Scooby-Doo Fan Site

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

This is the original Scooby-Doo series, where the characters and the format of solving mysteries associated with supernatural creatures and villains in disguise were established. The members of the gang travel around in a van that they call the Mystery Machine, visiting various places in the United States and even around the world. The characters' ages are never fully established, although they seem to be in their late teens. They are old enough to drive and travel without parents, but the adults in the episodes refer to them as "kids." As least one of them is probably in college because they sometimes seem visit professors and help them with various tasks. However, they also participate in things like barn dances, which seems like more of a high school activity, and in "Nowhere to Hyde," someone even mentions that the kids went to see a magic show at the high school. Aside from giving the kids an excuse to visit and help professors, school isn't discussed much in the series, and the kids are never actually seen attending classes. They only rarely work at any particular job or educational project, which is how the kids often are in other series as well. It isn't explicitly stated at this point, although it is somewhat implied that the kids are at least somewhat supported by parents or other relatives who have money, enabling them to travel. You never see the kids' parents in this series, although the kids occasionally visit other relatives, like aunts and uncles.

Although each mystery has a ghost story or monster themes that often spoof old horror or mystery shows (see my page of movie references, which compares episodes to old movies), every mystery has a logical explanation and every ghost or monster is really a human in disguise. Hauntings and monster attacks are typically staged to scare people away from certain places and/or cover up for some kind of criminal activity. (The schemes can require a lot of suspension of disbelief because the villains' plans tend to be needlessly complicated and many would probably require more money and equipment to set up than the villains would get from them.)

One of the funny things about the supernatural creatures that the kids investigate in this original series is that they are often referred to as "ghosts" even when they are clearly some other kind of creature, like a vampire or werewolf, like the monsters in "A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts." Sometimes, the monsters are not just merely monsters but also specifically declared to be ghosts of monsters, like the alien that is called a "space ghost" in "Spooky Space Kook", the ghost of the yeti in "That's Snow Ghost", and the ghost of a werewolf in "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Werewolf?"

The episodes tend to follow a certain format:

1. The gang goes somewhere for fun, and they either see a ghost or monster or are told that there's one in the area.
2. Fred, Daphne, and Velma want to investigate the strange happenings, although Shaggy and Scooby think that they should just forget about it and, hopefully, get something to eat instead, establishing their roles as food-obsessed cowards, often the comic relief in the episodes. The others often have to talk them into coming on the investigation.
3. The gang goes to the place where the ghost or monster has been seen and has various frightening run-ins with it while they look for clues. The gang's opinions about whether the ghost or monster is real or not are often ambiguous, up until almost the end of the episode. Daphne is sometimes kidnapped at this point, establishing her as the damsel in distress of the series.
4. There's a big chase scene, accompanied by music in a popular style which has little to do with the theme of the mystery.
5. Velma and Fred are the ones who usually come up with the solution to the mystery. Velma is the smart one who notices details and has esoteric knowledge, and Fred is good at putting together clues and knowledge that Velma offers. Fred also comes up with a plan for capturing the villain, assembling a complicated trap out of things they have in the mystery machine or that they find around them and explaining to the others how it will work, establishing his reputation as the man of action and the trap-maker.
6. The others convince Shaggy and Scooby (often together, but not always) to be the bait that lures the villain into the trap. (They taunt Shaggy and Scooby, saying that they're cowards, but you'll notice that none of them wants to be the bait, either. Just saying.) They often bribe Shaggy and Scooby with Scooby Snacks or other treats to get them to cooperate.
7. During the trapping scene, something often goes wrong with the trap, sometimes because of Daphne's clumsiness (establishing her "danger-prone" reputation), but they still manage to get the bad guy.
8. The gang unmasks the bad guy and explains to the authorities what the villain's motive was.

Later series also use this format, but many of them also make in-jokes about it or intentionally vary it for the amusement of long-time fans.

Admittedly, there's a certain amount of corniness to the series, but that's part of the charm. If you're a fan of old mystery movies, you understand. This particular Scooby-Doo series, as the original series, is the one that usually has the most nostalgia for fans, the one most of us saw first as kids. It's also the one that all other series are compared to as fans talk about how faithful later series are to the characters and format.

No one is ever concerned about why Scooby talks, although they sometimes meet up with more normal dogs, who don't. There is no particular reason given for why Scooby talks, it just seems to be considered normal for him. His ability to talk varies a little between episodes and in other series, with Scooby sometimes using hand signals or Charades to convey information. When he speaks, he tends to include extra 'R's, saying things like "Ruh-roh!" instead of "Uh-oh!"

The one thing that sometimes bothers me about old episodes is how callous the characters sometimes seem toward each other, particularly Fred and Velma toward Shaggy and Scooby, calling them "dumb" sometimes, joking about how they would never find a clue when they often do, acting like Shaggy and Scooby often imagine things when they never do (they're always running into monsters and ghosts! literally!), and trying to force, guilt, or bribe them into the whole "live bait" routine when none of the rest of them is willing to do it. Later series, while also involving bribing or convincing Shaggy and Scooby to be live bait, sometimes change things up, with other characters being bait and Fred and Velma being a little nicer. Shaggy and Scooby don't usually mind being called cowards, actually, because that's how they see themselves, too, and they're pretty open about it, considering it the saner course of action when there's ghosts and monsters around. They kind of have a point.

Table of Episodes

This table has descriptions of the episodes in the series. The table is set up so that you can choose which episodes display, limiting the episodes displayed to those with a certain kind of creature in them.

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