If I Created a Scooby-Doo Series
Since I doubt I would ever be presented with an opportunity to pitch a Scooby-Doo series to Warner Bros themselves, I might as well share my thoughts online for how I would rework the classic characters into a new team dynamic. For me, there are two issues with Scooby-Doo I'm looking to address:
1. Velma stops carrying the team. By giving everyone a niche talent or expertise, they feel more like a team working together, instead of Velma pulling all the weight on a group assignment with her friends.
2. Why does everyone want to be in a mystery solving club? The origin of their friendship interests me.
I imagine Fred in my version as the son of a detective, either PI or police. That parent is dead, leaving Fred with a single parent and wanting to live up to his dead parent's legacy by becoming a detective or forensics investigator. Obviously, the skills he would bring would include criminal profiling, procedural knowledge, and possibly laws. Plus his traps, of course. It's his area to figure out suspects and their motives. He started Mystery Inc as a one-man operation. He pulled in Velma due to her knowledge of chemistry making her ideal for analyzing clues and data. He may know about forensics, but Velma actually knows how to do it.
Velma is the egghead researcher and preppy student government member brought into the club in the first episode when Fred asks her to analyze the clue he discovered. Fascinated by riddles, puzzles, and secrets, Velma is persuaded to help by means of appealing to her curiosity and scientific mind. She primarily handles chemistry, physics, and robotics. She analyzes the clues mostly, and is great at connecting the dots.
The Daphne of my series would be a theater kid through and through, as well as a gymnast, cheerleader, and most importantly, a reporter for the school newspaper. She falls into the first mystery while sleuthing for a scoop for her column and agrees to help the gang so she can report their activities. Her background in theater means she's well versed in make-up, costuming, and special effects, and figures out how the monster is pulling off their disguise. She also serves as the face, managing their social media presence, website, image, and whatever else.
Covering the last two together, Shaggy would change the most, becoming a paranoid conspiracy theorist hacker, allowing him to serve a non combat role. Shaggy's obsession with cover-ups and conspiracies makes him interested in the mysteries, even if he is afraid of the monsters. His role in the group, aside from being the hacker, is that he would know the lore of whatever supernatural creature the criminal was using. So, if a criminal posed as the Jersey Devil, Shaggy would be the one to explain the monster. He would also catch on if the monster does things that break the lore, such as a fairy touching iron or the headless horseman crossing running water. In a way, unmasking the fakes is also somewhat therapeutic for him. Shaggy in my mind has some health condition, and Scooby is his service dog, especially since large dogs like Great Danes are good support breeds. Shaggy joins the party either because he was investigating an unrelated paranormal sighting, or because the gang needed to hack into security cameras, and came to Shaggy.
In terms of identity and tone, I'd angle more for the Mystery Incorporated era, when character, lore, and an ongoing mystery breathed new life into the franchise. I liked the darker and more mature viewpoint, and would want to revive it in my own version. Especially in the age of streaming, a serialized Scooby-Doo is more likely to work than it did as a commercial tv show on broadcast television.
