The eleventh adaptation of Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo, the Cartoon Network’s Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated should also be considered a reboot of the series. As I wrote in my review of Volume One, this latest incarnation maintains the essence of the cartoon while bringing the familiar characters into the 21st century. The third volume contains just four episodes: “Battle of the Humungonauts,” “Howl of the Fright Hound,” “The Secret Serum” and “The Shrieking Madness.” While it’s disappointing that the first season hasn’t been released as a single box set, breaking it up into several volumes has made the DVD’s very affordable for fans.
Featuring a fairly impressive voice cast, including: including: Matthew Lillard as Shaggy (reprising his role from the feature films), Frank Welker as Scooby-Doo, Mindy Cohn as Velma Dinkley, Grey DeLisle as Daphne Blake, and Gary Cole as Mayor Fredrick Jones Sr., long-time fans of Scooby should be pleased.
In homage to the film, The War of the Gargantuas, “Battle of the Humungonauts” finds two monsters referred to as Humungonauts by Sheriff Stone (Patrick Warburton), are attacking Crystal Cove. Attacking the property of two brothers, each brother had insured the other’s property in order to gain money and revenge against each other for abandoning the other from the circus. Meanwhile, Scooby stumbles across Velma and Shaggy kissing, and discovers their relationship. Shaggy faces a dilemma when Velma and Scooby get in to a fight over who he likes better.
In “Howl of the Fright Hound,” Crystal Cove finds itself being terrorized by a violent dog. Sheriff Stone blames Scooby-Doo and arrests him. At the same time, the gang is introduced to an old classmate of Velma’s, a nerd named Jason Wyatt (Daryl Sabara) who still has a crush on her. Visiting Scooby at Crystal Cove’s Animal Asylum “for the Criminally Insane”, Mystery Inc. encounter Professor Pericles, who gives them a warning, meant specifically for Fred: “Beware of those close to you!”. Though Scooby’s name is eventually cleared, this episode does leave some loose ends.
“The Secret Serum” finds a stealing vampire on the loose. More troubling is the fact that the gang is at odds. Velma refuses to speak to Shaggy, and Fred and Daphne begin to grow apart. The girls decide to investigate the vampire problem alone. The gang ultimately unites to capture the vampire but Velma declares that “maybe we’re not a team anymore”. The episode ends with the gang returning to their homes separately.
The fourth and final episode on the disc, “The Shrieking Madness,” has the gang, having gone their separate ways, decide to take a weekend and check out a local university. However, they are forced to change their plans when the campus is terrorized by a creature known as a Char Gar Gothakon, whose screams can destroy anything in its path. After catching the creature, the gang reunites only to find that Mr. E (Lewis Black) has left them a box belonging to the Darrow family, which contains a whole new mystery.
The essence of the series remains true to its roots. Each episode presents the gang with a new mystery to unravel, and the kids sleuth their way through to the eventual unmasking of the villain. Unlike the previous series, Mystery Incorporated continues a thread from a previous episode to the next one. For Scooby-Doo fans, this is good stuff.
Available now, this standard DVD includes no special features.
