrown out the window after Thursday's programs got pre-empted for war coverage and we ended up with this schedule for Friday night:

Well, that was the schedule for the Eastern and Central time zones. The Pacific and I also believe the Mountain time zones weren't so lucky because DS was completely pre-empted there. Ep #4 (Hour 5) wouldn't be seen there until January 25th right before that night's regularly scheduled Ep #5 (Hour 6).

And even the Eastern/Central changes wreaked havoc with some people who were planning to watch Friday's ep because unless they tuned in to NBC that night they had no idea of the schedule changes. I had many friends who'd programmed their VCRs for 9pm only to discover a recording of Cheers/Wings rather than DS. Thankfully I did pay attention so I knew of the switch to 10pm and I was able to make copies of Ep #4 for them, but no doubt many other potential viewers weren't so lucky...

But all that being as it may, here's the opening of the series' debut as it played on the east coast at exactly 30 years ago today:

(The jittering at the beginning is how it was broadcast.)

Enjoy! 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

And as extras, here are the three different bumpers that played leading to or during commercial breaks:

Enjoy as well! 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

[Uncle Roger]

Outstanding stuff, MB! The kind of material that should be included on a DVD.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

   I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm enjoying sharing it. 

As for DVD, if only there was a release with a 4:3 aspect ratio instead of 16:9, with the correct color timing, and with extras. But, alas, it doesn't seem like we'll ever see that, especially when it comes to the latter because of all the legal issues involved.    And in lieu of it, fans who can need to share this type of stuff with each other...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

The Pacific and I also believe the Mountain time zones weren't so lucky because DS was completely pre-empted there. Ep #4 (Hour 5) wouldn't be seen there until January 25th right before that night's regularly scheduled Ep #5 (Hour 6).

Actually, I went looking through my '91 Series stuff and came across the following. It seem like DS may not have been pre-empted in the Mountain time zone. But even if it was only the Pacific time zone, that was bad enough, especially when it was moved from 9/8pm to 10/9pm in the Eastern and Central time zones (and who knows when it aired in the Mountain time zone):

How wild is it that DS had a higher share than Cosby, which was consistently one of NBC's Top 5 shows at the time. But then Cosby was the first show of the night on NBC and when it was on not many people might have realized that NBC was even running entertainment programming and not war coverage.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

A couple other things:

Is it just me or does the announcer doing the first January 16th promo actually say "She's like no other man she's ever known" instead of "He's like no other man she's ever known"?    I must have heard that promo dozens of times and it always sounds like "she's" to me. 

And it's interesting that the quote depicted as today's entry in the slideshow (Elizabeth - 'What kind of person could do such a thing?') also appears in the recap at the beginning of Ep #4 (Hour 5) -

- even though it was cut from the NBC version of pilot and wasn't actually seen until MPI restored the pilot. And discussion about the restored scene featured for today begins in the pilot script topic with the following post:

Moving on to the next sequence: ...