Time Travelling Barnabas (SPOILERS)

It would have been simpler for Barnabas to use the staircase as opposed to the I Ching to get to 1840 and just leave the 1840 Barnabas untouched in the chained coffin.

[spoiler]For me, the bigger problem is at the end (I know I've mentioned this before).  Barnabas sends his spirit back to 1840/41 and occupies his own body chained up in the coffin, while leaving his 1970/71 body back in its trance.  Then, at the end of the story, he, Julia and Eliot take the stairs back to the present, Barnabas still in his 1840/41 body.  Never did they show his 1970/71 body being sucked back as it had from 1969 to 1897.  That means that there are now two Barnabas bodies.  Well, I guess that can be convenient.  If he doesn't want to attend another one of Mrs. Cumberbunn's droll tea parties down the road from Collinwood, he can just send off his I-Chinged body.[/spoiler]

Gerard

It was his plan to use the staircase.  By the time he got free of the zombies, it disappeared.  He called out, "Julia, the staircase is gone" or something like that.

[spoiler]You can try to make this whole plotline and ending for it make sense but it is impossible to do.   Here is where it really gets complicated.  In 1840, Angelique releases Barnabas from the curse she put on him in 1795.  At that point in 1970, that Barnabas should have ceased to exist and the family in that time should not have known anything about any Barnabas, except the one that lived in 1795.  There should never have been a 20th century Barnabas Collins as far as they were concerned.  Because he was released from the coffin and released from the curse in 1840 , all events after that point should have been altered, with no vampire in 1967 for Willie to release, thus no Barnabas, cousin from England in 1971.

For that matter the 1897 storyline does the same thing, in that Barnabas of that time is no longer in that coffin and does not return to it for Willie to find in 1967 so at that point the family should not have known him when he returned from that time.

Each time history was changed with the regard to other aspects, it had affects in the present day, but not in regard to Barnabas.  In 1840 the changes there to the fate of Daphne and Gerard, cause their ghosts not to come and Collinwood not to be destroyed so why would changing Barnabas's fate in 1840 cause the same alterations in the future as well.

For that reason, I gave up trying to make the plotlines make logical sense years ago and just enjoy the stories.

Raholt[/spoiler]

Wow, Raholt.  I never thought of that.  Sorta gives one a headache, huh? 

When I first saw 1897, I thought that the disappearance of the 1969 body of Barnabas was for it to appear in 1897 and show that Barnabas was not really a vampire (as it was a human body) and that the 1897 body was then returned to the chained coffin where it should be.

I use Angelique as the one who corrects things in both 1897 and 1840 (IMHO)

[When curing Barnabas in both time periods, she manages to seperate the present/past selves and cure only the present version while the past self returns to the mausoleum.  This is the only way that I can see how the present time family still remembers Barnabas.  It happened off camera.]

All I'll say in regard to this topic is that at this stage in the game, and for some years at this point, "reality" and "Dark Shadows" do not really exist in the same space-time continuum.  At all.

It's fascinating going back to 1966 and seeing how relentlessly realistic the early scripts by Art Wallace and Francis Swann were.

I was delighted recently when discussing the series with a friend who watched it way back during the original Sixties broadcast.  He told me he wanted to see tapes of the early shows but commented, "after a couple of years, it really got rather ... Rococo."  I hooted with laughter at that turn of phrase. So apt.

G.