Spooky Space Kook

"Spooky Space Kook" is the fifteenth episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! season one. It aired on December 20, 1969 on CBS. It was produced and directed by William Hanna and Joe Barbera, the co-founders of Hanna-Barbera Productions.

The gang investigate an old, abandoned airfield haunted by what appears to be an alien, with an otherworldly laugh.

Detailed summary
A mysterious aircraft appears and lands behind some trees, and out of it comes a mysterious ghost which releases a maniacal laugh.

Scooby, Shaggy and the gang are driving down an old country road and are running out of gas and have to stop soon. They park at an old farmhouse and talk to an old farmer who at first mistakes the gang for reporters. The gang explain their situation and the man says that the reporters have been bothering him because a spooky spacecraft and an alien has been haunting an abandoned airfield adjacent to the farm. After getting gas, Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby realize they have a mystery on their hands and they follow the aircraft to the abandoned airfield. They find a running generator and Scooby and Shaggy have a run-in with the mysterious ghost. Fred and the girls search for clues, and Fred gets caught by a hook and is dangling in the air. They rescue him before the ghost arrives, and the kids flee. Shaggy and Scooby arrive at the mess hall where they find fresh food, but the ghost comes again and chases them away. The gang then find a Jeep that runs by itself and an army of the space alien ghosts just materializes. Then, the biggest clue is when Shaggy and Scooby head into the air tower and find a movie projector and tape recorder.

The culprit, after chasing Scooby and Shaggy, goes into the wind tunnel by accident and gets his costume blown off. The crook happens to be the old farmer's neighbor, Henry Bascombe. He was trying to exploit the land for money after he heard that the airfield was re-opening again. The army of ghosts was just a bunch of stuffed dummies, and the Jeep that ran by itself was just remote controlled. The spooky laugh was played over the loudspeakers, and the spacecraft was imitated through a movie projector. Fred plays the spooky laugh track which scares Shaggy and Scooby, with Scooby afterwards saying "Aww! Scooby Doo!"

Memorable quotes
Fred: I feel like a side of beef.

Shaggy: Oh, no! Here comes that cackling, creepy space ghost again!

Henry Bascombe: And I'da gotten away with it, too, if you kids hadn't have come along.

Characters
In order of appearance:


 * Spooky Space Kook (Don Messick)
 * Fred Jones (Frank Welker
 * Daphne Blake (Stefanianna Christopherson)
 * Velma Dinkley (Nicole Jaffe)
 * Shaggy Rogers (Casey Kasem)
 * Scooby-Doo (Don Messick)
 * Farmer (Hal Smith)
 * Chicken
 * Henry Bascombe (Don Messick)
 * Sheriff (Casey Kasem)

Locations

 * Farmhouse
 * Airfield

Objects

 * Gazette newspaper
 * Double Dutch Chocolate Syrup

Vehicles

 * The Mystery Machine

Development
Joe Ruby and Ken Spears either wrote or story edited, as they were unable to remember what they specifically did past the fifth episode.

Behind the scenes

 * At no point in the episode, the alien is referred to as the Spooky Space Kook or Space Kook. But more often than not, when referred to in other media, he is called Space Kook.

Errors

 * The farmer's sclera are white for a change, except when he leans forward to take a closer look at the glowing footprints and again when Fred says how they weren't made by chickens.
 * After Daphne asks the farmer about the "haunted flying saucer," a small part of his shotgun flashes silver.
 * When Scooby wails about being got by "it", his eyebrows flicker between brown and black.
 * When Daphne says the gate is locked and wonders how the gang will get in, her headband disappears briefly before returning in the next frame.
 * When Scooby runs to catch the peanuts after Shaggy throws them, the two wobble in place in sync with Scooby's running animation.
 * Before Scooby releases the life raft, the bottom half of Shaggy's shirt is the color of his pants which then returns to the normal green color after a few seconds.
 * When Shaggy and Scooby jump off the air tower, one frame lacks Shaggy's eyes and Scooby's head and tail. All three missing parts return in the next frame, however.
 * In the scene where the gang just let Fred down after he was suspended by a machine hook, his left hand is noticeably missing in the first shot.
 * Daphne says her line: "Sheriff, look, he's getting away." It's her voice, but Velma's mouth moving.
 * When Shaggy and Scooby enter the mess hall, the door is broken and swaying on the side. When they leave, the door is perfectly intact.
 * Shaggy calls the syrup bottle, Double Dutch Chocolate Syrup, but the label simply says "Syrup".
 * Apparently all the livestock the farmer has is one chicken.
 * When Fred finds the newspaper article hidden in a barrel, Daphne says to look at an article that has been circled. When the paper is in view, there is no circle.
 * Perhaps the biggest oddity of this episode is the existence of all the functional equipment on the abandoned air field. Regardless of the field being public or military, wouldn't every piece of working equipment be stripped when they shut the field down?
 * The "Automatic Dish Washer" label is wrong on two accounts. One, dishwashers are automatic to begin with, and two, dishwasher is misspelt as "dish washer".
 * It seems strange that what appears to be a WWII era aircraft would have an automatic inflating life raft in the cockpit where accidental deployment would interfere with operating the aeroplane.
 * Shaggy somehow magically got the key to the supply department.
 * Shaggy and Scooby jump outside through the window to get the key to unlock the door so that they can escape the room. If they had been thinking clearly, they didn't need to go back inside as they had already escaped.
 * The farmer cared enough to call a sheriff, but either he took his time doing it or the sheriff was taking his own.

Everlasting influence
This episode has been adapted several times in the following decades:
 * Gold Key Comics' Scooby Doo... Where Are You! #4 (retitled "The Spooky Space Kook")
 * Archie Comics' Scooby-Doo #20
 * Landoll's Spooky Space Kook
 * In the film Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, a live-action adaptation, the costume is donated to the Coolsonian Criminology Museum.
 * In Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, a sequel with a reboot (in modern conventional terms), the Space Kook costume has been taken by Velma's parents and used in an exhibit for the Crystal Cove Museum.
 * In the Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! reboot series, it appears in the opening theme song, before appearing much later in the episode "In Space".