She arrived 49 years ago on June 27, 1966, and nothing has ever been the same since.

Happy Anniversary DS!

G.

I was looking for some pictures of Magda just now and I found this fab little conversation between my most talented niece, Penny Dreadful, and somebody named Dr. Destruction:

http://terrordaves.com/2012/06/11/he-saidshe-said-penny-dreadful-dr-destruction-dish-on-dark-shadows/

It's a great discussion, but what impressed me is that Penny SPEAKS OUT on behalf of Leviathan, and Nicholas Blair's return in the storyline!

FINALLY, another fan who "gets it"!

Big hearty cheers to Penny Dreadful!

G.

I'm sure you have thought of this, but have you tried phoning Best Buy?

I work in Cambridge, Mass, which is a major epicenter of computer geek culture in the Northeast, and there are a couple of shops here that fix cracked screens.  I imagine that simply remove the cracked pieces and replace with the correct new screen.

I don't know where you live but you could try googling "cracked screen" and your town and state name.

Best, G.

An even bigger "much ado about nothing" was the whole Java Queen thing, endlessly discussed and speculated upon during the Gerard haunting story in the Summer of 1970.  Complete with pirates who later became zombies, and a cool model of the Queen that showed up in David's bedroom.

Then we go to 1840 and ... zilch.  I think during the big plotting session that supposedly happened over a weekend in Sept. (or maybe even early Oct.) of '70, somebody realized just how difficult it would be to stage a shipboard romance storyline in the confines of the existing studio space.

That wasn't the only major continuity gaffe in 1840, but it was a doozy.

G.

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.

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.

JGL fans will find this of interest:

http://comicbook.com/2015/06/07/sandman-is-going-to-be-a-grand-spectacular-action-film-with-no-p/

I read some of the Sandman books and there was considerable occult content.

G.

That's a really good choice, Josette.

The writers really dropped the ball with Quentin and Chris.

One of my favorite moments is in Leviathan when

[spoiler]Liz looks down at Paul, whom she thinks has been knocked out by a drug, and tells him:  "How did you think I would EVAH take you back?"  And then turns contemptuously away.  It's a great moment for those who have seen the 1966/67 storyline, and probably the Liz character's last moment of glory on the series.[/spoiler]

G.