Would You Do It For A Scooby Snack?

Quiz Time folks: Who am I talking about? A TV show beginning in the sixties, ran for years, last seen in a change of format in a movie, now back with a new series. A title character with unexpected abilities, the name being two words, six-letters and three-letters. The second word rhymes with 'moo'?

So, did everybody crack my pre-credits teaser? Yes of course you did - not Doctor Who, but Scooby Doo. Who else (Doo else)?

Scooby Doo has been in my thoughts a lot recently, not least because the Boomerang channel whiled away the October half-term by having a Scooby Doo week, which does exactly what it says on the tin. Every programme on that channel last week was Scooby Doo. There was what I would call 'classic' or 'traditional' Doo; there were feature-length cartoon movies involving real ghosts and ghouls, and aliens; there were some very bizarre 'crossovers' teaming the gang with, amongst others, the Addams Family and with Batman; and there was the most recent series, catchily entitled "What's New Scooby Doo?" There was, in short, Doo, Doo, and more flippin' Doo.

It's hard to say exactly what the appeal of Scooby Doo is, but whatever it is has clearly lasted well. In my idle moments (which my wife will tell you is pretty well most of the time) I sometimes find myself wondering how certain things we take for granted ever came into being. Can you imagine, for example, the meeting where some fool stood up and suggested making fish fingers? How many people told him fish don't have fingers before they finally gave up and made them anyway? It's the same with Scooby Doo: there's this dog, see, who can talk, and he's a coward. Oh and he likes to eat. And he and his friends solve mysteries. Each week they start off thinking there's a ghost, right, but it always turns out to be some guy dressed up. Well, quite... Presumably somebody somewhere must have had the original idea (either Hannah or her sister Barbara I suppose, or am I getting confused again?) but why on earth they ever thought it worth pursuing is anybody's guess.

But whatever the logic (or lack thereof) it's obvious that 'we' have a great affection for Scooby and co - if you have seen (as I have) such travesties as 'The Reluctant Werewolf' (Shaggy is turned into a werewolf and must take part in a ghoul version of Wacky Races organised by Count Dracula in order to become human again) or 'Ghoul School' (Shaggy takes a job as gym master at a private school for female ghosts and phantoms) or the episode where they help Dick Van Dyke to save his circus (I promise you I'm not making these up); if you've seen these then you'll know that only a set of characters that we love and enjoy could possibly get away with it. They are the Scooby Doo equivalent of our own "The Monster of Peladon" or "The Chase" - we know they're abysmal on almost every level, but we love the show too much to totally condemn them.

Of course, the current 'revival' of the adventures of the wacky Mr Doo and his chums can probably be attributed to the big-budget, live-action movie version of last year. We have this on DVD at Curnow Towers, having acquired it last Christmas. Having then seen it a dozen times before the decorations were down I feel confident that I can comment on it with some authority. Several things strike me about the film (quite apart from the curiously stimulating sight of Linda Cardellini's bare shoulders, inexplicably deleted from the final film - or is that just me?). First is the fact that it managed to keep the basic things we remember from the TV series, and just about manages to get away with them in the 'real' world - so Shaggy does wear green T-shirts and brown flares, and he does eat an absurd amount; Velma always wears orange and says "jinkies!"; Daphne likewise always wears purple; the villain does turns out to be a man in a mask (well, sort of); oh, and Scooby Doo really does talk. It's interesting to note, though, what did get changed - for example, Fred's previously rather absent personality is here defined as a rather vain, Adonis figure, which works well in terms of the film's story.

The other thing of note about the movie is that my daughter still thinks it's the real Scooby Doo - I know this because just the other day she asked me how they managed to get him to talk. Thank goodness she's never seen Mr Ed, she'd never cope. Nevertheless, it must surely be some kind of testament to the concept that even though she knows the Boomerang versions of Scooby Doo are 'just' cartoons, she thinks that they are based on a 'real' dog. On that basis she must think my mother-in-law's dogs are retarded or something, because not once have they spoken to her, much less taken part in an elaborate scheme to unmask a phantom.

I vividly remember watching Scooby Doo as a child - indeed, although I was never scared by Doctor Who, the headless horseman episode of Scooby Doo had me hiding under the bedclothes for weeks afterwards. I saw it again recently, and surprise, surprise! it wasn't as scary as I remembered. I told my daughter that it had frightened me when I was little, and she gave me a look that suggested I was perhaps a bit simple. Fair point, I suppose. (I also remember being slightly 'excited' by a character called the Hornet Queen in one of the episodes with, I think, Scrappy Doo, but I haven't seen that episode since I was a kid - if I do ever come across it I don't think I'll mention that to my daughter. It puts me in mind of the Lister/Cat exchange in Red Dwarf, regarding the Flintstones: "I'd do it with Betty. But I'd be thinking of Wilma.")

The thing that is most apparent to an adult watching Scooby Doo (and I'm referring to the original ones now, where all the phantoms turn out to be people dressed up, a convention I'm happy to report they have gone back to for the most recent episodes) is that the plots are an odd mixture of genius and gibberish (a bit like this column, except with genius). Although the explanations at the end always 'logically' explain the odd goings-on, a moment's calm consideration reveals them to be largely absurd. Take the episode with the Ghost Clown ("watch the spinning coin of gold, and you will do as you are told"). Towards the end, the gang think they have captured the Clown, but when they look at the cage, he's gone! At the end of the episode we find out that they had actually captured a life-size balloon of the Clown, inflated with helium to make it 'move', and once deflated he naturally seemed to have vanished. Well, ye-es... But why would the Clown have a life-size balloon of himself to hand? How could he pump it up so quickly? How did he steer it in to the cage without being seen? How did he let the helium out without them noticing? And why didn't they spot a deflated clown-shaped balloon lying at the bottom of the cage? When you put it like that, it's only the site of Daphne in a tutu that makes that episode at all watchable.

But then, I'm being unfair aren't I. It's a series aimed at children, and without wishing to be rude, aimed at comparatively unsophisticated children by today's standards. The plotting, the animation, even the fact that it is quite obvious any 'guest' parts are voiced by either Fred or Shaggy with only the skimpiest of accents, all seem to mark it out as a programme knocked up on the cheap, just to fill a half-hour slot. To be honest, that's probably all it originally was. And anyway, it's not just Scooby Doo that has such ridiculous explanations - look at the ending of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" for example, and the leap of faith. That's simply a trick of perspective, and from the point of view of the character Indiana (or whatever he's called) he would be able to see the bridge perfectly well. It's just as cheap and absurd and 'false' an explanation as any in Scooby Doo. Scooby's explanations may not make any sense in the real world (and that's without my pointing out that in most cases sightings of ghosts wouldn't put people off, but would in fact actively attract them) but they're just the kids cartoon equivalent of any amount of 'technogibberish' that we hear in Star Trek or, heaven forfend, our own beloved Doctor Who.

Reading Si Hunt's thoughts on the Daleks in his superb column not very far away from here, one could also apply such thoughts to Scooby Doo. It's impossible to pinpoint why exactly the show caught (and still holds) the public imagination when other, dare I say better, cartoons have come and gone. But it is certainly true to say that it has. When discussing the Scooby Doo Movie, and the presence of Scrappy Doo, I was taken aback by my sister-in-law, whose immediate reaction was to exclaim, "I hate Scrappy Doo!" in the same way she might have condemned Tony Blair, or the Common Agricultural Policy. To get such a violent reaction in a fully grown woman, referring to a pretty cheesy and cheap cartoon show, is surely a testament to just how much a part of 'us' it all is.

This column is rather longer than my previous two, and I apologise for that. I certainly didn't intend to ramble on about Scooby Doo as much as this, but then I also never planned to spend the half-term holidays watching "Scooby Doo". My plan was to do a bit of reading, a few odd jobs around the house, maybe watch a bit of Doctor Who. That was my plan - and I'd have got away with it too, if it wasn't for my meddling kid!!!

7th November 2003