Santa Barbara outer limits
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One of the boldnesses of Santa Barbara at the origin of the magic it offers to its televiewers is the occasional appeal to fantastic elements. We listen by fantastic the events taking place in reality, but that no science or no logic can rationally explain. That is why we shall not speak here about the dreams made by the characters (The Capwell zone for example), or the hallucinations arisen from a state of coma (Brandon reliving the Nativity at Christmas 1988). Following the example of other daytime soap-operas, Santa Barbara had appeal to fantastic elements repeatedly during its existence. These events outside reality can be divided into three categories : the fantastic meetings, the premonitory dreams and the time travels.

The fantastic meetings

One of the first incursions of Santa Barbara in the fantastic takes place in October 1986. Eden Capwell and Cruz Castillo, then engaged, goes to South of France, in Monte Carlo then in Nice for a romantic stay. Hosted in a castle in Nice, they discover a suitcase containing old costumes from the last century. The owner of the castle tells them that they belonged to the son of the Duke of the castle, Edward, and to a woman named Anna with whom he was in love. But the Duke wanting to force his son to marry a princess, Anna committed suicide by hoping to make him change his mind and then to resuscitate to find Edward. Her plan having failed, their love was never able to bloom, and they both continue to haunt the castle forever, unable to find each other. Even if she is impressed by this ghost story, Eden decides to take on the dress to spend an evening worthy of a novel from the Renaissance with Cruz, her beloved. The spirits of Edward and Anna do not need more to appear to Eden, finally gathered thanks to the strength of the love that Eden and Cruz were able to inspire them. The owner of the castle moreover confirms them that the drafts felt in some of the rooms disappeared for this night, sign that the souls of the unfortunate couple are finally in peace.

The same story, minus a few details, happens again in April 1988, this time during the wedding of Eden and Cruz in Pebble Creek. It is just before their union so awaited that, each one on his side, the two heroes get acquainted with Amelia and Captain Edward Anderson. Dressed in costumes completely anachronistic, the two characters turn out very quickly to be the ghosts of a couple of lovers whose story is dramatic. Indeed, while seeing the ship of her beloved sinking offshore at a few miles of Pebble Creek coast, Amelia committed suicide by throwing herself into the ocean. But for the second time, the love of Eden and Cruz offers to a couple of spirits the force to break the fate which prevented them from meeting and from living their love peacefully.
To believe that the destinies of Amelia and her captain are intimately connected to those of Eden and Cruz, because in 1990, on the occasion of a pilgrimage to Pebble Creek after their break-up, our heroes find a lonely Amelia, separated too from the person she loves. The magic of Pebble Creek then operates again and each of both couples succeeds in re-forming and in pursuing its adventures.
Read also : Eden Capwell and Cruz Castillo's wedding

Another fantastic meeting operates in December 1987, with a character often summoned in television shows in this period of the year : Santa Claus. These are Julia Wainwright and Mason Capwell who open the ball, asked to audition pretenders for the role of Santa Claus for a charity party organized by Lionel Lockridge. They then meet a man named Kris Kringle, who tells them to be the most competent for the job, being himself the real Santa Claus. Julia and Mason have fun with it, while wondering at the capacity of Kris to know the whole life of the both heroes since their childhood. When after an unfortunate combination of circumstances, Kris turns to be locked in prison, he does not wait to disappear in smoke to join his cabin under the snow. This is there that Julia and Mason find him and spend a night in his guest room, persuaded to be hosted by a delirious fanciful man. But at night, it is well Kris that they see from the window of their bedroom, to fly towards heavens on his sled pulled by flying reindeers...

Kris makes his return in Santa Barbara the next year. At the time of Christmas, this is this time Eden and Cruz who seek him to participate in a charity fair for the city orphans. After the party, Kris sprains his ankle a few hours before the departure for his tour. This is then to Cruz that Kris asks for help for the annual distribution of presents for all the young children of the world. With a certain surprise, Cruz finds then himself playing the benefactors around the world on a flying sleigh together with one of Kris' elves. Kris, to thank Eden and Cruz for having played the temporary workers the time of one night, makes them the gift of a magic stone which allows to fulfil a wish. Eden has then the idea to use it to wish the awakening of the young Brandon Capwell, plunged into a profound coma at the hospital for several days. The magic operates and Brandon wakes up immediately after the wish is pronounced. A beautiful Christmas Eve rich in miracles...
Read also : Kris Kringle's cabin

After Santa Claus, it is with guardian angels that are confronted some of the heroes of the show as from 1989. It is at first Mason, during his coma, who flies away in Paradise and discovers there that his former love, Mary DuVall, is officially his guardian angel and watches over him since her death about three years ago. We would have been able to believe that these so sweet reunion scenes come from a delirium of Mason during his semi-conscious state, until an event confirms their truthfulness. Indeed, a few months later, Julia and Mason, freshly married, go on a heavenly desert island for their honeymoon. But Julia falls suddenly seriously ill and Mason is afraid for her life. The appearance of a mysterious woman came to bring care and cure to Julia allows this latter to survive. When Mason understands by a letter she left him that their benefactress is in fact Mary, her status of guardian angel is then confirms without any discussion.

Another guardian angel then makes his appearance at Christmas 1989 : while Cruz is discouraged further to his problems of couple with Eden, an unpredictable and strange man comes to him. He tells to be named Paddy and to be his guardian angel. He offers to Cruz the necessary comfort to help him to get back on his feet, by showing him how much he is loved and also by presenting him the life of his family and friends without his presence and his support. Thanks to the success of his action, Paddy will even gain his wings to Paradise.
Finally, it is one year later, in December 1990, that the third guardian angel intervenes to save another hero of the show. It is Briana, who appears to Eden during her coma, and allows her above all to change in a irreversible way some events of past (see lower, in the time travels).
Read also : The biography of Paddy

A last fantastic meeting can be mentioned, always in 1990. It is the one of Cruz with Shamar, an old Indian of the Sakites tribe. This latter, before dying, gives to Cruz (who would be a descendant of the tribe), a talisman with magic powers. The effects of this object on Cruz confirm these statements, because in its ownership, Cruz escapes repeatedly to death as by miracle. The man was well a magician, whose powers were moreover desired by many persons, of whom a Pasha, who kidnaps Cruz in his Moroccan palace to bring to light the origin of these powers. But this is then another story...
Read also : Cruz captive of a harem

The premonitory dreams

In Santa Barbara, the heroine(heroin) the most convenient to the premonitory dreams is called Eden Capwell. Twice in the series, Eden succeeds in seeing in dream of the elements no knowledge of which she(it) had nevertheless and that she(it) had no means to guess. The first time goes back up(raises) to its marriage with Cruz in 1988. During an ancestral ceremony in Mexico, Guillermo Castillo, the uncle of Cruz, predicts for Eden that she will see in dream the place where she and Cruz can get married. Eden has fun with it, until she(it) made one night the dream of a large(upper-class) hotel built on a magnificent property in border of the ocean. While she(it) gets ready to give up finding this place in the reality, she(it) makes a surprising discovery: his(her) relatives(parents) already went(surrendered) in this place. It is even over there that they crossed(spent) their honeymoon and conceived Eden! Nevertheless, never they had spoken to him(her) about it nor even less shown a photo. Moreover, even on the spot, in the hotel of Pebble Creek, Eden will feel as attracted(enticed) by a magnet(affectionate) towards the room(chamber) where his(her) relatives(parents) had stayed, more than twenty five years earlier...
Read also : The biography of Guillermo Castillo

It is the next year when Eden will again be subject to a series of premonitory dreams. While they had confirmation that their baby Adriana did not finally die, Eden and Cruz is in the incapacity to locate(localize) her(it). It is then that Eden has regularly visions of the child in its sleep, as well as the place which she(it) does not succeed in defining. He will need several days to discover finally that this place is situated in Paris and that it is about the apartment occupied by Ric, the brother of Cruz. Until she sees there finally Adriana and is persuaded that her baby is good in the reality there. If Cruz has difficulty in adhering(subscribing) to its visions, the coming of Eden in the French capital confirms its dreams: his(her) daughter is good in the hands of Ric and of his wife... Or how demonstrate, if need were, the links mystic quasi-uniting every mother to her child...

During the same storyline, a second person seems to weave some narrow links with Adriana and the other protagonists involved in her kidnapping : the medium Sandra Mills. From the moment she appears to Cruz with the certainty that Adriana is well alive, Sandra shows at many times the veracity of her gifts. During phases of "dreams", Sandra is capable of feeling Catherine Thoreau's death and of guaranteeing that the body of a child found dead is not Adriana's.

The time travels

Great classic of the science-fiction, the time travel is also part of the fantastic themes approached by Santa Barbara. The show applies the theory which wants that when an event is modified in the past, this latter has then immediate repercussions in the present.

The first time travel takes place in 1988, after the wedding of Eden Capwell and Cruz Castillo. Once united, the couple decides to spend its honeymoon in Pebble Creek, love place of Eden's parents where they conceived her. By discovering an old book in one of the bedrooms of their hotel, Eden and Cruz have fun reading the magic curses it contains and cross a mirror which leads them directly... in 1962. And so they fall on that period versions of Sophia and C.C. Capwell, at the time of their coming to Pebble Creek. But C.C.'s legendary jealousy does not delay making him become enraged with his young wife, when he surprises her dancing with Cruz and having fun with him. The couple quarrels and threatens to part. Eden worries about the effects on the present if her parents do not get reconciled and do not conceive her, as says it History, during their stay there. So, Cruz tries to persuade C.C. that there is nothing between Sophia and him, whereas Eden convinces Sophia that all men are jealous and that she has to forgive her husband. By organizing the reunion of her parents in the stables of the hotel, Eden succeeds in restoring the events having led to her conception and by there even to her existence. Once the past saved, Eden and Cruz hurries to leave the 60s to return in their good old year of 1988.

The second time travel concern this time only Eden. At the end of 1990, Eden is victim of a car accident and gets to the hospital, plunged into a profound coma. Her guardian angel Briana appears to her then and offers her the possibility of returning in the past to, at first, clear up a murder. Indeed, a few days before her coma, Eden shot in position of self-defense at Robert Barr, her former boyfriend and new husband of her sister Kelly. But as she could not prove that she was threatened, Eden said nothing about it to the police and Kelly was charged at her place. So Eden comes back on the scene at the evening of the murder, and discovers, like a spirit, another vision of the events happened that night. She surprises at first Craig Hunt to prowl in secret rooms of Robert's manor house, before discovering that another person was also present this evening, Flame Beaufort. This latter was in fact all this time hidden behind one of the panels of the wall overhanging the staircases of the manor house and shot at Robert a first time, just before Eden's fire. So, Eden does not have to feel guilty of having killed Robert any more and can help, once brought out of her coma, to make Kelly being acquitted.

But the occasions to modify the present during time travels thanks to Briana do not stop there for Eden. This latter, always in the coma, takes advantage of the opportunity which is offered to her to erase an evening she cared about a lot : the one when her mother Sophia offered herself for one night to her former lover Lionel Lockridge, one evening of 1990. So she goes back to this evening and reaches in preventing them from committing the irreparable action. So that even the compromising photos of this act which Gina Capwell had taken without her knowing to blackmail Sophia become blank, the event having been erased by Eden in the past and thus even in the present.

In any daytime soap-opera, the part of magic and dream has to be always tangible "to make sacred" a love story and to lead it on the way of the myth. This is what the writers managed to weave with delicacy and with a certain realism, around the couple Eden Capwell and Cruz Castillo, or also around the story of Mary DuVall and Mason Capwell. Even if the authors kept a rather conventional approach of the incursion of fantastic in reality (ghosts, guardian angels and Santa Claus), it is necessary to recognize that it protected the televiewers of any incoherence or dive in ridiculous storylines (such as the return of Bobby Ewing under the shower one the year after his death in Dallas, or the kidnapping of Fallon Carrington by aliens in The Colbys).