Scooby-Doo fans the last time you saw me talking about the anything from the franchise was about three or four months ago when Scoob was released. Well i'm here now with another review from this franchise and while it's not anything recent it is something that honestly I don't see people doing and that's taking a look back and reviewing one of the classic episodes and so here is my review of the very first episode of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!" called "What A Night For A Knight" so enjoy everyone.
The plot of this episode is a professor who is delivering a suit of armour to the local museum disappears and it's up to Scooby and the gang to work out where he is , who took him if anyone did and why. The stories in Scooby-Doo are always super easy to follow and yeah the same is true here it's story that works because of how simple it is as such I can't see a plot like this working if it was super dark and complicated but with that said I would have liked a few twists and turns thrown just because I did predict who the culprit was.
Starring in the episode is the late and great Don Messick as Scooby-Doo , Professor Hyde White and The Sheriff. Also in the episode is the great and only actor still involved with the franchise and still playing the same character Frank Welker as Fred Jones , the late Casey Kasem as Shaggy Rogers , Stefanianna Christopherson as Daphne Blake , Nicole Jaffe as Velma Dinkley and John Stephenson as Black Knight and Museum Worker 1.
In terms of what I thought about the acting in the episode I honestly didn't mind it that much yes a few of the performances could have been better but given that this was the very first episode and no one could have predicted that the franchise would still be going I have to give them a little slack. What was odd tho was hearing Stefanianna Christopherson as Daphne just because i;m so used to hearing either Heather North or Grey Griffin so it was hard for me to hear what she originally sounded like but it was something that I quickly overcame.
I don't think that this needs saying since it's really freaking well known but doing the animation for not only this episode but this whole version f Scooby-Doo is Hanna-Barbera Productions. Now in terms of the quality of the animation I thought it was honestly pretty decent and is easily alot better then alot of other animated shows that were coming out around the same time period and is most probably the best animated TV that Hanna-Barbera Productions have worked on at least in terms of there classic shows anyways.
That being said however while I personally only spotted at least one animation error the official Scooby-Doo fandom wiki page found alot more. The only one that I found is where Velma looses her glasses for the first time and mistakes the Black Knight for Shaggy and when Shaggy comes running in Velma for some reason has her glasses back on despite not having picked them up it's nothing that's important to the plot of the episode but at the same time it's still an error that could have been fixed assuming that the team had the time to fix it that is.
Sticking with odd little things that I noticed not long after the gang split up Velma and Scooby stick there head around a door but just a few seconds before that Shaggy walks right past them and so Velma shouldn't have said that they lost Shaggy because she would have saw him walking. I personally don't count that as an animation error but I wouldn't blame anyone if they did since it's so freaking strange it honestly makes Velma look a little bit dumb if i;m being honest.
Now that i've spent a little while talking about the negatives of the episode it's about time that I got back to talking about some of the episodes positive points. That being I like the Black Knight in this episode he / it is a really creepy looking villain and it's a villain that honestly I could see them making a straight up horror slasher film with him / it as the villain since it already looks so freaking creepy and those eyes just put it over the top in terms of creep factor.
This episode was first broadcast on September 13th 1969 on CBS and for once I actually cannot say when it's ended because it's technically still going on since the show has been rebooted and retooled so many times to keep the franchise fresh and new. I can say that this version even tho it lasted three seasons ended on December 23rd 1978 after ABC revived this version of the show for a new third season.
Now then since this is comedy that does mean that we have to talk about the jokes that are in the episode itself. Of course we get some of the usual gags that the show would become well known for like Velma loosing her glasses in some way and in this case Scooby disguising himself to fool the ghost now while someone loosing there glasses isn't funny it is one of the thing s that the show has become will known for and the jokes themselves are fairly decent.
Now then since Scooby-Doo is built on being a mystery franchise that means I have to talk about the actual mystery of the episode. Which I honestly thought was pretty decent yes it is kind of predictable who the villain of the episode is but for me the fun is trying to work who it is and how the show goes about giving you it's clues which this episode does really well in my opinion it gives you just enough clues so that you can work it out for yourself which is what alot of good mystery shows or movies should do however like I said a few times already I already worked out who did and so I felt like the characters were playing catch up to me which should never be the case both you and the characters should e on a level playing field you should know what they know about the case that there trying to solve , it should them playing catch up with you or you having to play catch up with the characters at least in my opinion anyways.
Overall this was honestly a rather fun episode to watch and it's not hard to see how the show became the hit that it did. That being said I did have alot of issues with the episode all of which i've covered in hopefully great detail in this review but those issues weren't really enough to stop me from enjoying the episode in fact they oddly made it more enjoyable to me well at least animation error did as such this episode gets an 8 out of 10 from me.
All the images that I used in this review were gathered from either the official Scooby-Doo fandom wiki page or Google Images. I have to say that I wasn't expecting any of the images to be HD at all and so the fact that all but one of them was high definition is to me a huge freaking plus as such I highly , highly , highly recommend that you get you r Scooby-Doo images from the official Scooby-Doo fandom wiki page just because there are really freaking HD.