Since 1969 Scooby Doo and friends have starred in hundreds of cartoon adventures, plus comic books, chapter books, and more. Over the years there have been multiple versions of the show. Some involve "real" ghosts and other notable deviations from the classic 1969 TV series formula. Through all the different versions, the biggest attraction has always been the main characters.

Scooby Doo
It's Scooby's show--he's the #1 draw, the one truly indispensible character. A Great Dane who sort of talks--but only sort of--Scooby has the intelligence and personality of a human being. A comically cowardly, gluttonous human being.

But there's much more to Scooby than that. Scooby can be quite brave when he has to be, especially when one of his friends is in danger. He's also resourceful, formulating plans on the fly and adopting assorted absurd disguises. The team would be lost without Scooby's keen nose, fast feet, and ability to always come through in an emergency.

During the 1970s there was a tendency to place more and more emphasis on Scooby's eating and tendency to take fright. There was also much denigration of his intelligence. In the late 1970s-early 1980s this trend reached its peak in cartoons that used Scrappy Doo to handle the action hero part of the job while turning Scooby into nothing more than a totally incompetent source of comic relief. Fortunately in the 1990s Hanna Barbera (With an eye, no doubt, to attracting older Scooby fans who were now raising a new generation of potential viewers) began going back to basics and restoring Scooby to something more like his old self.

For decades classic cartoon voice artist Don Messick provided Scooby's distinctive voice. Since his death in 1997 the character's usual interpreter has been the great Frank Welker. Welker is a fine choice to continue the character, but it's such a shame we don't still have Don Messick around to do the honors!

Shaggy
Shaggy is Scooby's best buddy. He's virtually as much of a constant in the series as Scooby himself. His personality and interests (food and staying as far away from ghosts as possible) are very similar to those of Scooby. Usually Shaggy can be counted on to voice what both pals are thinking.

Like Scooby, Shag is more than just a hungry coward. He's resourceful, he can be brave when his friends' necks are at stake, and he's a very fast runner. It's small wonder he and Scoob are usually tapped to serve as live bait when the time comes to try to capture the villain!

Also like Scooby, Shaggy suffered from 1970s-80s scripts that emphasized his gluttony and cowardice to the point where his better attributes were mostly buried. The 21st-century Shaggy is a bit more rounded--but still quite an off-the-wall character.

Casey Kasem, one of America's best-known DJs, had a thriving second career for many years as a voice actor. Until recently he was the default voice for Shaggy. For years Kasem, a practicing vegetarian, insisted that Shaggy not be depicted eating meat in any cartoon in which he provided the character's voice. Shaggy never officially became a vegetarian and would eat meat in the comics, live action movies, and other Scooby productions. But in many cartoons he sticks strictly to the vegetable kingdom.

Scrappy Doo
Not one of the five classic characters, Scrappy deserves a mention because he was such a major part of the series for a number of years. Scooby's pint-sized nephew, Scrappy idolized his uncle, whom he wrongly supposed to be much braver and more heroic than he was. Scrappy literally didn't seem to know the meaning of the word fear. He was brave to the point of foolhardiness, making him a loose cannon.

Many Scooby fans hate Scrappy with a passion. This seems to be largely a generational matter. Viewers who were small children during Scrappy's period of ascendancy tended to like him. Those who had encountered Scooby before Scrappy came along tended to find him and his antics highly annoying.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the character was his effect on Shag and Scoob. In order to accentuate the contrast with the fearless Scrappy, the writers turned them into quivering, stammering caricatures of themselves. When the producers began trying to attract the attention of the older fans--who were now parents themselves--Scrappy was given the old heave-ho. The treatment of the character in the first live-action Scooby feature movie represents the final victory of the Scrappy haters. While I personally can't say as I miss the little tyke, he really didn't deserve all the invective he received.

Fred

The gang's driver, leader, and principal spokesman, Fred is, for all his stocky build, an exponent of flight over fight. On the rare occasions he does try to lay an ambush he invariably seems to catch Shag and Scoob by mistake. Fred is always polite in his dealings with the people he and his friends meet. It is so ingrained in his nature that in one episode ("Jeepers, it's the Creeper" [1970]) he instinctively apologizes to the villain after accidentally tripping him!

He does have his lapses. On a couple of occasions in the original series he is heard making ungallant comments about "Danger-Prone Daphne". Usually, though, he seems considerate enough. We see him opening doors for Daphne, and even protectively holding her hand or arm when danger threatens.

In the early 1980s Fred, along with Daphne and Velma, was dropped from the cast. Later in the decade he appeared as a boy in "A Pup Named Scooby Doo". That show's writers apparently felt that Fred was too blandly virtuous. They turned him into a muscle-headed nitwit. Regrettably subsequent Scooby productions have sometimes continued to show Fred as something of a dope. More recently this has been dialed back, though he still often comes across as too eager (and too into building needlessly elaborate traps) for his own good.

Frank Welker has provided Fred's voice in nearly all of the character's cartoon appearances. After 40 years the great voice talent is still at it with one of his first and best characters.

Very interesting about vegetarian Shaggy, I never knew that.

There's a brand new Scooby Doo show coming to Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network or somesuch. Are you gonna watch it?

Watch it? She'll review it

Velma
With her glasses and tendency to use big words, it was clear from the start that Velma was meant to be seen as a stereotypical bookish brainiac. As the original series progressed it became clear that she was more than just a handy source of information. Velma soon became--and remains--the team's principal detective. She is also outspoken and clearly about as much in charge as Fred. We can get some idea of her force of character from the way this short, unprepossessing young lady, with her girly Mary Janes and knee socks, is accustomed to giving Shag and Scoob orders and having them obeyed.

Velma also has quite a clever sense of humor. This came out quite well in the early 1970s in the "New Scooby Doo Movies" series. At times her humor could be downright wicked, as when she mischievously tormented Daphne by pointedly remarking how much an old house they were approaching resembled one at the beginning of a horror movie she had seen.

Later in the 1970s Velma lost much of her vivid personality and became more of a walking detection machine. Part of the problem had to do with the departure of original voice actress Nicole Jaffe, who left acting in 1973 to begin a successful career as a talent agent. Subsequent Velmas, though sometimes talented performers, tended to be badly miscast. More recently Mindy Cohn (best known as Natalie on the old "Facts of Life" show) has helped to restore the character's personality to what it should be.

As with any female character, Velma's appearance has been much discussed. She has often been characterized as fat. Although she does indeed look a bit chunky in some scenes of early episodes, she has usually not been depicted as heavy--just rather full-figured (Or, as a certain ex of mine once so delicately put it, "She's got big boobs!"). It has been suggested that Velma has body image issues. That's hard to believe given the obvious self-confidence with which she approaches everything she does.

Daphne
A scream queen. A fifth wheel. A danger-prone ditz. Sadly Daphne has often not gotten much respect. Actually the original Daphne, though not the detective Velma was, had useful powers of observation. In the original series pilot, "What a Night for a Knight," Daph actually spots more clues than anyone else.

The danger-proneness was real enough in the original series. She routinely fell through trap doors, pulled the wrong switch, fell over railings, and generally got into trouble. Usually (though not always) this was the result of bad luck and klutziness (according to Shaggy, she was apparently not coordinated enough to ride a bicycle), not bad judgement on her part. She was never portrayed as stupid.

In terms of courage she was usually braver than Shag and Scoob but did sometimes suffer failures of nerve. Her body language frequently expressed tension and nervousness. But she was usually willing enough to overcome her fear to follow the others. Occasionally, as in "Mystery Mask Mix-Up (1970) she was brave to the point of rashness. In that one her righteously indignant refusal to hand over her newly-purchased curio to the zombie-thug villains suggested that Daphne, for all her timidity in the face of spooks, had a certain courage of her convictions.

Though she could get mad now and then, Daph was usually portrayed as sweet-natured, ready with a supportive or sympathetic word or touch. She was a touchy-feely type who frequently clung to Fred when startled (Perhaps providing an insight into why Fred kept taking his girlfriend into scary situations). Basically gentle, she was not really cut out for a life of adventure, but was game enough to try.

In the mid-1980s Daphne became the team leader for a time. Unfortunately leading a team consisting of a poorly-animated and written Shag, Scoob, and Scrappy brought her little glory. Later there was a tendency to portray her as more of an action heroine, gentleness being apparently unwelcome in today's cartoons.

For the first season Daphne was voiced by Iceland-born actress Stefanniana Christopherson. In 1970 young TV actress Heather North (who coincidentally looked rather like the character at the time) took over and played Daphne through most of the 1980s. In recent years she has been played mainly by the talented Grey Delisle.

Two notes:

1. Grey Delisle is one of the loveliest people, generally, and women, specifically, that I have ever met.

2. Daphne (and other Scooby Doo fans), when you get a chance, read this delightful little story by Paul Cornell (preceded by a few paragraphs of bloggery): http://www.paulcornell.com/2007/12/twel ... s-six.html

Steve, when did you ever meet Gray Delisle? I know very little about her. I've read that she has recorded songs in addition to her cartoon voice work.

Thanks for the story link. Not the best M.R. James pastiche I've ever read, but I love the idea of Scooby and company intruding into his world of haunted British academic dons.

I bet M.R. James is probably one of Fred's favorite authors.

I interviewed her in mid-2005 for the prototype issue of the magazine I never actually ended up launching, Earthling --



She had just released her first folk album, The Graceful Ghost, and she'd been busy doing voice-acting gigs for The Powerpuff Girls, Star Wars (Padme and others in the first Clone Wars cartoon; Leia and others in several of the video games), etc. She was kind enough to do an interview backstage a few hours before her show at the 9:30 Club in D.C. -- she was opening for her husband Murray Hammond's popular indie band, the Old 97s. The album is really good -- totally old-school, front-porch bluegrass/country/folk ballads. (Love the sad sea dirge "Katy Allen," a tribute to a shipwreck.)

Sounds like the kind of album I'd enjoy.