r/DarkShadows

I watched as a little kid on SciFy network but don’t remember too much of the stories or plots- just the main characters and premise. I’ve started watching again from the beginning on TUBI last week. I’m at episode 36 now. Would love to have someone else to discuss the show with and discuss characters and plots and what may happen next with someone that’s also new to the show and doesn’t know what’s in store!! Let me know if that’s you!

Throughout the series, he makes this sort of entreaty for Elizabeth to look out for her own interests. Do you think this is true, or do you think it’s only a blind only for himself? I mean, what does the guy do except hang around the drawing room and drink? Yeah he dresses well, but so can any tailor’s dummy. What’s his actual use in the family? He’s totally reliant on Elizabeth’s largesse. He’s a hanger on and dead wood, otherwise.

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone who attended the festival heard anything about the actual restoration process used by Zach Smothers on the upcoming blu-ray release? Or if Zach is in this subreddit, if he might be able to share anything?

I found a preview video on Facebook that makes me think they used Topaz AI to upscale it, but would love to hear specifics, if anyone has them.

Regardless, it seems like a very tasteful upscale and am looking forward to picking up a copy!

As soon as we meet Sandor in 1897, he's already a servant to the vampire and has totally lost his own willpower. I would have liked to see more back and forth with him and his wife Magda We never really got to know the REAL Sandor Rakosi.

I started with the Barnabas storyline, and I'm at "Season 2 e7"

What can I say that you haven't already heard? Barnabas rolled in to town, and it's created this butterfly effect so that everybody seems to hate each other while abducting two people and trying to play nice. It's kind of wild haha.

I'm also going back and watching The Beginning when I go to bed, and it's cool but again, they all just seem to hate each other. David is like what, 9? He's the smartest of them all.

I was just thinking about how Barnabas tries to mind control most people around him when he wants them to do stuff for him. But I don’t recall him ever attempting this with Julia. Did she have some natural resistance to his mental powers because she was a very smart lady and also knew what he was from the start?

He threatened her a lot to try to get her to do what he wanted, but why not just mind control her like he did everyone else? Threatening her is more risky because she can still disobey him. Those he had mental control over really couldn’t disobey him.

He always refused to bite her, even though that would have given him control too. But by the time we get to the point she’s offering herself constantly, she’s also in love with him, and that might give her some kind of protection from his control, even if he were to bite her.

I’m remembering the episodes where she was bitten by another vampire and that one she couldn’t really resist.… but she wasn’t in love with that vampire.

Iam about to finish 1795 flashback , it seems to me that rev Trask is a formidable opponent for many of the shows characters. I do know his offspring and his ghost return thru the series are they as powerful and driven as him?

Back in the day, DS Festival attendees received programs that included the schedules of events for all three days, bio pages for each cast member (perfect for autographs), and various pictures. Did they provide one at the 2026 Fest?

If so, could someone post photos of it? I'm especially curious to see the complete schedule of events for all three days.

I take back everything negative I previously had to say about writer Francis Swann. Once Art Wallace stopped writing for the show, Ron Sproat came on and I can no longer immediately tell while watching who wrote the episode. What I think was happening with the earlier Swann episodes is that Art Wallace as the "head writer" was keeping the meatier episodes for himself and telling Swann to keep the car in Neutral for his episodes.

Roundabout episode 100, Wallace gets replaced by Ron Sproat and the story seems to start moving at a slightly less glacial pace. They finally reveal who'd killed Bill Malloy. The funny thing is that despite us now knowing the answer, the story didn't just end in one or two episodes. It's now headed into what seems like a slowish unwind. That secret panel behind the bookshelf, has that ever been used later on in the series after [spoiler]Matthew Morgan[/spoiler] leaves the show?

Vickie and Carolyn remain insufferably stupid. Roger remains the resident shitheel/boor. Jerk Devlin remains sort of dashing and cool but you know, he's written as the villain that some fans might be rooting for. It's interesting to me as someone who's watched the entire show and a shorter summary of these earlier episodes before, Burke's character as originally portrayed was kind of the blueprint for Barnabas. He's a villainous type. An ex-con! Wrongfully framed, to be sure, but he's vengeful and tries to destroy the rest of the Collins family beside Roger. He's written as the show's OTHER bad guy. You think his little friend David is going to turn out fine if the family lost the cannery business like he'd planned?

Vickie gets a new boyfriend who doesn't even live in town and doesn't seem to be on the same page with his boss/dad. Those two getting in one another's ways clumsily and nothing really come of it struck me as clumsy writing.

Where I think the writers went wrong was that they rarely came up with B stories in this era. And if they do, they typically got resolved in relatively short order leaving the whole show being about an unsolved murder mystery.

Barnabas was a creep. C-R-E-E-P. I never got over what he did to Maggie. I never understood why so many thought he was attractive either. 🤮

So I’ve been into Dark Shadows for over a month now (New to the fandom) and found that my favorite character is Maggie. Kathryn Leigh Scott has a powerful onscreen presence in my opinion. Was curious about what your favorite Maggie/Josette/Kitty or any other character Kathryn has played in the show (I’m still watching it and haven’t finished) scenes were?

Going through my first watch of the show. I am finally out of 1795 and in the Leviathan storyline. Now the first part of the storyline was a little bland when they focused on the Todds. Neither actor really had much to work with in their tragic story. How I love Marie Wallace though. Once Jeb Hawkes shows up, the storyline is really engaging. I also really liked Paul Stoddard's return and the Amanda/Quentin wrap up. I just got to where they changed Barnabas back into a vampire. I wasn't a fan of the 1795 storyline, and I thought this was going to be bad considering everyone says this is the worst storyline of the show. It's really not.

So we return to1970 but is it the original 1970? I ask because Quentin keeps referring to his "great great uncle from 1840" to people that know Quentin is originally from 1840 and know they are one in the same man, so am I missing something?