Nowhere to Hyde

"Nowhere to Hyde" is the first episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! season two. It aired on September 12, 1970 on CBS. It was produced and directed by William Hanna and Joe Barbera, the co-founders of Hanna-Barbera Productions.

A chance encounter with the ghost of Mr. Hyde, leads the gang into the laboratory basement of a crazy scientist.

Detailed summary
A mysterious green ghost scales a high-rise building and snags a rare jeweled necklace out of the Movart Collection of Rare Jewels, quickly sneaking past a police officer who calls for backup after seeing what he reveals as the Ghost of Hyde. He sneaks into the Mystery Machine, which is sitting in the parking lot for the malt shop, through its back doors.

Inside, the gang have just come from watching their school's magic act, and are capping off the evening by having a round of double fudge sundaes, which is ruined when Scooby performs his own magic act by eating everyone's sundaes. With nothing left to do the gang decide to go home. As they head into the van, Shaggy plans to watch I Was a Teenage Blob, and as they discuss the movie, they are unaware it is quite similar to Hyde concealing himself beneath their beach blanket. On the road home, the gang gets cold due to a broken heater, so Velma asks Scooby to fetch the aforementioned blanket, and in doing so, Scooby finally discovers the Ghost of Hyde. He throws the blanket back on top of him and rushes to tell the gang. At first, the gang don't believe him, but after stopping, they turn around and see the ghost for themselves and all flee. The gang hide behind a log, watching the ghost disappear into the marshes. Getting their act together, they then realize to themselves who the Ghost of Hyde is; a jewel thief who's been scaring the residents of a town. They track him to an old, dilapidated mansion where they fall through a trapdoor and end up in a science lab, where a scientist who reveals himself as Dr. Jekyll comes out and explains his fear of changing into the Ghost of Hyde.

The gang split up to search the mansion and Shaggy and Scooby are to search the attic. Scooby finds a spider web which can apparently be played like a harp, and Shaggy finds a chest full of bats which come flying out. In the same chest he finds old costumes and a mask which he accidentally tosses onto Scooby's head. Scooby scares him with the mask and Shaggy sarcastically suggests he keep it on, before taking the mask away and locking it in the chest, asking Scooby to stop fooling around and to help him search. The duo split up and Scooby assumes the Ghost of Hyde is in the closet and goes to tell Shaggy. Shaggy opens the door and the duo realize Scooby was looking in a mirror at himself. The duo again assume the Ghost of Hyde is after them until Helga comes upon them and accuses them of making a mess of the attic after she'd cleaned it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang find a clue, which is a fraction of a newspaper article addressing Helga as an ex-circus star who had an act on a Friday.

Shaggy and Scooby find a book about ghosts and ghouls in a library and pull it off the shelf when the Ghost of Hyde pops out and begins his evil laugh. They run from him but are cornered behind a television set so they begin acts as if the television still worked. It's revealed it doesn't when it's all just an act by Shaggy and Scooby, who once again flee only to take Velma with them through the chute into the laundry room. There, they discover another clue: a feather duster just like the one Helga used to clean the attic. Velma becomes suspicious more clues may be in Helga's room, so they journey there.

There, they find two more clues: a can of phosphorous paint and a bottle of knockout drops. Shaggy tries to tell the gang he found a clue himself but before he can elaborate, he's snagged by the Ghost of Hyde. When he frees himself from him, he elaborates the clue: 4 suction cups found in a fruit bowl.

Eventually the Ghost of Hyde is caught and revealed to be Dr. Jekyll. He was behind the Ghost of Hyde jewel robberies and turned to a life of crime when all of his experiments failed, and when he figured he would be caught, he came up with the idea of framing Helga by placing false clues for the gang to find that would make it look like Helga was behind the Ghost of Hyde. After Shaggy found the 4 suction cups, which turned out to be the real clue, he tried desperately to get them back but ended up caught in one of the gang's traps. The suction cups would be used to scale buildings. If Helga was the Ghost of Hyde, she wouldn't need the said suction cups as she's a former circus star. Scooby performs his own circus act with the said suction cups and ends the episode by dangling from the ceiling with a suction cup on his tail.

Memorable quotes
Daphne: He went into that spooky-looking old house. Shaggy: They always do.

Characters
In order of appearance:


 * Ghost of Mr. Hyde (John Stephenson)
 * Security guard (Don Messick)
 * Waiter (Don Messick)
 * Fred Jones (Frank Welker)
 * Velma Dinkley (Nicole Jaffe)
 * Shaggy Rogers (Casey Kasem)
 * Scooby-Doo (Don Messick)
 * Daphne Blake (Heather North)
 * Dr. Jekyll (John Stephenson)
 * Helga (Susan Steward)
 * Mouse (Don Messick)
 * Alligator
 * Sheriff (John Stephenson)

Locations

 * Department store
 * Malt shop
 * Dr. Jekyll's mansion

Objects

 * Scooby Snacks
 * Dracula Manual
 * A Hundred and One Ghosts and Ghouls
 * History of Make-Up
 * Origin of Species

Vehicles

 * The Mystery Machine

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

Heather North replaced Stefanianna Christopherson as the voice of Daphne, when the latter moved to New York to start a family. North was a roommate of Nicole Jaffe, the voice of Velma, at the time who suggested to North that she should audition.

Music
With this episode, the theme song is now performed by George A. Robertson, Jr., in a Davy Jones-esque manner. Robertson Jr. also sings the new bubblegum pop songs added to the second season during the chase sequences, with this episode featuring "Recipe for My Love". It was written by Danny Janssen.

Behind the scenes

 * The episode is inspired by Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a graphic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886.
 * This episode acknowledges that the gang go to high school, which had been ignored up until this point. This happens again in "Jeepers, It's the Creeper".
 * The Scooby Snacks box is labelled as "Scooby Snax".

Errors

 * When there are close-ups of Scooby and Shaggy at the malt shop, their spoons are missing.
 * After he enters the basement, Dr. Jekyll's shadow vanishes. Later, Mr. Hyde's does, too.
 * While watching Shaggy and Scooby slide down the banister, Fred turns his head all the way around.
 * The mud on Jekyll's shoes wasn't there a moment before.
 * Shaggy runs right through the wall, leaving a Shaggy-shaped hole... complete with floating pieces of wood to delineate the negative space in the crook of Shaggy's arms.
 * As the gang flee the Mystery Machine after seeing the Ghost of Hyde, Scooby flees through the right side, only there isn't a door (at least, not one that's open) on the said side behind the seat-back.
 * The picture on the wall is just a solid blue. Modern art?
 * The muddy shoes that Scooby, Velma, and Shaggy find on the ironing board, aren't muddy.
 * Velma in the Hyde costume is considerably shorter than normal.
 * When Scooby is climbing the wall at the end of the episode, he has suction cups on all four of his paws and one on his tail, but when he is on the ceiling, his front paws have no suction cups on them with no time for him to take them off. When he catches himself on the ceiling with his tail, his rear paws also have no suction cups.
 * When Fred says "Now it's our turn to scare the Hyde off of Hyde," Daphne's pantyhose are missing.
 * When Freddie and the girls find a newspaper clipping about Helga in the fireplace, it reads she will give a special performance of her human fly act on Friday. However, the blurred out letters actually read Monday.
 * Dr. Jekyll doesn't just become Mr. Hyde, he becomes the ghost of Mr. Hyde, and on top of that the ghost of his own great-grandfather. At no point does anybody make the distinction that Dr. Jekyll could've just become his own Hyde monster.
 * The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde novel doesn't seem to exist, given that no one references it. Yet, it does by time of the The New Scooby-Doo Movies episode "Sandy Duncan's Jekyll and Hyde", where two movies have been made (with a third on the way), and none of those movies were based on what the Scooby-Doo Dr. Jekyll did.
 * Fred says they ended up in Dr. Jekyll's lab, when technically they ended up down in his lab.
 * The gang must've seen the stolen necklace in Dr. Jekyll's hand, yet they don't bother to mention that the sheriff (or someone from the jewel department) should be called to collect it. Maybe they thought they were doing Dr. Jekyll a favour, as he surely would've been arrested, without hearing his unbelievable story the same way the inquisitive, yet gullible kids would.
 * Dr. Jekyll managed to plant all of the clues extremely quickly and yet methodically; unless he was prepared beforehand that someone might follow him, which is not what the Gang believed, this is somewhat miraculous.
 * The fact that a trap door leads right into his lab, makes things more curious.
 * When Scooby and Shaggy meet Helga in the attic, she has the shadow of the slim and tall Ghost of Mr. Hyde, even though Helga has a bigger build, and wasn't the Ghost of Hyde. Perhaps this was to make it tense, or frame Helga, or make it seem like Scooby and/or Shaggy's imagination.
 * When Shaggy and Scooby claim that "Dr. Jekyll must have changed again," Velma claims this is impossible as she, Fred and Daphne just saw him reading in his study. At this point the audience is being led to believe Helga is the Ghost of Mr. Hyde; but after it transpires that Jekyll is indeed the ghost, it means that Jekyll must indeed have moved impossibly quickly.

Everlasting influence
This episode has been adapted several times in the following decades:
 * Landoll's Nowhere to Hyde
 * Nintendo's Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers on the Game Boy Color

In the film Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, a live-action adaptation, the scene in which the gang fall through the trap door outside of Jeremiah Wickles's mansion, it seems vaguely reminiscent of them falling through the trap door outside of Dr. Jekyll's mansion.