I never know how to react to these top ten lists.  It seems really weird to me that people would be able to make these lists in the first place.  I must be from another planet because I could never put my finger on "the best of the best" and then work my way down from there, especially with DS--it's all so juicy and layered, who can choose?

I personally VASTLY prefer the scene between B & J down in the Collinwood drawing room BEFORE the confrontation in Julia's bedroom.  The two are playing cat and mouse with one another or maybe little cat and big cat and Julia pretty much gets away with murder throughout.  Not only are both actors much more on their respective marks in that drawing room scene, the scene itself is much better shot than the bedroom sequence.

And that scene betwen Willie and Barnabas during Tom Jennings just wasn't very well written or played.  Yeah, it's cool that Barnabas admitted that he does "care for" Julia, but as theater the scene is way below par for the general tone of DS.  YMMV of course and always.

Reading this list makes me realize how strongly people project their own narratives onto the series.  I suppose that's why after all these years we keep watching and talking about it.  It's no longer really about anything that happened on the show--it's much more about the show as a vehicle for our own fantasy lives.

It does seem odd that there are so few KLS and Josette fans online.  In the old zines from the early 90s, I remember endless adverts for "Barnabas and Josette Forever" pillow--heart-shaped, to be scattered over the sofa.  

G.

Not that I'm into lists or top tens, but out of idle curiosity, what were the top three "all time best" scenes chosen in Jonathan Frid's "Game"?

I view this sort of thing as completely subjective, and my own list would change depending upon what I had been watching lately.  Having Mrs J hand an open-mouthed Maggie Evans a ten cent tip because "you're a nice girl" would definitely be on my top ten list, for example...

G.

What a darling!  Teen idol '70! 

His career seems to have gone nowhere, alas.  He also seems to have been on the verge of cracking up in his second scene in the episode...

G.

Of course, everybody needs to bear in mind that once the picture is completed, months or years could go by before it is released.

It's happened before--ask fans of Joss Whedon's "Firefly" series about the history of the feature film version, "Serenity."

G.

The idea of trying to somehow "explain" the time travel in DS really baffles me, when you watch the actual shows and they are so vague about how it all happens.  I thought one of the writers gave his own editorial comment to the time travel element when he had Prof. Stokes tell Jeff Clark "I am not a travel agent for time!"

The I Ching time travelling was inspired by a section in William Seabrook's circa 1940 book on Witchcraft in which he explores the notion of "atavism" and talks about experiments that were made in the 1920s where people used the I Ching in an attempt to "open a door" on the astral plane and do something along the lines of what, today, many New Age people think of as "past life regression."  The instance of the Russian lady who turned into a ravening wolf after she "went through the door" actually did involve the K'o hexagram which was how the time travel was accomplished on DS.  Needless to say, this has no connection to anything documented in the Chinese lore about the I Ching material, nor anything remotely connected with quantum physics.  It does seem to be connected with some early 20th century occultists' theorizing about "atavism" in human psychology (there's a great entry in the early 1970s "encyclopedia of the supernatural," Man, Myth and Magic, on this).

The first instance of time traveling seemed to occur as a result of the ghost of Sarah Collins intervening at a seance.  How this happened was never explained--which I personally thought made it work better as a story.  We never knew how it happened, we just know that it did. 

I think the "Staircase through time" setpiece in the final storylines, which includes a scene where Julia reads a diary entry from the 1840 Quentin in which he theorizes that time and space are one and the same dimension, *may* be something that can somehow be related to modern speculations in quantum physics... but only in a really vague way. 

If you want to give yourself a headache, try reading Warren Oddson's attempt to reconcile how there Barnabas wound up being split into two, with bodies existing in separate time continuums, but without the existing Collinwood continuity being disrupted (I use the term "continuity" here in an extremely loose way).

It's much better, IMO, to just go with the flow and take the stories for what they are--fabulous entertainment!

cheers, G.

Thanks, Miranda, for the report.  Like MB, I pretty much figured on the "surprise" screening being the 2004 pilot.  I'm sorry you missed most of it.  I quite liked Alec Newman's Barnabas and Matt Czuchny (sp?) as Willie.

I love Cassandra, so it's nice that she was included among the clips.  I'm very sorry I'm missing Jerry Lacy!

cheers, G.

GP was the original form of the rating that the world now knows as PG-13.  Before that it was M, for Mature audiences only (if memory serves).

I expect that it meant that they played the scene with much heaving of the bosom and lips brushing against cheeks and that was about ALL. 

cheers, G.

A laff riot!

"Time to give Elizabeth another ... sedative ... !"

G.