Thanks to an interview with bloody-disgusting.com, writer Mark B. Perry has confirmed that his sequel series to the original Dark Shadows, Dark Shadows: Reincarnation, is still being retooled and shopped around after ultimately not making the cut at the CW, more for scheduling reasons than anything else. He describes the premise this way: “We are present day, whatever that ends up being. Whether it’s 2022, ’23, whatever it is when we finally get on the air. But we are definitely a present day continuation. Everything that happened on the original show, mostly, is canon. As you know as a fan, canon changed within the show while it was around … The protagonist is a young woman in her twenties. In the very first minute of the pilot, she discovers that the woman that she thought was her aunt was really her biological mother, and that her biological mother was a bloodline Collins.”
As it turns out, her mother is actually Victoria Winters (played by Alexandra Moltke on the original). The search for the truth — mirroring Victoria’s quest to uncover her own mysterious past — drives this character, Tori Danvers, to Collinwood. Notes Perry, “The plan for the first season is to have a couple of legacy characters from the original show. I’m not going to tell you who they are, though! But that is the plan. That is the way the script is written, which I think provides continuity. But what’s important is, the focus of the show is going to be on the 2020s, and the next generation of the Collins family. Though it’s probably two generations by now. The focus of the show is going to be on that, but the legacy characters are crucial to the storytelling, and also to the legitimacy of the show.”
One would have to imagine that vampire Barnabas Collins will remain a significant player. For starters, being a vampire, he’s immortal. And then there’s the fact that it’s difficult to imagine DS in any form without Barnabas being at the forefront. Hopefully there will be much more to come.
Don’t forget Barnabas Collins was no longer a vampire when the show ended.
I’m still convinced that any television series of Dark Shadows has got to feature the character of Barnabas Collins; we’ll have to assume he re-acquired the curse or something.
That would work.
Well he does say some things are canon from the old show and in another article he indicated the Julia quote about the history of the Collins being sketchy. So, I remember that Victoria was ‘lost’ in the past, with Peter Bradford, which led to Barnabas meeting the Leviathans (I think). But if not, this new character might still be too young to have Victoria be her mother from 50 years ago (well, maybe). And in mother forums I’ve already suggested the idea that Reincarnation would have Victoria come back, via Quentin’s Stairway Through Time. So why to merge these? A pregnant Victoria did find her way back to Collinwood (possibly it’s own season or arc!) but 20 or more years later, and what a different Collinwood. So she fled having this new character under another name, all the while not sure how to handle this problem. But another point would be Barnabas. My own idea goes to the point that at the end of the first series, he was cured. But what if he reverted, later, and Julia had to chain his coffin again, but in a more secret area. And then of course Julia aged and died. But maybe she gave the secret of Barnabas to one of these legacy characters?
The thing I’m looking forward to is seeing how he ties the generations together. I just had a long discussion with Mark about it and I have to say that I’m very excited about his vision for this show. He’ll be featured in the third episode of the Vampires & Slayers podcast, which will go live one day next week.