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Okay, so pitch for a better scooby doo show. Same cast as the originals but they spend more time international. Interacting with cultures from various parts of the world and their supernatural monsters and the usual crime mysteries we all know and love, always having a local translator who is knowledgeable where the gang is not joining as a temp member of the gang. They find their own knowledge and experiences isn't always relevant in these new areas and they learn from the places they're visiting. Because the fish out of water trope is usually handy for learning moral lessons etc etc.

With occasional callbacks to previous cultures that are adjacent. "We were in this area and this was part of their culture, is that applicable here?" "Well, yes but it's different here in this way." Shows that they've learnt stuff that's important and that cultures have all sorts of similarities and differences that make each of them important.

Has the race virtuing that the company execs seem to want, offers a lot of opportunities for other cultures to shine and you get to see a craptonne more mythologies. Just need a decent writing team so it's not done all hamfisted.

After years of different characters joining the gang, for better or worse, it feels a bit meh that now they're choosing to just race swap characters who are semi established. I know the idea I put forward may have been done in past generations of scooby doo but it could always be fleshed out more surely?

They did do a series like that. I think it was in the era when the Scream guy was as voicing Shaggy, so with it a few years of Mystery Incorporated. I tend to get the episodes a bit mixed up with the Gargoyles adventures in foreign cultures episodes.

As for the show ditching Scooby, maybe Velma gets her own animal sidekick for this? Maybe Professor Pericles…

The race swapping may be the result of casting. Daphne is played by an asian actress, velma by an indian, and shaggy by a black actor.

I very much doubt WBs corporate execs had any meaningful input into the races of the characters. This is very likely driven by the creators giving diverse casting and having the characters reflect it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Josie and the Pussycats,

I thought that was an Archie comics spin-off?

Also, the live action Josie and the Pussycats movie is AWESOME! Everyone should watch it.

It just seems spiteful, and with the only trailer actually being spiteful, I'm probably not going to watch it. It'll probably be similar to She Hulk in that the way it handles stupid internet people makes no sense in universe, and only exists to pretend that people only dislike it because of sexist/racist (in this case) reasons instead of seeing the writing on the wall, or the show being bad.

Also, real monsters/ghouls/ghosts being real in Scooby Doo is older than I am. How they're handled varies.

And the Supernatural Scooby Doo episode was really good.

As long as it doesn't have Scrappy in it there's a chance it will be fun (but i'll miss Scooby)

maybe we'll explore how Norville aka Shaggy went from a bright young man with a promising future to somebody with a habit that gives him the munchies all the time?

and don't dis Captain Caveman! (or forget the comedy stylings of the New Shmoo in the group of youths having adventures with a thing cartoon genre)

 Easy E wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Josie and the Pussycats,

I thought that was an Archie comics spin-off?

It is, but most are probably more familiar with them either through their own Hanna-Barbera cartoon or their crossover with Scooby-Doo via 'The New Scooby-Doo Movies'.

Just one more day until the train wreck.

Don’t worry, Mrs Whitehouse.

Modern TeeVees come not only with an “off switch”, but a great many channels of other things for you to watch.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Don’t worry, Mrs Whitehouse.

Modern TeeVees come not only with an “off switch”,

IF you can find it!

Touchscreen buttons on TVs I find can be a case of mashing your fingers near where the button should be and hoping you hit it instead of the two or three others clustered around that open menus or such.

Touchscreen teevee?

Those are a thing? But that involves getting up off my arse. What’s wrong with a remote control? Or even voice activated, so you can do a semi-Vyvyan

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxfVeWU65ukgtx776Q6b2opsWPQIqyUeQ-

I don't trust the TV when its got its little red "HAL" light on! Blinking slowly on and off. It's watching!! Judging!

It's either on and entertaining my whilst its studying me and reporting back to its masters or its fully off; not in standby mode

Not a bad call to be honest, spesh given the price of lekky these days.

Which reminds me. Tomorrow is the Dreaded Reading Of The Meter.

I’m a good boy though and always give accurate readings.

 AduroT wrote:
Just one more day until the train wreck.

That seems less like a general synopsis than one made by a 4chan poster to rile up other 4chan posters.

That's from only one of several review sites that have given it lukewarm reception and when even most of the more left-leaning sites aren't giving it great reviews, you know it must be pretty bad, considering the checkmarks it ticks for what they usually see as a good show in their eyes.

Sadly, the pillaging of old IP's will continue unabated.

I don’t think left-leaning audiences are into what you might think they’re into.

Good deconstruction or satire require good writing and strong sense of tone. It also requires respect or at least engagement with the original source material. I’d consider Mystery, Inc to be a more successful, more left-friendly, take on Scooby Doo than the description in that text box, assuming it’s accurate. That just sounds like a SNL skit level parody rather than a sustainable vision.

Consider The Watch, BBC America’s attempt at bringing Discworld to screen.

As a series based on The Ankh Morpork City Watch? It’s woeful. It misses many of Pterry’s points, the odd charms of His Grace, The Duke of Ankh Morpork, Commander Sir Samuel “Sam” Vimes (a bigoted man, who finds his bigotry tested and largely overcome through his unstinting dedication to Justice, but a surprisingly small minded bigot all the same), and gets it all wrong.

But…..get it’s abuse of the source out of mind? And it’s actually not that bad a show. I certainly enjoyed it for the most part once I got over myself.

In short? Either give it a whirl and see what you think of it on its own merits, or just….don’t tune in, and do your best to ignore it.

Ignoring it is easy. I detest Rick and Morty. That stuff is everywhere. Yet….I still manage to ignore its existence and just be about my life.

See I didn't give a gak about the show when it was announced because no Scooby Doo no gaks given.

And I still don't care, except to wonder how much of the pre-release of this show is purposeful trolling for marketing purposes cause some of it is so on its face cringy, and seemingly tailored to push all the buttons, I struggle to believe that's really what the show will be but I'm also not going to validate the marketing (if that's what it is) by caring after posting this.

I have better things to do than watch a show I'm not interested in, or bitch about it on the internet.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Racists really gonna pretend they love Scooby Doo just so they can cry about how it was ruined, huh.

To me, being not-racist is about not caring about what race people are, but it also doesn't mean race is interchangeable and we should start making white characters south asian, the same as we shouldn't start making south asian characters white. Not that I care massively either way, but it seems the show was trying to court controversy with not only race swaps, but not having Scooby Doo and changing the personality and behaviours of the characters.

At this point it seems race and gender swaps in media is done to generate publicity more than anything else.

I didn't know "Velma" was even a thing until it started popping up as recommended videos/news due to the race swapping "controversy". I would not have known it existed, but now I do... so mission successful for the advertisers to give the show more publicity than it's worth I guess.

Although I watched Scooby Doo as a kid, I really couldn't care less, I would have been happy enough not knowing this thing existed. I'll maybe watch an episode now that I do know it exists, though I'm far from a fan of Mindy Kaling.

ccs wrote:
Eew, a serious Scooby-Doo show without Scooby?? Who wants to see that?

The mythical "modern audience".

 LordofHats wrote:


I have better things to do than watch a show I'm not interested in, or bitch about it on the internet.

Words to live by Exalted!

So I watched the first episode because I wanted to know if it was as bad as the marketing makes it look, and it is. Norville is the only decent one while the other three are giant a-holes to everyone. Won’t watch more.

It sounds like someone had the kernel of an idea for a new High School drama, but they could not get it green lit as a stand-alone new product.

Therefore, they packaged it as a Scooby Doo re-boot in order to get the money to make the show they actually wanted to make.

That's what it sounds like to me.

 Easy E wrote:
It sounds like someone had the kernel of an idea for a new High School drama, but they could not get it green lit as a stand-alone new product.

Therefore, they packaged it as a Scooby Doo re-boot in order to get the money to make the show they actually wanted to make.

That's what it sounds like to me.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the general trend for a lot of these poorly adapted shows from borrowed IP's. You saw it with the Halo live action show, Witcher: Blood Origins, and now Velma. People who lack the talent to make their own ideas work by itself resort to hollowing out and skinsuiting existing IP's to get their pitches through and resent the source material that they're hijacking as being the main attractor of attention instead of their own "original" take on the IP which usually results in this kind of mess where it actively craps on the source material rather than adding onto it in a respectful way.

It's not even lacking skill at making their own stories. Often as not you can find its producers/executives/suits not wanting to finance unknown IPs and unknown series unless you're are very powerful director/writer who will bring a huge fanbase with you.

Otherwise they want a big "guaranteed" market that a known/previous IP will have and that your unknown one (no matter how good it is) doesn't have.




Another layer can be where you've a good script and a good story, but then polls, theories, target demographics and all those other fancy office buzzwords come out. Diversity, representation and loads of other bits all rear their heads and start chopping and changing bits here and there. Squeezing in things based on viewer theories. Eg adding a romance element to The Hobbit.
Sometimes a lot of those things change the story up so much that hardly anything that the actual writer made is left - yet often as not the script writers take the blame in the public eye.



I would also say that the US system of production also does have an attitude of "putting their own spin on it" and "modernizing" stories and such. They do it all the time; heck even when adapting animations from other cultures they will chop and change things very significantly. Some anime for adults gets chopped, changed and shifted into a kids show; the early adaptation of Nausicaa was made into a high action film (from what I gather).

 Overread wrote:
It's not even lacking skill at making their own stories. Often as not you can find its producers/executives/suits not wanting to finance unknown IPs and unknown series unless you're are very powerful director/writer who will bring a huge fanbase with you.

Otherwise they want a big "guaranteed" market that a known/previous IP will have and that your unknown one (no matter how good it is) doesn't have.




Another layer can be where you've a good script and a good story, but then polls, theories, target demographics and all those other fancy office buzzwords come out. Diversity, representation and loads of other bits all rear their heads and start chopping and changing bits here and there. Squeezing in things based on viewer theories. Eg adding a romance element to The Hobbit.
Sometimes a lot of those things change the story up so much that hardly anything that the actual writer made is left - yet often as not the script writers take the blame in the public eye.



I would also say that the US system of production also does have an attitude of "putting their own spin on it" and "modernizing" stories and such. They do it all the time; heck even when adapting animations from other cultures they will chop and change things very significantly. Some anime for adults gets chopped, changed and shifted into a kids show; the early adaptation of Nausicaa was made into a high action film (from what I gather).

Oh don't get me wrong, executive meddling and choices by committee are still one of the hallmarks behind so many shows being bad, but it's hard to completely excuse the writers involved when you have many of them explicitly showing disdain for the source material (e.g. The Witcher) and often times doing either character assassinations or deliberately poor framing of existing characters out of some weird spite rather than sticking to the original characterization (which would be the path of least resistance when it comes to writing a character, they're already made for you).

While Hollywood and most streaming/film entertainment is very risk averse, why hire people that seem to have no interest in the IP at all then? I can only assume because most of the gigs are obtained through nepotism and connections rather than competency given how poor a large chunk of the adaptations for a lot of the existing IP are.

So I watched it. It's actually pretty good and funny, there is some dumb Metsa jokes, near start. But it picks up half way through the first episode. With an interesting overall mystery.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

ccs wrote:
Eew, a serious Scooby-Doo show without Scooby?? Who wants to see that?

The mythical "modern audience".

Don't be ridiculous; it's not mythical. Half of them are posting in this thread!

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So I watched it. It's actually pretty good and funny, there is some dumb Metsa jokes, near start. But it picks up half way through the first episode. With an interesting overall mystery.

I agree with this. Its got the manic pace of a Rick and Morty episode with the meta commentary of Rick and Morty episode placed over a potential decent plot that we just dipped our toes into.

Il give it another episode or 2 before I decide to stop or keep going.

The funny part about all this is that if they wanted to do an adult Scooby Doo, frankly Mike Tyson Mysteries set a much better example of how to do it, as it did a MUCH better job in showing how the absurdity of how they solve mysteries by not taking itself too seriously and they didn't rely on overly self-referential and overdone meta gags to deliver its humour. It also helps that the voice cast (Norm Macdonald's last major voicing role if I remember correctly) and characters are balanced against one another much better than what is currently shown with Daphne, Velma and Fred all being arseholes. Heck, MTM even did the gay character right!