Episode 659: Gone Girl

“But last night, she sent me a message… from the past.”

The morning of a new day at Collinwood. Plans have been made to take two children away on an extended trip. But there are unseen and evil forces at work within the great house — forces that have possessed both children, and decreed that — oh my god, Vicki, WHAT IS IT NOW?

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Yup, guess who’s back. Two weeks ago, girl governess Victoria Winters Bradford-Clark finally vacated the premises with her new husband, and as far as we can tell, she’s not enjoying the honeymoon.

She’s been causing various minor haunts, and she left a note that said, “I am alone. Help me! Help me!” Today, David took a picture of Barnabas and Carolyn, and when the picture was developed, there was a figure of a hanging woman in the background.

This just goes to show that you should never use a magic wristwatch to follow your dead husband back in time to the 18th century, where you already know that you were both executed. This is not a particularly helpful thing to know, because it’s something that never occurred to anybody before. Once again, Vicki is breaking new ground in the field of mistakes.

So the answer is: No, Vicki. We already have a new governess. Thank you for your interest. The position has been filled.

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But, fine — as long as she’s here, we might as well try to figure out what in the Sam Scratch is going on.

To begin with: who sent Vicki to the 18th century in the first place?

Everybody who watches Dark Shadows assumes that Vicki’s first time trip was initiated by Sarah, the little dead girl haunting the estate. It’s a natural conclusion — they were holding a seance to communicate with Sarah at the time — but it’s not as cut and dried as people think.

At the climax of the seance, Sarah was speaking through Vicki. This is the crucial exchange:

Vicki:  Barnabas, when you marry Josette, will you still love me? Will you come and see me at the new house?

Roger:  You come to the new house to see David. Why?

Vicki:  To tell him the story. The story of how it all began…

And then the lights went out, and the next thing they knew, Vicki was replaced by a startled woman who identified herself as Phyllis Wick.

If you think about it, Sarah never actually said, “And now I shall use my special dead-girl all-access pass to the time vortex; please turn off all electronic devices. Ta-dah!”

Sarah said she came to the new house to tell the story to David. She never promised to tell Vicki anything — and as it turns out, Vicki never learned most of the story anyway. She mostly just got herself arrested. So why do we assume that it was Sarah who actually pulled the switch?

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I know, once again I’m nattering on about my weird “lost princess” time travel conspiracy theories, but Dark Shadows keeps doubling down on this story point, and it makes less sense every time they mention it.

We’ve all accepted, on very flimsy evidence, that the ghost of a ten-year-old has the ability to pick up a governess by the scruff of her neck and transport her, Quantum Leap style, to a convenient dropoff point in the ghost’s own timeline, swapping her temporarily with another member of the Collins family support staff.

But we’ve seen lots of other ghosts on Dark Shadows — Collinwood has restless spirits like other houses have mice — and we’ve never seen them exhibit any power over time mechanics. In fact, they usually don’t even have the strength to speak clearly.

So far, the specter starter pack includes the ability to open a casement window, blow out a candle, and make a chandelier swing back and forth. That comes standard on all models. Beyond that, we’ve seen ghosts appear, disappear, cry, laugh, knock down a brick wall, appear in someone’s dream, testify for the prosecution, write the word “JAMISON” on a mirror, murder a grandfather clock, and play the gramophone.

Now, it’s true that Sarah had an unusually strong power set — she could manifest herself for minutes at a time in a solid form that could play catch and scatter personal items around. But Sarah, as we know her, is nothing special. She’s not a ninth level sorceror supreme or anything; she’s a nice and rather dim little girl. So who died and made her the boss of dead people?

The story, as we’re expected to understand it, is that Sarah can send Vicki tumbling through the centuries because she’s a ghost, and it’s her seance. But if every ghost was able to toss people through time in order to illuminate a specific chunk of backstory, life at Collinwood would be insupportable. Phyllis Wicks would be stacking up everywhere; we wouldn’t have room for anything else.

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Clearly, somebody’s responsible for this irresponsible time travel, and I’d bet you anything that it turns out to be they. This has they written all over it.

I’ll back up a step, if you’re unfamiliar with the terminology. Back in April, Vicki ran into a guy named Jeff Clark. Well, she didn’t run into him, specifically; she actually ran into a highway embankment, and he happened to be standing next to it. Then she said that Jeff was the reincarnation of her 18th century lawyer boyfriend, and she repeated it so many times that he practically started to believe it himself.

Finally, Jeff consulted with local occult expert Professor Stokes, who gave him some special herbs to eat, which would expand his consciousness and get him in touch with his past self. This was common practice in 1968. Either you do that, or you watch Here’s Lucy; those were basically the only entertainment options.

So Jeff ate the herbs and concentrated, and pretty soon, he started seeing twinkly lights, and he felt himself losing touch with the now. “They’re pulling at me,” he said. “They’re calling me back!”

And then Vicki ran in, and threw her arms around him, and shouted, “Commit yourself to this life, to this time! Say you will, Jeff — and they will let you stay!”

At press time, we still haven’t figured out who “they” are, but at least now we know that they have kind of a sick sense of humor.

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Now Vicki’s coming at us from the other direction, calling collect from 1796 and reversing the charges. She’s the ghost now, reaching out across the centuries.

So here’s a question: why is she trying to contact Barnabas? I mean, we know that he’s a vampire and therefore he has some experience in this area, but last time we checked, Vicki thought he was just a very polite guy who likes candles. And either way, there’s no reason to think that he has any kind of influence over current events in the late 18th.

But now that I think about it, how do we know that Barnabas is the first person she’s tried to reach? I mean, let’s say that Vicki is flailing around in the ether somewhere, putting “help me” notes into bottles, and throwing them out to sea. Who, in all of time and space, does she have the closest connection to?

She had a close relationship with Barnabas, but he’s always taken second place to her real love interests — Jeff and Burke. If she’s sending out an SOS to the future, wouldn’t she try to reach Burke first?

Now, the last time that Vicki saw Burke, he was flying to Brazil on business. So imagine a small private plane somewhere over the South American jungle. Suddenly, the radio crackles to life, and Burke hears a familiar voice, crying, “I am alone. Help me! Help me!” Startled, the pilot looks around — and the image of a hanging woman appears in the reflection of a window.

It’s like the old joke: What do you get when you cross the Atlantic with the Titanic? Halfway.

Look, I’m just saying it’s a possibility. And what’s one more accident on Vicki’s record? She smashed up the car when Peter showed up, and when Phyllis Wick was snatched out of the timeline, her carriage overturned.

A plane crash, a car wreck, and a derailed carriage — maybe somebody’s trying to send Vicki a message about the dangers of transporting yourself to someplace where you don’t belong.

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So, if this is they, then what are they trying to achieve? Why would somebody create this jagged wound in space-time, just to help an orphaned governess jump back and forth over 170 years? What could they possibly have to gain?

But it’s like I keep telling Vicki: there are consequences to time travel. In fact, you usually get the consequences first; that’s the whole idea.

That means we’re seeing it backwards. They’re not messing with time just to help a governess. They’re using a governess to mess up time.

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They’re up to something. I don’t know what they’re trying to do — who even knows with they — but for some reason, they need to create an area of instability, some kind of chrono-synclastic infundibulum in the fabric of space-time, running from 1796 to 1969.

We’ve known for a long time that Vicki is not the main character of Dark Shadows — but it turns out she’s not a character at all.

Vicki is a weapon.

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So let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that there’s no such thing as a naturally-occurring Victoria Winters. You do not get this level of mess just happening all by itself. Somebody did this on purpose.

It’s not the Leviathans, by the way. The first person who says “It’s the Leviathans” is going to get their carriage overturned. Yes, the Leviathans are a time-traveling death cult that uses a magic altar to transport lost vampires and ancient artifacts on a direct shuttle route between 1796 and 1969. Yes, they have a far-reaching global network of deep-cover operatives bent on altering the destiny of the Collins family. Yes, they can possess people, and force them to act against their very nature to pursue some unearthly goal. But that’s not the important thing about the Leviathans.

The important thing is that whatever the Leviathans are trying to do, they totally suck at it. After countless millennia, the only thing they ever achieve is setting fire to their own sacred altar. “The Leviathans” is never the correct answer, unless the question is “who runs the stupidest time-traveling death cult in history?” Forget about the Leviathans. Seriously, they’re not worth it.

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But let’s think for a moment about the complex space-time event that calls itself Victoria Winters. What do we know about her?

Well, she was dropped off on the doorstep of the Hammond Foundling Home in winter 1946. And she’s put so much energy into finding out where she comes from, that it’s never occurred to us to ask when she comes from.

After all, even before her time trip, she kept talking about “the past” like it’s a single, specific thing; e.g., “Josette’s music box reminds me of the past,” and “Maybe Burke’s right, maybe I’m getting too caught up in the past.” We never paid much attention, except to think, well, that’s why she’s a governess and not in graduate school. But what if that actually meant something?

Also, why is her prime directive to always, always create time paradoxes? She literally did nothing else for the entirety of 1968, and she’s still at it.

And why did she start every episode with “My name is Victoria Winters,” like she has to keep telling us over and over? Why is she so desperate for us to believe that that’s her name? What is she trying to prove?

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There’s really only one explanation that makes sense.

The girl that we know as “Victoria Winters” is actually Phyllis Wick. The babies were switched, a normal soap opera cliche that’s been weaponized, and used to destabilize time. One girl from the 1770s, another from the 1940s, swapped in their cradles. They’re like a stretched rubber band, marking a route from one century to another.

So they — of course it’s they, it’s always they — just went and stole this baby away from her parents, Phil and Felicia Wick. The child was taken from 1775 to 1946, and they brought some random 1940s kid back in time to take her place.

So the real Phyllis Wick — codename: “Victoria Winters” — was placed at a foundling home, and every month, she received $50 in cash, postmarked from Bangor, Maine. That was the honey trap, giving her a reason to take the job when somebody recommended her to Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. (We don’t know who pointed Liz in the right direction, but I bet it was they. It’s usually they, one way or another.)

So Phyllis comes to Collinwood, anxious to link her past with her future. She keeps telling herself, “My name is Victoria Winters,” because deep down, she knows it’s not true. She feels the past pulling at her, calling to her, inviting her to come back home.

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Finally, she makes contact with a mad, dead kid named Sarah. And it’s in that moment of contact — when she’s connected to another little girl from the past — that the rubber band finally snaps her back where she belongs, with a concussion that knocks “Phyllis Wick” right out of her carriage and all the way to the 1960s.

Things go badly, of course. They planned it that way. They made sure she was holding that impossible book, the Collins family history.

And “Vicki” runs riot, grabbing everybody she can get ahold of, and begging them to alter the course of history. This is what she’s for.

“Victoria Winters” is literally a time bomb. She was created to blow up time.

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So at the last moment, she finds a way back to the 1960s, and “Phyllis” swings backwards into the past again — the two of them, crashing their way through the underbrush of history, laying down a track for others to follow.

And pretty soon, what do you know — Peter Bradford takes the same route, losing his memory along the way, followed by Angelique, and Danielle Roget, and Reverend Trask, and Josette, and Nathan Forbes, and Ruby Tate, and mad little Sarah — all of them, traveling back and forth through this channel that Phyllis and Vicki carved through the centuries.

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I don’t know who they are, or why they needed to create this portal, but they probably had a very bad reason. If I were you, I’d keep an eye on they, and vice versa.

Tomorrow: The Secret to Time.

Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:

In the teaser, Barnabas has trouble clearing the launchpad:

Barnabas:  Julia, wait. There’s something I want to show you.

Julia:  What is it?

Barnabas:  Well, I’m not… I’m not certain about it yet, but… I think that I may have to change my plans concerning the children.

In act 1, Barnabas tells Julia, “I’m going to see Baro — Carolyn.”

Somebody in the studio’s got a bad cough. We hear one cough when Carolyn tells Barnabas that her mother is alive, and a couple more when David is developing the pictures.

David and Amy talk over each other a couple times after they notice the extra figure in the photograph of Barnabas and Carolyn.

There’s a lot of studio noise when Carolyn tells Harry to take the bags out to the car — people shuffling around and closing a door.

Tomorrow: The Secret to Time.

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Dark Shadows episode guide

— Danny Horn

19 thoughts on “Episode 659: Gone Girl

  1. Great post! I could have seen Carolyn Groves as Vicki – too bad the timing was off – also maybe Vicki was trying to send a message to David (since David took the picture) – or to Carolyn -who knows with Vicki – Jeff/Peter was the real idiot – he came back for Vicki knowing that there was a good chance she would be returned to the noose as soon as they entered 1796 Collinsport – totally in character with something he would do. I’m sure given the chance Barnabas would have kept going back in time to rescue Vicki from whatever predicament she got herself into….

  2. Last night at The Improv:

    “Did you hear the one about Victoria Winters?
    Dan Curtis wanted her to hang around, after all.”

    “And then Roger said: Damn it, Vicky, Collinwood is not a hangout!”

  3. Lots of good points today. I especially like “It’s not the Leviathans”. No one should accuse them of being successful. Maybe there’s a reason they’re stuck in the past, don’t rule the Earth anymore, and, hello, live in…
    I don’t know, a sewer? Darwin?

    Interesting ideas about Vicky, the time bomb. Burton & Depp could have easily used time travel as a joke. I can see a sequence where Victoria Winters is time-jumping uncontrollably, past, present, future, back and forth, all over the place, always popping in at the wrong place, in the wrong clothes.

    About They, is it possible that They mean well, but just aren’t very good at whatever They’re trying to do, being somewhat incapacitated by being dead?
    I got the feeling that someone was trying to do something good, by sending Vicky back, as if things would have been worse if she hadn’t gone back.
    I would imagine They may contain some, or all, of the following ghostly ingredients: Sarah, Naomi, Jeremiah, Josette, Joshua, Bathia, Riggs, Ben, Daniel, etc. Whoever wasn’t evil.
    Evil ones usually go solo.

    It’s probably unknowable, but that’s OK. When I became Hooked on David Lynch, I learned to love the occasional Unsolved Mystery. There’s something fun, something alluring, about an unsolvable case.
    It taunts you, saying “solve me! I’m mysterious!”

    1. And Mysterious Lynch has returned to the project,supposedly. Can’t wait for Danny’s blog on THAT.
      I digress.

  4. You know, Danny, that would explain SO MUCH…

    Now, who are they? Maybe Gallifreyans carrying out an interesting experiment…

    1. The Leviathans didn’t seem too bright, just evil as essss.

      Not to put Vicki down(too much), but they were dumber.

      Which is why they quit the show faster than she.

  5. This would have been great in a reboot. I also wouldn’t have minded seeing Phyllis Wick living in the modern day, instead of Vicki’s return being moments later.

    The trouble with reboots is you can never have Jonathan Frid in them. But I digress.

  6. “THEY” are Angelique and Phyllis Wick.
    Phyllis WAS a witch; she tried to escape hanging by switching places with Vicki, but didn’t foresee that the other girl would make an even bigger muckup of the whole witchcraft thing, begging everyone to believe her and showing that future history book to all and sundry. Angelique, finding out that Vicki was from ‘the future’, realizing that Barnabas had somehow got away from her, flung the two governesses back to their own times so that she could follow Vicki and find Barnabas again.
    And time stood still in 1968 because Phyllis had switched with Vicki, but put her in the wrong spot in the past. Phyllis had tried to switch herself out at the moment of her hanging, but overshot and sent Vicki back to the point of Phyllis’ arrival in Collinsport. (Phyllis learned all her spells from Aunt Clara, I guess.) Phyllis had been hanged SOONER in the original timeline, since she didn’t have Jeff (I mean Peter) defending her; he was off learning French with Danielle. So time had to stop until the two hanging events coincided to create the temporal passage.

    But it doesn’t explain where Angelique got that black wig from.
    Some things are better left unknown…

    1. I will not make the 2018 DS Festival in Cali…but if I could make it in 2019 if there is one…I would confer with Lara and ask her how she chose that black wig and why did she think that wig did her any justice?…lol. Still a doll though.

  7. I suspect this entry is at least half-jest, but I still like it. Time wasn’t just disturbed by Vicki, it was warped into parodic forms.

    Witchcraft trials were over roughly a century before 1795 in America. Somehow, Vicki warped time, custom, belief patterns and the Enlightenment all in one swoop.

    As for time traveling to “save” Vicki, you wouldn’t have to go back to 1795/96, only to the day before Vicki disappeared with Phantom Peter. Or, the day before the Sarah séance.

  8. No wonder Julia was skeptical that the photograph showed Vicki. It didn’t look like either Vicki that Julia knew. Only Barnabas could see the resemblance because Vicki had told him – vividly, apparently – about being hanged.

  9. It was awfully darned bright in David’s “darkroom.” And when did he become an amateur photographer anyway?

    When David took the picture Barnabas’s head was inclined downward. Yet when the picture is developed he’s looking straight at the camera.

    I know I’m reading too much into it but every time Nancy Barrett does a scene with Craig Slocum she looks like she wants to strangle him. Unfortunately, she doesn’t.

  10. It makes sense to me that Sarah sent Vicki back. The whole thing with the supernatural is that what seems weakest is actually strongest. The dead are stronger than the living, children stronger than adults, etc. So it fits the conceit that a long-dead and not especially bright little girl is the greatest power. It fits the dramatic development as well- throughout her time as a ghost Sarah steadily reveals more and more powers, and by the time of the seance we’re wondering what she will show us next. Moreover, her whole approach throughout 1967 is an attempt to curb Barnabas’ murderousness and to shield him from accountability at the same time. Vicki’s return from 1795 storyline precipitates events that achieve precisely that goal, and it is the goal to which Julia (Sarah’s successor as a sister to Barnabas) devotes herself for the rest of Barnabas’ time on the show.

  11. I like your theory about Vicki and Phyllis Wick. It seems Vicki is just a nuisance in any and every century.

    I wish it had been Craig Slocum who left yesterday instead of Joel Crothers. Why in the world would they not get rid of his character?

    I also find it brave and spooky for them to show a hanging woman on TV in 1969.

    That same night ABC aired Bewitched episode 154: “Samantha’s Super Maid” wherein Darrin’s mother hires a maid for Samantha. This was a remake of a season two episode “Maid to Order” which in itself was a remake of the I Love Lucy episode “Lucy Hires a Maid”. Bewitched often repeated Lucy scripts (with Lucy’s blessing – at least for the chocolate covered banana episode that is coming up) as William Asher, the main director on ILL was the main director on Bewitched and Elizabeth Montgomery’s husband at the time.

  12. I love that Harry is still there and being treated like a member of the staff, bringing the car around and hauling luggage down the stairs, getting yelled at by Carolyn for taking too long. Between him and Butler Barnabas, Collinwood is turning into Downton Abbey.

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