>>211460280
Harker surviving his first encounter with Dracula was already a huge boon. It's not too much of a stretch to say that they could have come to the conclusion on their own that they needed to desecrate Lucy's grave.
From Wikipedia because it's a while since I read it
>While Seward and Van Helsing are absent, Lucy and her mother are terrified by a wolf and Mrs. Westenra dies of a heart attack; Lucy dies shortly thereafter. After her burial, newspapers report children being stalked in the night by a "bloofer lady" (beautiful lady), and Van Helsing deduces it is Lucy. Seward, Morris, Arthur and Van Helsing go to her tomb and see that she is a vampire. They stake her heart, behead her, and fill her mouth with garlic.
Why couldn't they have staked out the grave on a whim, discovered it was Lucy and been completely shocked. Had some difficulty comprehending that their dead beloved had risen. Decided together they needed to kill it. Maybe failed the first time or underestimated the danger, etc.
Instead it's ass pull after ass pull from Van Helsing:
>knows garlic stops vampires (but doesn't tell anyone)
>reveals that vampires can only rest on earth from their homeland.
>Using hypnosis, Van Helsing exploits Mina's faint psychic connection to Dracula to track his movements and they pursue.
It's ridiculously dumb, he knows so much about Dracula that he should basically be categorized as an anthropological/zoological discovery. He's a breakthrough, only known of his species, and has the intelligence level of a child, which is about the same as a crow. Yes he's dangerous, but so is a bear and we wouldn't drive those to extinction.
And before you come down on me for saying that treating him like a scientific sample isn't much of an story, I agree, but that's why you keep the scientist out of the story.
