The Time Warriors and Beyond

By Owen Quinn author Photos copyright Warner Bros

I love crossovers especially when they are done right and don’t promise a Spock two parter and he arrives ten seconds at the end of episode one. Yes, you Star Trek The Next Generation.

March 29th 2018 was the date and something arrived that fans had only dreamed of…..

Now the stars of Supernatural have always wanted to do a crossover. They would have loved to do a Vampire Diaries one but it never came to pass. The closest they ever came up to that point was Negan’s famous barbed wire covered baseball bat, Lucille, at the start of an episode claiming it was their dad’s favourite weapon.

But the crossover they got was a fan favourite and one that took great patience which was rewarded in spades. Doctor Who briefly became a cartoon in the episode Lux but when Sam and Dean are given a haunted television set, they find themselves as cartoons. But not just any cartoon. Sam and Dean Winchester come face to face with Scooby Doo and the gang. This isn’t Scooby’s first crossover. He has previously teamed up with Batman, the Harlem Globetrotters, Mark Hamill, George Takei, WWE and Sonny and Cher. The Winchesters episode surpassed everything that had come before.

The episode opens in live action with Sam and Dean battling a green dinosaur top evoke Barney with viewers. It has sparkly purple eyes but they defeat it with fire. So grateful is the shop owner that he tells them they can have anything from the store. Dean picks a big screen tv. On the scene too is Jay who literally owns all the shops in the area.

But as Dean shows of his Fortress of Deanitude or Dean cave, the brothers are plunged into the world of Scooby Doo along with the Impala. At first they think it may be an angel thing or the Trickster and it isn’t the first time they have been part of a TV show. They discover a malt shop where Dean flips when he sees the Mystery Machine and meets the Scooby gang.

As kids, Dean and Sam were left by their father for weeks and months at a time and everywhere they went was a television and on those televisions was Scooby Doo. It became a comfort blanket for them, apparently Dean more than Sam. We also get a lovely parallel as Dean compares them to the Scooby gang except Fred who’s a wad. They travel, solve ghost mysteries and technically, Castiel is their talking dog. This is a celebration of all of our childhoods as we all grew up on Scooby.

This fusion of shows works perfectly as Dean and Sam recognise that this was a real episode of Scooby Doo so they know what is going to happen. Scooby has been summoned to a will reading where he has been left money from a millionaire for saving his life years before from drowning in a fishpond. They will each get a share of the money if they can survive one night in his haunted house. Dean revels in it. He gets to create a giant sandwich just like Shaggy and Scooby where his mouth opens impossibly wide as in a cartoon. As the ladies man, Dean wants to get together with Daphne who Sam points out is clearly with Fred. Dean replies that she is settling. Dean hates Fred because he has great hair, his can-do attitude and his ascot. It doesn’t help that the Mystery Machine leaves the Impala for dust. This script is brimming with great dialoge and one liners as the brothers realise that the harsh reality of their world is spilling over into Scoobyverse and ruining it.

Dean scolds Sam for almost telling Thelma about their real world and ghosts are real. To Dean, the Scooby gang are innocent, unspoiled from the life the Winchesters lead. Ghosts here are conmen in masks. This innocence is shown when Daphne tells a horny Dean that boys and girls don’t sleep in the same room and that Fred is not a jerk. Sam on the other hand finds himself lusted after by Thelma much to Dean’s chagrin. Dean is trying to protect the good memories he has as it is a good part of his childhood; a safe part that wipes out all the monsters.

When one of the cousins die, he does for real with real blood. That means the Scooby gang could die too and Dean vows not to let that happen; he will take a bullet for the dog if he has to.

When Castiel arrives in animated form, he is his usual dry wit self. He is taken aback when the dog starts talking. He is teamed up with them and another gem when he utters, “I once led armies and now I’m paired with a scruffy philistine and a talking dog.” Somehow the ghost is real too and reality is starting to hit hard. They find another cousin decapitated and strung from the ceiling.

When the Scooby gang discover that ghosts are real, it begins to destroy their world. Everything begins to unravel. Thelma believes she is really blind and Fred is aghast that they could have been hunting Dracula instead of real estate fraudsters. Daphne freaks that since the supernatural is real then that means there is a heaven and a hell. She firmly believes she is going to hell. Scooby thinks they are doomed and Shaggy cries they should have believed him all along that ghosts were real. Shaggy gets his arm broken and is nearly killed but Castiel saves him. Reality has hit well and truly with a hammer. Sam and Dean convince the gang that they have done good and fought monsters without a thought for themselves. They go through a list of classic Scooby villains like the Black Knight, Space Kook and Miner 49er. Theese would also turn up in the live action Scooby Doo 2 movie.

Interestingly enough, Matthew Lilliard as the voice of Shggy is the only one to cross from live action to cartoon to this television crossover.

Sam and Dean have to fix everything and restore the innocence of the cartoon. We get all the Scooby classics. The chase scene montage with the theme tune including Sam, Deana and Castiel. Fred’s trap that fails, pure luck that reveals the truth about the ghost and the book in the library that opens a hidden door.

When the ghost is captured, they learn it is the spirit of a child being controlled and forced to haunt. But the Winchesters then lie to convince the gang that they were wrong about ghosts being real. They fall on to the old tropes like projectors, flying on wires and with innocence restored, Shaggy’s arm heals.

I loved Castiel’s goodbye to Scooby and Shaggy who will miss their wise worlds and gentle spirista and the great strength of laughter in the face of danger. Thelma smacks one on Sam’s lips leaving Dean disappointed he never saw it first.

By restoring the world of Scooby, the Winchesters have kept their childhood memories intact. It turns out Jay was the man controlling the kid through a penknife the boy’s late father gave him. They send him to heaven by burning the knife with a torch. Again, this feeds into the innocence of childhood theme as they save oen more soul. And in irony of ironiees, Jay was trying to force all the shop owners to sell so he could make a fortune by selling to a big real estate company.

But the fun ain’t over as Dean dons a ascot and stops the shop owner from selling to Jay. When arrested, he utters the immortal line that he would have ‘gotten way with it too if it hadn’t been for the meddling kids’ much to Dean’s delight. Dean looks into the camera and does a Scooby impression. When Sam asks him what he is doing, he says at the end of every episode, Scooby would look into the camera and say ‘Scooby dooby doo’. Castiel informs Dean that he is not a talking dog.

They are most definitely back in the real world.

Scoobynatural is a flawless crossover episode that works on every level and ticks all the boxes. The dialogue is funny and witty and we get to see what the dark side of our world can do to characters that symnbolise a happy childhood for us. We watched these charatcers, every week and for years after in repeats and some of us still do, so we have a loyalty to them. They represent keeping the dark times away from us. When bullies and the bad dreams come, the Scooby gang were there to make us feel safe again. Even kids in impossible circumstances like the Winchesters needed this comfort blanket and this perfectly celebrates that fact that we have all been Winchesters at one time or another.