Dark Shadows: A Temporal Map of Collinwood

Remember that episode of Star Trek where Kirk has to standby and let Edith Keeler get hit by a truck in order to save the future? That's a Tuesday conflict for Dark Shadows, a television series so non-linear that it makes Black Mirror's "Bandersnatch" experiment look like a recipe for making toast. Hell, the premise of Dark Shadows even changes depending on where you first start watching it. Those of us who started at the beginning have trouble letting go of Victoria Winters, while those who came in later in the series have this notion that Barnabas Collins is a tragic hero. And don't even get me started on the many different Quentins that populate the series.

Patrick McCray has spent so much time in Collinsport that he's registered to vote there. He's run the series so many times, and in so many different viewing orders, that he's got a God Mode perception of Dark Shadows that few can keep up with. It seems silly not to exploit lean on that knoweledge every once in a while, so I asked him for a chronology that placed the episodes in a viewing order based on the year in which they were set. Trying to visualize this time stream prompted some interesting discussion and challenges. For example, it's never explicitly stated that the "parallel time bands" of 1841 and 1970 are one and the same, yet there's evidence to support that assumption. Also, thanks to a combination of time travel storylines and the way daytime dramas constantly fudged the the flow of time, you could make an argument that the entire year of 1967 simply disappears in a puff of paradox.

Below is a "Temporal map of Collinwood," which includes a few notes about how these storylines might flow if put in their chronological order. Warning, this map is HUGE. Click on the image to get a closer look at it.

UPDATE: One of the great things about sharing your work online is the sudden appearances of thousands of proofreaders, all of them offering their services for free. A few readers quickly spotted an error I made in the chart: the ommission of a block of episodes from 1970. Below is the revised graphic with those episodes restored.

Dark Shadows: Episode 1

It's not easy picking a date to celebrate the birth of DARK SHADOWS. As a daytime drama, the show relied on a ruthless, unforgiving schedule that gave the cast and crew only one day to get things right. The first episode, though, offered a lot more flexibility. There was location shooting, script writing, casting, and multiple days of studio recording — most of which took place during the early weeks of June, 1966. (In most markets, the first episode aired on Monday, June 27.) There's a lot there to commemorate, so I decided to take a stab at an infographic that illustrated the inception and impact of these early creative decisions.

Click on the image for a closer look!

A visual guide to Big Finish's DARK SHADOWS tales

DARK SHADOWS is an intimidating, lumbering beast. The original series has more than a thousand episodes, all of which have serve as a foundation for comic books, novels, television "revivals," three feature films and more than 50 audio dramas. I imagine many people never sample DARK SHADOWS because they simply don't know where to start.

This mindset has probably even kept a few devoted DARK SHADOWS fans away from Big Finish's audio dramas, which have generated a gravity of their own during the last decade. It was pretty easy to keep up in the early days: the new installments were (generally) set after the end of the television show, creating a tidy continuity. But the series' rambling timeline eventually led to writers exploring the deeper pockets of Collinsport, creating a narrative that straddles several centuries.

But it looks more confusing than it actually is.

Jumping onto a serialized story — whether it's a Spider-Man comic, a post-modern soap like PRETTY LITTLE LIARS, or DARK SHADOWS — is a lot like arriving at a party: You're dropped into the middle of several on-going conversations, many involving people you don't know. Some guests have lengthy (possibly even troubled) relationships, while others are complete strangers. I could probably elaborate more on this metaphor, but I just remembered that I hate parties. (But you probably see my point.)

A user at the Divergent Universe forums has shared a growing timeline of DARK SHADOWS audio dramas that puts the entire series in chronological order. I've used this timeline to build an infographic for Big Finish's many release, which you can find at the bottom of this post.

WARNING: It's a HUGE file.

A few notes before you start exploring it:

Big Finish's timeline has always been intentionally loose. Many of the episodes set after the end of the original series are listed only as "1973." This doesn't automatically mean these stories all take place during the same 12-month period ... just that they take place in the years following the show's cancellation.

The same goes for the episodes set in "1983." Some of the early Big Finish stories were set in the early 1980s, with later episodes implying a progression of time. A great many are slugged "1983," but there's no reason to think they all take place during the same year OCTOPUSSY was released.

Regardless, the writers take these complicated backstories into consideration when creating each new story. It's been a driving concern from the very beginning not to alienate new fans, so it's safe to dive into the DARK SHADOWS line pretty much anywhere.

Below, you can find the first draft of the visual timeline to Big Finish's DARK SHADOWS tales. Click the image for a closer view.