347

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Number	343
Timeline	1968
Narrator	Alexandra Moltke
Writer	Joe Caldwell
Director	Lela Swift
Broadcast	October 24, 1967 (Tuesday)
Recorded	October 18, 1967 (Wednesday)
Video	Complete: Disc 38 Collection 4: Disc 2

We have 5 images of Dark Shadows 347

Barnabas' hand changes to that of a very old man.

Synopsis[]

Teaser

Deepest night lies over all of Collinwood, and sleep has given quiet rest to all who live there. But there is a house where night and sleep are not companions, and the dark hours are the hours of action.

In the makeshift laboratory in the Old House cellar, Barnabas Collins and Dr. Julia Hoffman finish their argument. The vampire insists on the treatments being accelerated, despite Julia's advice to the contrary. Julia straps Barnabas into a chair, and then starts the mechanism which consists of a multitude of vats, electrical equipment and bubbling viscous green liquid. Barnabas closes his eyes as the treatment begins.

Act I

After a while, Julia stops the treatment and a weakened Barnabas can barely speak. It takes him a long moment to move, and he feels a strange numbness in his left hand. But the numbness fades and is replaced with warmth, giving Barnabas hope the accelerated treatment is, in fact, working. Excited by the radical changes taking place in his body, Barnabas reluctantly allows Julia to run tests on his current condition. He plans to go upstairs to a room at the top of the house to watch the sun rise. This alarms Julia greatly, as it could mean Barnabas' destruction. He agrees to wait until tomorrow when he can feel the warmth of the sun with Victoria Winters by his side.

Act II

Later, at Collinwood, Carolyn Stoddard watches helplessly as Victoria paces the drawing room awaiting word from Brazil about Burke Devlin. Carolyn worries for Victoria's health as she has spent another night up waiting by the phone. As Carolyn leaves to ask Mrs. Johnson to bring them coffee, Julia comes into the room. Alone with Victoria, Julia claims to have found a missing prism from the West Wing foyer's chandelier. She urges Victoria to examine the crystal in the light, and, using her experience with hypnosis, slowly places Victoria into a trance. Julia forces her to follow her out of Collinwood.

Act III

Taking Victoria to the Old House, Julia shows the hypnotized governess Barnabas' coffin. She instructs Victoria to open it, and Victoria finds Barnabas sleeping inside. Horrified, she turns away... but Julia forces her to look and to subconsciously remember what she has seen. Julia closes the coffin and returns to Collinwood with Victoria.

There, Julia brings Victoria out of the trance just as Carolyn returns with a tray of coffee. Carolyn, in a bad temper over having to make the coffee herself, leaves to help Elizabeth Collins Stoddard with something. Alone with Julia again, Victoria starts to talk about her excitement over restoring the West Wing... only to pause, upset over speaking Barnabas' name. Julia smiles, secretly pleased her hypnosis has worked.

Act IV

That night, Victoria is reading in the drawing room when Barnabas arrives for a visit. She startles at the sight of him. Nervous in his presence, Victoria tells Barnabas about the piece of crystal Julia found. Barnabas invites her to watch the sunrise with him at Widows' Hill, and, after a little hesitance, Victoria agrees. Barnabas is overjoyed until Victoria notices something wrong with his hand. He rushes to leave, claiming to have injured his hand earlier and postpones their date.

Barnabas returns to the Old House and angrily confronts Julia over her treatments. He shows her his hand, which has aged 172 years.

Memorable quotes[]

Julia: To proceed without a minimum of caution is against my principles.

Barnabas: Come, Doctor. You gave up working out of principle a long time ago.

Barnabas: All through me, as if new blood was rushing through my veins… new, young, fresh blood.

Julia: Try not to get too excited.

Barnabas: I can feel myself coming alive. It’s working!

Barnabas: There’s a room at the top of the house that looks out across the cliffs toward the sea. I will go up there, and I will watch, and then the sun will rise. I will stand there, and I will watch the pale sky grow lighter and lighter...the colors of pink and blue, and then a golden light...and I will watch it come up out of the sea! The sun! The sun!

Julia: Did you ever try to find the exact center of a piece of fine crystal?

Julia (to Victoria, showing her Barnabas in his coffin while hypnotized): What you see here, you will never forget, and you will never remember.

Julia: Carolyn enjoys dramatizing sometimes.

Barnabas: Look again! You and your treatments! Look closely, and maybe you’ll see me age before your very eyes! My hand! The hand of a very, very old man!

Dramatis personae[]

Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins
Grayson Hall as Julia Hoffman
Nancy Barrett as Carolyn Stoddard
Alexandra Moltke as Victoria Winters
Peter Murphy as Aged Barnabas' hand (uncredited)

Background information and notes[]

Production[]

Story[]

How exactly does Julia's experiment to change Barnabas from vampire to human work? The chair in which he is strapped is not visibly connected to any of the equipment in the laboratory. Also, she has every stereotypical bit of laboratory apparatus, including a cauldron with dry ice, lots of interestingly shaped glassware full of colored solutions, an oscilloscope, and lots of electrical switches, all viewed by torchlight because... the Old House has no electricity. (Julia's contraptions must have their own generator - it's confirmed in 575 that Julia had installed a generator by the time she & Barnabas are working on the creation of a mate for Adam; it's likely it was originally installed during her attempt to cure Barnabas.)
Barnabas is wearing his onyx ring on the left hand, having previously been seen with it on the right.
Does Barnabas know his left hand has aged before entering the drawing room to talk to Victoria? He very obviously hides his left hand under his cloak during the conversation, and when Victoria does get a glimpse of it and mentions it, he doesn't even glance at his hand before saying he injured it. But if he did know about it beforehand, wouldn't he have gone to confront Julia earlier? [Addendum: There's a practical issue here: the hand makeup would have needed to be applied for this scene since there would have been no time to apply it between the scenes in the Collinwood drawing room and the one immediately following at the Old House. When Barnabas enters the drawing room, we see him from a distance, so the hand makeup may not have been noticeable to viewers. I'm confident the intention was that Barnabas didn't realize his hand was aging until Victoria pointed it out.]
TIMELINE: Day 130 and 131 takes place.

Bloopers and continuity errors[]

When Julia shows Victoria the crystal, Grayson Hall obviously has forgotten her lines and very conspicuously looks at the teleprompter next to the camera before turning back to Victoria to say her lines. She continues to read directly from the teleprompter the entire time she hypnotizes Victoria.
After Victoria opens Barnabas's coffin, the close-up on her face is out of focus.
When Julia closes the coffin, she accidentally closes it on her jacket, and has to pull it out.
When Carolyn brings a tray of coffee into the drawing room, a boom mic dips into view.
Jonathan Frid stumbles over his lines as Barnabas talks about viewing the sunrise from Widows' Hill with Victoria.