Dark Shadows Reborn
(
15/08/2008)
By Stuart Manning
April 17:It’s a
Big Finish strategy meeting.
MD Jason Haigh-Ellery announces he has a plan – he always has a plan. With the logistics of gathering the
Dark Shadows cast for our second series of releases proving especially complicated this summer, we’re now unlikely to record until the end of the year. So, what do I think about us recording some more straightforward dramatic readings to bridge the gap?
It’s a good idea, and coincidence is on our side, as LA-based actress
Kathryn Leigh Scott (Maggie Evans) is going to be in London for a month in May. Taking a leaf from the
Doctor Who Companion Chronicles, I suggest we use a second reader. Any ideas? Well, actually...
“What about Alec Newman?” I suggest innocently, pretending to sound casual. I’m not, of course. My brain’s whirring away – it has to be
Alec Newman! For the uninitiated, Alec played vampire Barnabas Collins in the
2004 Dark Shadows pilot produced by Warner Bros, and gave a fantastic performance. Ever since seeing it, I’ve been trying to think of a way we could involve him in the Big Finish range, and as we’ll be recording in London, maybe this could be it.
April 18:
David Richardson, Big Finish’s line producer emails. Alec’s interested, subject to seeing some script pages. Yikes! David’s not one to waste time. Unfortunately, I am, so I spend the weekend fretting as I fail to come up with a story. Do we have him play Barnabas? Do we go with a completely new character? Eventually, I decide we’ll do both – what we need is something that has all the essential qualities of Barnabas, but is a unique personality linked closely with Maggie Evans. Listeners will get a taste of what Alec’s Barnabas might have been, within the context of a new story. So no tall order there, then.
April 21:So, how will this become a story? Well, if we’re using a two-person format, it’s a spooky voice talking to Maggie, I reason... A voice whispering away inside her head, trying to scare her. And one that might adopt any number of guises. Of course, that’s not really a story, but it’s enough for me to write a few pages of dialogue and email them off.
I also want to explore Maggie’s time at the
Windcliff asylum. There’s a pivotal period on the original show, where Maggie’s trying to recover from her ordeal with Barnabas Collins, and I think there’s some mileage to be had there. We can really explore the psychology of being a vampire’s victim, and discover what happened to Maggie in that month or so she spent off-screen. All we need now is for Alec to say yes.
April 23:And he does! For a moment I’m in total shock, before it sinks in that I need to have two scripts ready within the next two weeks. So, half-enthused, half-panicking, I set to work writing. It’s the usual mixture of inspiration, dead ends and frustration, but I’m generally pleased with how it’s going. After a few late nights spent with the phantom voice in Maggie’s head, I begin to think I’m the one being haunted by it.
I’m currently partway through my work on the second series of
Dark Shadows, and I have a problem that’s stumped me for a while. And one lonely evening, whilst fretting over the resolution of
The Ghost Watcher, I realize it’s staring me in the face... The bit of series two that’s clogging up the story and doesn’t really work – it’s the ending I’m looking for. Right ending, wrong story. Problem solved! It moves from one script to the other and fixes both of them in the process.
May 1:It’s all gone wrong. I’m 10 pages into writing the second script and I’ve hit a wall. My plan from the first meeting was to have Alec play the same character, but set the stories years apart, around Maggie’s two trips to the
Windcliff Asylum in 1966 and 1970. We’ll explore Maggie’s changing character, and her reaction to a seemingly unchanging supernatural figure stalking her, I think. On paper, it seems fine, but I soon realize we’re just telling the same story twice. I try moving bits around and throwing myself curveballs, but it’s hopeless. So, reluctantly I admit defeat and go back to the drawing board. The transposed bit of series two is still good, though. That can stay.
So, new story. The asylum stay remains as a plot point, but I decide to relocate the action to Maggie’s offscreen return afterwards, and set it largely in the town of Collinsport. In the series, the action was generally restricted to the Collinwood estate, but here’s a chance to get under the residents’ collective skin and find out what makes a remote fishing village plagued by the supernatural tick. Fear, mostly, but the resilience and fortitude of the denizens seems well worth exploring.
But where will Alec fit in? It makes sense to have him play a new arrival, to give us an outsider’s view of Collinsport, and I remember Kathryn telling me a while back that she’d like to do a more romantic story, which gives me a starting point. And then I get a flash of an image – all movie poster style – a man in a long coat, walking through a misty night, holding out a hand with a glowing orb in it. I have no idea who he is or what he’s holding, but I suddenly have enough to start writing again.
May 10:The scripts are nearly finished, and with bleary eyes, they go off to David to distribute to the cast. They’re not the two stories I set out to write, but I’m pleased with them. Clothes of Sand is an abstract, dreamlike tale – later in the studio, Alec describes it as a “waking consciousness” – whereas
The Ghost Watcher is a much more linear story, with a wistful edge. The Ghost Watcher is a very late title change – the scripts go out called The Day of the Dead, which I put in without really thinking, based on one line of dialogue in the pre-titles. Good title, but there’s no day! There are some dead, but they’re out only at night. And Night of the Dead has more than a hint of George A. Romero about it. So, The Ghost Watcher it is. Done.
May 15:Alec calls me to check the arrangements for tomorrow’s recording. He immediately seems a nice guy, and very enthusiastic, telling me how much he’s looking forward to tomorrow. “I know a bit about Dark Shadows,” he says conspiratorially. “Yeah?” I reply. “I was in a pilot of it,” he confides. I wonder where this is going. “I played Barnabas,” he reveals modestly, and I detect more than a little pride.
May 16:Studio days are always over so quickly. Pages pile up on the floor as the takes are called and all the things you wished you’d thought to put in the script swim before your eyes with devastating clarity. But, for once, I’m enjoying the ride. Both Alec and Kathryn are fantastic, and it’s there, whispering to us in the control room, through the speakers - exactly the voice I heard in my head when I was writing.
No wonder Maggie’s scared.