Dark Shadows volume 17 & 18 announced
 

from are good friends at DVDBLISS

Dark Shadows Collection 17
Street Date: March 29, 2005
SRP: $59.98
TRT: 840 min.
Label: MPI Home Video

http://www.boxsetbliss.com/images/DV...lection-17.jpg

In 1897, Judith Collins is released from the sanitarium and returns to Collinwood, where Gregory Trask, hoping to seize control of the Collins family wealth, plans her murder. Evan Hanley conducts a ceremony to reunite Quentin Collins' mind with his body, which has been taken over by Count Petofi. Secretly cured of his vampirism, Barnabas Collins reappears, claiming to be a British relative. Mesmerized by Josette's portrait, Lady Kitty Hampshire begins to believe she is Barnabas' lost love. When Kitty disappears, Barnabas follows her back to the year 1796. He is chosen against his will to become the human leader of the Leviathans, an ancient race from another world. The ghost of Jenny Collins appears to Chris Jennings in 1969 and warns him that Quentin is the only one who can save him from the werewolf curse.

Dark Shadows Collection 18
Street Date: May 31, 2005
SRP: $59.98
TRT: 840 min.
Label: MPI Home Video

http://www.boxsetbliss.com/images/DV...lection-18.jpg

While driving in the Collinsport village, Barnabas Collins accidentally hits a stranger in the road. He recognizes that the man is identical to Quentin Collins from 1897. Paul Stoddard becomes frantic when he realizes that the Leviathans want to claim the soul of his daughter Carolyn due to an agreement he made when she was a child. He discovers that the young boy living at the antique shop is a member of the other-worldly race. Dr. Julia Hoffman's investigations to find a cure for Chris Jennings' werewolf curse lead her to the elderly artist Charles Delware Tate. After revealing that she is really Amanda Harris from 1897, Olivia Corey tries to help Quentin regain his memory. While searching for Quentin's mystical portrait, Julia meets art collector Sky Rumson and learns he is married to Angelique, the witch. Barnabas begs Angelique for her supernatural help to overthrow the Leviathans.

EeeK! My budget is only up to volume 13 so far!! :D

So, we're looking at about 24 volumes total? (I'm guessing...)

there will be at least 25, probably 26 to reach the end of the show....

as long as they continue to release 40 eps per set...after collection #25 there will be about 15-20 eps left...not sure how they will handle this....
My guess would be to throw a bunch of extra stuff on there to make it a full set or something....

remember that there were 1225 episodes of DS total, but since several episodes have two different numbers due to it being pre-empted or whatever..the epsiode numbers go up episode #1245 (the last episode)...

then there are the first 209 episodes to be released......and I reckon there will be 5 or 6 sets for that....

I've read somewhere that the reason these episodes where skiped-over in the first place was because a) nobody knows who owns the rights to them & b) because there are no masters (or there completely thrased of something)...

that's completely false.

MPI has already said they will be releasing these after they the finish the rest of the collection.

This is the same way they released the show on vhs....they started the releases with the arrival of Barnabas, and then released the early episodes after that and called it the "Collectors Series".

The reasoning behind this is that the pre-Barnabas episodes are not very interesting and peple coming to the show for the first time will likely have given up on it all before reaching the arrival of Barnabas. When originally aired, DS was in serious danger of cancellation until Barney came out of his coffin.

The first 209 episodes were released on vhs....all of the episodes exist.
(there is only one episode of the entire show that is still missing and it's episode #1219......and they have a sound recording of this episode for which stills from surrounding eps were used to roughly reconstruct the episode for the vhs release.....and the same reconstruction will probably be used in the dvd release).

oh, forgot to mention....

another reason why the releases start with #210....
this is where the syndication cycles always began.... PBS and whatever other channels that used to show the series in syndication never had the first few hundred and the last few hundred episodes. There were 6 syndication cycles sold to various stations covering only episodes 210-1001. If I recall correctly, the first time that the entire run of the show was rebroadcast was when Scifi Channel got the show....

All this information can be found in the Dark Shadows Almanac: Millennium Edition.