The New Scooby-Doo! Mysteries was one of those series that reduced the number of main characters (common in the Scrappy Doo era) for most episodes. The series mostly centered around Scooby, Shaggy, Scrappy and Daphne solving mysteries together sans Velma and Fred. This was done in a format of two 11 minutes shorts an episode. However the show did feature a few episodes that broke from this pattern and featured a half an hour storyline with Fred and Velma as "guest stars" helping Scooby, Shaggy, Scrappy and Daphne. While these episodes did not quite recapture the magic of Scooby-Doo Where Are You? they are very entertaining in their own right.
This episode features the gang joining Velma's explorer uncle in a quest to find the Celestial Orb, a ruby that has a map to the Temple of Sirus on it. Unfortunately Velma's uncle's ex-assistant and her hoard of zombie minions are out to steal the ruby from our heroes. There might also be something out of this world happening in the temple.
The Ghosts of Ancient Astronauts was certainly a better than your average episode of this show. While not as atmospheric as an episode of the first TV show, the zombies do add a creepy factor that works better than most monsters from this Scooby era. Unlike in many episodes of this show the danger feels completely real and this adds a lot to the proceedings. The cave of death itself is quite creatively designed and like the zombies feels pretty dangerous. Fred and Velma are a welcome addition and really add to the storyline. The uncle is also a nice addition and actually has a bit of personality himself. The villainess is definitely one of the better ones from this series. While there is no real mystery here, there is a bit of a twist at the end that works quite well.
This may not be classic Scooby-Doo! but there is still a lot to enjoy for cartoon fans like me.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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