Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright

"Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright" is the third episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! season two, and the twentieth overall. It aired on September 26, 1970 on CBS. It was produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the co-founders of Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Scooby and the gang are harassed by a recently thawed out caveman, meant to be studied at Oceanland.

Detailed summary
On a research vessel, the ropes holding a caveman in its block off ice come loose, accidentally sending the caveman overboard.

While fishing and having fun at the beach, Shaggy snags and pulls ashore the aforementioned giant block of ice containing the frozen caveman that had got lost during a storm at sea. Velma recognizes it as a two million-year-old caveman discovered in the Arctic and washed over the side of research vessel during a storm. The kids take it to Oceanland and leave it with two scientists, Professors Wayne and Ingstrom. After they leave, someone turns a space heater onto the caveman; Ingstrom leaves for the dockside while Wayne remains behind to work on some research notes.

At the malt shop, Shaggy remembers that he left his fishing tackle at Oceanland, and the gang returns to pick it up. They find the doors ripped off its hinges, Wayne's torn parka, and the caveman thawed out and missing. The phone is broken, so the kids decide to investigate. They follow giant caveman tracks to the dock, where they see Ingstrom working a strange device and seemingly talking to a porpoise. He takes fright and flees into a shack when he hears Scooby creeping up on him. When Freddy opens the doors to the shack, they discover the angry caveman, who chases them all about Oceanland.

After they narrowly escape, Velma finds a map showing the currents off Oceanland and an object anchored offshore. She, Shaggy, and Scooby take a boat out, where they find a fishing boat. They are locked inside it with an ice machine that is churning out giant ice blocks full blast. They escape just before being crushed by the ice, only to find that their boat has been scuttled, so they paddle back to shore on an ice block.

Freddy resolves to catch the caveman and has Shaggy and Scooby (dressed as fish) lure the caveman to a spot where he and the girls can drop a net on him. But Daphne falls, pulling everyone else down into the net. The caveman chases them again but is caught when he falls into the tank holding the giant clam. They pull him out and unmask him as Professor Wayne. Wayne had heard about the loss of the Arctic caveman and had constructed his own frozen caveman at the fishing boat, with the intent of letting it drift down to Oceanland. After its recovery, he melted it and disguised himself as the caveman with the idea of getting rid of Ingstrom and stealing his revolutionary new marine life communicator.

The gang back at the Malt Shop dancing, as Scooby dances around with the empty caveman suit; Shaggy figures Scooby needed a dance partner, and what better way to make use of the costume?

Memorable quotes
Shaggy: Like what kind of clues are we looking for? Velma: Anything unusual or mysterious... Shaggy: You mean like doors slamming and locking behind us? Yikes! What am I saying? It did slam, it did lock and we're trapped!

Professor Ingstrom: That invention is worth a fortune. Professor Wayne: And it would've been mine if it hadn't been for those meddling kids. Sheriff: Well, where you're going, you won't have to worry about meddling kids anymore.

Characters
In order of appearance:


 * Frozen caveman
 * Velma Dinkley (Nicole Jaffe)
 * Daphne Blake (Heather North)
 * Fred Jones (Frank Welker)
 * Shaggy Rogers (Casey Kasem)
 * Scooby-Doo (Don Messick)
 * Professor Wayne (John Stephenson)
 * Professor Ingstrom (Don Messick)
 * Dolphin (Frank Welker)
 * The Caveman (John Stephenson)
 * Seals (Frank Welker)
 * Fish (Casey Kasem)

Organizations

 * Mystery Incorporated

Locations

 * Beach
 * Oceanland
 * Malt shop

Objects

 * Scooby Snack
 * Marine life communicator

Vehicles

 * The Mystery Machine

Development
Credited writers are Larz Bourne, Tom Degenais, and Bill Lutz, while Joe Ruby and Ken Spears story edited.

Songs

 * "Seven Days a Week" - performed by George A. Robertson Jr./written by Danny Janssen and Robertson Jr.

Behind the scenes

 * Professor Wayne looks uncannily similar to Dr. Jekyll, also a culprit, from "Nowhere to Hyde". They're also voiced by John Stephenson.
 * This episode features two instances where Shaggy physically picks Scooby up and drags him by the collar whilst scared - as opposed to bribing him with a Scooby Snack. The only Scooby Snack used in the episode is actually to prompt an idea, rather than encourage bravery.
 * This marks the first time a villain actually calls the gang "meddling kids", though previous villains used similar terms such as "blasted kids".

Errors

 * While Shaggy is fishing, when he says "Scooby," his mouth doesn't move.
 * When Scooby held up a fur parka, it was Prof. Ingstrom's. When the scene moves closer to the parka, it was Prof. Wayne's like it should be.
 * When Shaggy and Scooby draw the others' attention towards the absence of the Caveman, the heater next to the melted block of ice is absent. When they investigate it further, it reappears.
 * When Professor Wayne is arrested, he wasn't wearing his lab-coat and his hands are behind his back. But when the scene switches, he is wearing his lab-coat again and his hands are in front.
 * When Velma says "And that's what gave Professor Wayne the idea for his scheme," it's her voice coming from Daphne's mouth.
 * Professor Wayne's shirt is short-sleeved when he gets out of the costume and when he bumps into the gang, but as soon as he lands, it's a regular long-sleeved one.
 * When Shaggy calls the sheriff, his mouth disappears.
 * One would think anthropologists would be better-prepared to study such a find than marine biologists. Unless Oceanland also functions as an anthropology center.
 * Oceanland appears to be some sort of Aquarium, obviously open to the public as the Gang are allowed in, yet there are no other visitors.
 * Shaggy leaving his fishing reel at Oceanland is an unconvincing, flimsy excuse to get the gang to return to find the broken "arctic" chamber since he would have no reason to bring it there, to begin with, and would've surely packed it into the Mystery Machine before first going there.
 * Professor Wayne is shown turning on the heater, and then the scene pans to show him at his desk as if he had been sitting there without turning on the heater. If he really did turn it on, he would have to move like lighting to turn it on and reach his desk and look as if he had done nothing.
 * There isn't really any need for stealth when the gang see Ingstrom on the pier. They already discern that he is talking to a fish, and it would be perfectly reasonable to ask him about it rather than being nosy. After all, they have a valid reason for being there, and Ingstrom seemed perfectly willing to talk about it at the end of the episode.
 * Wayne (as the Caveman) somehow moved between the fishing boat and Oceanland extremely quickly and without a visible mode of transportation.
 * The beginning of the episode shows the ropes breaking and the caveman sliding, hitting the ramp and falling in the water, whereas in the flashback, it shows Wayne throwing the ice cube, himself, in the water. It is likely that the beginning showed the real two-million-year-old caveman getting lost.
 * In the final shot of the malt shop, there are no cars parked outside, not even the Mystery Machine.
 * Velma calls the dolphin a fish even though they're actually mammals.
 * When Shaggy, Velma, and Scooby are trapped on the boat with the ice machine and Scooby rams the door with a block of ice. The alleged "chunk of ice" that was forced through the hole in the shape of a key made a metallic clinking sound as it hit the deck as if it was made of metal instead of ice.
 * The whale kept at Oceanland appears to be a sperm whale, which are never kept in captivity as they are too big.
 * During the chase scene, when the Caveman passes by two giant tortoises, it shows that two of the tortoise have teeth, which they never have in real life.

Everlasting influence
This episode has been adapted several times in the following decades:
 * "Seven Days a Week" plays on the radio in a segment of Scooby-Doo: Behind the Scenes.
 * The Caveman has been reused in the video games Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights and Scooby-Doo! Unmasked.