Dark Shadows 44: The Darkest Shadow (spoilers)

It's an interesting story. First off, it was the first two disc release of the Dramatic Readings range since the adaptation of Angelique's Descent (two 2 disc releases) that started the range.

The biggest easter egg reference is right there in the synopsis, D Curtis. No doubt a reference to Dan Curtis, who literally dreamed Dark Shadows up!

Some cast notes. Denise Nickerson, who plays Elspeth Gardner in this (and first appeared in the role in Carriage of the Damned released earlier in this bundle of stories), played Amy Jennings in the original series and was Violet Beauregard in the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. There's an interesting bit of foreshadowing with the Walles Hamonde character that I won't go into details here because of potential Bloodlust spoilers regarding his character in that. Hint: listen closely during the understudy scene near the end of the first part.

I seem to remember Ubiquity Studios (where this story takes place) also appearing in the Doctor Who audio Peri and the Pison Paradox, which was also written by Nev Fountain.

Slightly nit-picky, but I'm not quite sure about Donna McKechnie's acting style. To my ear she's got a tone of dull surprise that she largely sticks with. I'm only a quarter or so through the 1897 storyline with the TV show and haven't met the character yet there, so I've yet to see if she did any better back then.

What if the Afghan is the actual Crimson Pearl, or curse on Collinsport?

It definitely pops up everywhere. It even makes its way to Bangor in The Enemy Within. The same story references the store that supplied the clothes for the original series, so the writer knew their trivia. Some of the characters already had Parallel Time counterparts in the original series!

I saw this new thread and wondered why we'd made another thread for this and upon searching for the old realized that I was thinking of the old BF forums topic.

So much good discussion lost.

This release was largely got me into the wider DS range at BF. I'd dipped in to a couple of the Quentin releases on the recommendation of the Dorian fanbase, but him actually cameoing in this got me to preorder instantly. And then of course I had to go listen to Eternal Actress, and the other Quentin Audios, and Londons Burning lead me to the Trask stories, which lead me to the Angelique stories, and so on, daisy chaining around until I owned all the Dark Shadows BF had put out up to that point, though I hadn't listened to it all by the time Darkest Shadow actually dropped.

And here we are three (!) years later (has it been three years already? Good Lord!) and I've watched all the movies, listened to all the audios, have read all the full-length novels, have seen the Revival, and am almost halfway through the Original Series.

You see what you've done, Big Finish! Shame on you for putting out such high quality content! SHAME!

(But no, when's the next release? I need more! )

So let me get this right she is obviously from the original series.She is a painting that was brought to life.She is immortal?She is in Love with Quentin.(Did Quentin get around the whole cast? 😝)
This is a good story with plenty to enjoy.Donna Mckechnie is very good are the rest of the cast and it leaves me with wanting to know more about her story(eventually i will see the rest of the show-but it is so enjoyable for me getting little snippets to piece together) and even i got the injoke about Curtis-nice one

Click on it-i am trapped in a time loop better link me to STNG

Another afghan spot, Maggie has it in The Ghost Watcher on her bed at the Collinsport Inn. Speaking of links, the same story mentions Jim Hardy, who at that point was a one-off mention in a very, very early episode (it would have had to be early, since it was about Roger's car crash that David caused).

That’s exactly what I thought as well.