(The following synopsis was written by Geoffrey Hamell, published in "The Eagle Hill Sentinel" Issue # 5/6, August, 1987.)
To Live As Other Men (July-November 1967)
At Wyncliffe Sanitarium, Dr. Julia Hoffman probes Maggie's memory through hypnosis, and begins to suspect Barnabas' secret. Posing as an amateur historian, she obtains Liz's permission to stay at Collinwood while writing a history of the family. Worried by her snooping, Barnabas plots to kill her. But when he confronts her, Julia makes a startling proposition - she believes that, by a series of treatments, she can make him a normal man again. Barnabas doesn't trust her for a moment, but is forced to cooperate when Julia tells him that only she knows where Maggie is. When a ghostly Sarah helps Maggie escape from Wyncliffe, Julia is forced to do some quick lying to convince Barnabas that her death would lead to his exposure. She hypnotizes Maggie into forgetting her entire ordeal.; but Barnabas remains paranoid about her memory returning, and wants to kill her anyway. Finally Willie, attempting to warn Maggie, is mistaken for her kidnapper and shot by the police. Left insane and amnesiac by his horrible experiences, he is taken away to Wyncliffe.
The mysterious Sarah continues to be seen, especially by David, who is delighted to realize he has a ghost as a playmate. Barnabas is greatly upset; he can't understand why his beloved little sister does not appear to him. Eventually Sarah unwittingly leads David to discover the truth about Barnabas. He desperately tries to tell everybody, but the family thinks he is more disturbed than ever and consider having him committed. The only ones who will listen at all are Burke and Dr. Woodard, but they can't find any proof. Woodard finally realizes that Julia is shielding Barnabas, steals her private journal, and learns the whole truth; but before he can tell anyone Barnabas murders him, forcing a guilt-ridden Julia to act as his accomplice.
As Julia's experiments progress, Barnabas allows himself to dream of a normal life and marriage to Vicki; her engagement to Burke is an obstacle he plans to remove. When Burke is killed in a plane crash, Barnabas thinks he has it made. But the experiments go wrong, and he ages to the 200-year-old man he truly is. Only drinking the blood of Carolyn, who becomes his slave, allows him to rejuvenate.
Enraged by Julia's jealous attempts to keep Vicki away from him, Barnabas decides to kill her. Julia turns to help from a young lawyer, Tony Peterson, who doesn't know who's after her or why but agrees to guard her precious notebook, and read it should anything happen to her. Carolyn schemes to seduce the notebook away from Tony, while Barnabas bedevils Julia until she is on the verge of a breakdown - and of betraying him.
Wanting to find out what is going on once and for all, the family attempts to contact Sarah through a seance - but Sarah, upset by Barnabas' wickedness, says she will never appear to any of them again. Then the lights go out. When they are switched on, Vicki has disappeared - replaced by a woman dressed in clothes of the 18th century!
There is no other word for it - the writers were groping for a plot. They had unwittingly posed themselves in a classic dilemma: What do you do with a murderous villain when you don't want any of your other characters killed off? The story inched along toward nowhere in particular as, painted into a corner, they bounced Barnabas like a ping-pong ball between intended victims - Burke on Monday, Maggie on Tuesday, David Wednesday, Julia Thursday...If Robert Gerringer hadn't announced his plans to leave, Dr. Woodard might still have been puzzling over his blood samples in 1970! (Though, perversely, this one time that a character was to definitely die, a strike caused the actor to leave a week ahead of schedule.)
And still the word "vampire" was never spoken - almost as though to say it aloud would force something to happen, and bring the whole precarious fabric tumbling down...
Yet it was during this period that Dark Shadows, so recently an obscure flop, achieved the status of a national phenomenon. How? By relying on what had always been its strong point - characterization. Too popular now for anyone to write off as a mere villain, Barnabas took to brooding on an almost daily basis, etching a powerful portrait of loneliness and inner torment. In this he was helped immeasurably by the presence (or, from his personal viewpoint, the absence) of Sarah. However selfish and ruthless he might be at other moments - and he can, in fact, be fiendishly cruel in this storyline, more than ever before or since - it is hard to see him yearning for Sarah's innocent sweetness without being moved by compassion. Her goodness, and her refusal to appear to him, symbolize everything that he has lost.
It didn't hurt, either, that a strong supporting cast was already so well established. Despite the tight focus on Barnabas, Dark Shadows was never allowed to become a one-man show. But it was, in a sense, the beginning of the end for the series' original stars. With their long-running mysteries resolved, the "reformed" Liz and Roger were quickly reduced to sitting on the sidelines; attempts would later be made to find new things for them to do, but they would never again regain their central roles. Burke, without revenge to drive him, became merely a bland romantic interest, trapped in a hopeless deadlocked rivalry where neither character could be allowed to win. All that was left for him was Air Brazil. Even Vicki, who till now had always stumbled on the villains' secrets, was now required to remain in the dark.
Clearly, someone was badly needed to put real conflict into Barnabas' existence - and, fortunately, along came Grayson Hall. Brought in specifically to provide an antagonist, Julia Hoffman's unique status as ally/adversary/conscience/victim allowed for an endless series of open confrontations. Their scenes together produced such electric tension, in fact, that the original plan to kill her off had to be abandoned - like Roger before her (who was at first meant to fall off Widow's Hill), she was just too good a character to throw away.
By this time, though, that plot had already advanced to the point where the Barnabas-Julia conflict was getting out of control. And with David running around telling everyone Cousin Barnabas was a menace - and Burke no longer present to protect Vicki from him - things were barreling toward a climax that could make it very hard to continue Barnabas' story. Only something wildly off-the-wall could bail the writers out of this one.
But then, Dark Shadows was becoming famous for that.
Credits and characters of Story 5
Portrait Gallery for Story 5
