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« on: April 22, 2012, 02:16:42 AM »
Once upon a time, William Mann, who is now a somewhat well-known author of celebrity biographies and novels, wrote an article giving a fairly plausible back-story for Laura Murdoch Collins, Phoenix of the ages. It was published in a 1990s issue of the old zine, Inside the Old House. If the editor of the zine runs a website now (I have had no contact with him in well over a decade, but if I remember correctly, his name was Dale Clark), perhaps someday he could be talked into posting Bill's essay on the internet. I didn't agree with all of Bill's ideas, but I think he did come up with the best solution to a number of your questions.
It seems fairly clear in both 1966 and 1897 that the pre-burning Laura was not a Phoenix, but that she was something of a playgirl (if I may be allowed to use a slang expression from the era). After Laura's disappearance in 1967, Roger flatly informs Liz that the woman had walked among them during those fraught months "wasn't Laura." Not the Laura he had known, at any rate. There's a definitiveness to that scene that feels quite real to me. And yet, Laura was able to play upon the emotions of both Roger and Burke in her attempts to take David for herself.
If I'm remembering correctly, Bill Mann came up with an occult reason for why Laura was required to sacrifice her child/children in her second hecatomb. I think it was the price for having "immortal life." Not a price any normal mother would welcome. I thought one of the incredible things about Diana Millay's performance was how she suggested Laura's inhuman nature in a very subtle way as the story went on. The writing in the 1966/67 story was just a bit more subtle than the writing for her story in 1897.
I do think that there was some kind of Phoenix Paradise in which Laura's consciousness dwelt in between incarnations. Her descriptions of it, particularly in the 1966/67 story, felt very "alive" to me, as if she were describing something she had really felt and seen.
Alas, the words of the spirit of David Radcliffe (was it David Radcliffe?) at that seance suggests that although Laura's progeny may go into the flames with her, she goes on to her Phoenixworld alone. (Am I hallucinating this scene with the spirit of the earlier David?)
This is about all I have the energy to write tonight on the topic. The Phoenix and the Count Petofi story were perhaps the most original narratives DS ever produced, and the 1966/67 Phoenix story might have been the highpoint, atmospherically, of the entire series... well worth viewing multiple times.
G.
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