Post by spocklocker on Feb 27, 2019 0:23:13 GMT -5
Hi, first-time poster. Didn't know where else to talk about this, but "Curse of the 13th Ghost" had me remembering that my favorite version of the Scooby gang as a kid was the gang that appears right at the beginning of "13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo," where it was just Shaggy + Scooby + Scrappy + Daphne. So I revisited "The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show" and "The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries," and I'm not exactly sorry the team didn't last longer, but I remembered why I liked it so much.
Of course I know now why the team was set up the way it was. They wanted to bring back the mystery format after dropping it (and all the humans except Shaggy) in the early '80s. But the network still wanted to do mostly short cartoons rather than full-length half-hour episodes, so they couldn't bring back the whole gang, not for an 11-minute cartoon (which is why Fred and Velma only returned in full-length episodes, never in shorts). So they chose Daphne because they needed a girl on the show and she was The Hot One. Really I almost wonder if they tossed around the idea of creating a new character and then realized they could just use Daphne in the role of the girl reporter who takes the gang around the world.
Anyway, what I think I liked about this version as a kid was how friendly it all seemed. Everybody got along. Maybe it's because they were without the leader (Fred) and the smart one (Velma) so no one had any reason to put themselves above any other member. Daphne was the leader by default, but she didn't really act like one. Scrappy stopped being obnoxious and became a helpful sidekick to any character he happened to be with. Daphne took Shaggy to meet her rich parents and they liked him; they all went to Shaggy's sister's wedding and hung out with more of Scooby's relatives... I don't think I've ever seen a version of the gang that felt more like a happy family.
Now, of course, this is why I'm saying I don't wish the team had stayed like that: what makes the original Scooby gang work is that there's some tension between them. They don't seem like they would naturally get along, and they don't always. That makes for more stories. The half-hour episodes of these shows feel a bit padded because even when Fred and/or Velma are around, there's just not a lot of tension. The foursome only really works right for those 11-minute mysteries.
But I also kind of like the 11-minute mystery format, again, not as something they should have kept doing, but as a fun change of pace. Scooby episodes have a tendency to feel padded out to half an hour because they really don't have enough plot to fill the time. So these are like little bite-size versions of Scooby episodes.
And I really like how Daphne, considered the least useful of the three "normal" humans, steps up and becomes anyone's equal in this series. It was an accident, I don't think they were really trying to develop her character, but because she had to do so much of the mystery-solving work, she became a "girly" girl who is also a natural leader and a brilliant detective but is still flawed and sometimes gets captured. And, like I said, Scrappy stopped being The Scrappy because of the setup that made him, in effect, Daphne's assistant.
"13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" is probably a better show overall or at least more ambitious, but the regular characters mostly didn't benefit from the new format. Scooby benefited (because we actually got to see him be burned-out and fed up with being in danger all the time), but Daphne, Scrappy and even Shaggy had surprisingly little to do, because so much of the screen time went to Flim-Flam and Vincent Van Ghoul and the many villains. So people have noted that Daphne's portrayal in "Curse of the 13th Ghost" isn't really like her portrayal in "13 Ghosts," where she didn't do much, but it's sort of a composite of her "13 Ghosts" look with her "NSaSDS/TNSDM" attitude.
Anyway, that's why I like these two years of Scooby lore. It's a shame the DVD releases stopped just before the point when Scrappy gets tolerable, but he doesn't have much luck.
Of course I know now why the team was set up the way it was. They wanted to bring back the mystery format after dropping it (and all the humans except Shaggy) in the early '80s. But the network still wanted to do mostly short cartoons rather than full-length half-hour episodes, so they couldn't bring back the whole gang, not for an 11-minute cartoon (which is why Fred and Velma only returned in full-length episodes, never in shorts). So they chose Daphne because they needed a girl on the show and she was The Hot One. Really I almost wonder if they tossed around the idea of creating a new character and then realized they could just use Daphne in the role of the girl reporter who takes the gang around the world.
Anyway, what I think I liked about this version as a kid was how friendly it all seemed. Everybody got along. Maybe it's because they were without the leader (Fred) and the smart one (Velma) so no one had any reason to put themselves above any other member. Daphne was the leader by default, but she didn't really act like one. Scrappy stopped being obnoxious and became a helpful sidekick to any character he happened to be with. Daphne took Shaggy to meet her rich parents and they liked him; they all went to Shaggy's sister's wedding and hung out with more of Scooby's relatives... I don't think I've ever seen a version of the gang that felt more like a happy family.
Now, of course, this is why I'm saying I don't wish the team had stayed like that: what makes the original Scooby gang work is that there's some tension between them. They don't seem like they would naturally get along, and they don't always. That makes for more stories. The half-hour episodes of these shows feel a bit padded because even when Fred and/or Velma are around, there's just not a lot of tension. The foursome only really works right for those 11-minute mysteries.
But I also kind of like the 11-minute mystery format, again, not as something they should have kept doing, but as a fun change of pace. Scooby episodes have a tendency to feel padded out to half an hour because they really don't have enough plot to fill the time. So these are like little bite-size versions of Scooby episodes.
And I really like how Daphne, considered the least useful of the three "normal" humans, steps up and becomes anyone's equal in this series. It was an accident, I don't think they were really trying to develop her character, but because she had to do so much of the mystery-solving work, she became a "girly" girl who is also a natural leader and a brilliant detective but is still flawed and sometimes gets captured. And, like I said, Scrappy stopped being The Scrappy because of the setup that made him, in effect, Daphne's assistant.
"13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo" is probably a better show overall or at least more ambitious, but the regular characters mostly didn't benefit from the new format. Scooby benefited (because we actually got to see him be burned-out and fed up with being in danger all the time), but Daphne, Scrappy and even Shaggy had surprisingly little to do, because so much of the screen time went to Flim-Flam and Vincent Van Ghoul and the many villains. So people have noted that Daphne's portrayal in "Curse of the 13th Ghost" isn't really like her portrayal in "13 Ghosts," where she didn't do much, but it's sort of a composite of her "13 Ghosts" look with her "NSaSDS/TNSDM" attitude.
Anyway, that's why I like these two years of Scooby lore. It's a shame the DVD releases stopped just before the point when Scrappy gets tolerable, but he doesn't have much luck.
