Despite loving 'The Scooby Doo Show', it was a childhood favourite and still love it to this day and that is unlikely to change, it does have to be admitted that there were some episodes that didn't do much for me as a child and still don't. That is true for a lot of shows, and 'The Scooby Doo Show' is not an exception. "Don't Go Near the Fortress of Fear" is one of the "always have felt indifferent to" sort of episodes, one of the worst of an inconsistent Season 3 and in the bottom 3 episodes of the overall show too.
The other two being in my view "The Diabolical Disc Demon" and "The Warlock of Wimbledon", "Jeepers It's the Jaguaro" is also heavily flawed but at least has a memorable villain and has some interest points which these episodes do not. Is "Don't Go Near The Fortress of Fear" a terrible episode? No, it has its moments and one can see once again how a couple of aspects have advanced significantly over-time. Is it a good episode? Not particularly, found that it had a lot of problems including the very bland mystery and villain.
Shall begin with the good. The animation is bright and colourful with some more elaborate backgrounding over-time and the drawing is smoother compared to when the show began. The music is not stock or repetitive and the instrumentation is larger-scaled and has more energy. The location is great, the fortress is very foreboding and would have made an even bigger impression if the villain matched that quality.
Voice acting from the regulars is solid. Don Messick and Casey Kasem over fifty years on from when the franchise began are still the definitive voice actors for Scooby and Shaggy. Heather North is also my personal favourite voice for Daphne. Frank Welker is still voicing Fred and he actually still sounds as youthful as he did fifty plus years ago. Shaggy and Scooby provide a little welcome levity every now and again and their chemistry is irresistible.
Am not so enthusiastic about the rest of the voice cast. They don't sound particularly involved and while the show has had worse accents the accents here still are distractingly bad and lack authenticity, sounding more basic Mexican than Puerto Rican. John Stephenson (whose overdone accent for Juan Carlos is one of the biggest offenders) really did excel at villain voices, with a resonant booming quality and he was always sinister and fun, but when he voiced most of the show's villains and with not much of a difference to each other it did start getting predictable. The writing does have some entertainment value and intrigues in other places, but also feels stale. Shaggy and Scooby have funnier material in other episodes.
Have never been properly sold on the mystery. The episode is actually pretty short on it and the story is really quite thin with not enough clues, the final third literally does feel like a series of repititious chasing very reliant on coincidence. What there is of the mystery lacks atmosphere and it is very uninspired and predictable, with an over-obvious reveal that for me has always been seen from miles off. That Juan Carlos and the perpetrator sound fairly similar to each other adds to the obviousness. The villain, again from personal opinion, is very bland, with no real menace or the fun factor. He also has very limited material, most of the time he literally laughs maniacally and chases around.
In summary, lacklustre. 4/10.
The other two being in my view "The Diabolical Disc Demon" and "The Warlock of Wimbledon", "Jeepers It's the Jaguaro" is also heavily flawed but at least has a memorable villain and has some interest points which these episodes do not. Is "Don't Go Near The Fortress of Fear" a terrible episode? No, it has its moments and one can see once again how a couple of aspects have advanced significantly over-time. Is it a good episode? Not particularly, found that it had a lot of problems including the very bland mystery and villain.
Shall begin with the good. The animation is bright and colourful with some more elaborate backgrounding over-time and the drawing is smoother compared to when the show began. The music is not stock or repetitive and the instrumentation is larger-scaled and has more energy. The location is great, the fortress is very foreboding and would have made an even bigger impression if the villain matched that quality.
Voice acting from the regulars is solid. Don Messick and Casey Kasem over fifty years on from when the franchise began are still the definitive voice actors for Scooby and Shaggy. Heather North is also my personal favourite voice for Daphne. Frank Welker is still voicing Fred and he actually still sounds as youthful as he did fifty plus years ago. Shaggy and Scooby provide a little welcome levity every now and again and their chemistry is irresistible.
Am not so enthusiastic about the rest of the voice cast. They don't sound particularly involved and while the show has had worse accents the accents here still are distractingly bad and lack authenticity, sounding more basic Mexican than Puerto Rican. John Stephenson (whose overdone accent for Juan Carlos is one of the biggest offenders) really did excel at villain voices, with a resonant booming quality and he was always sinister and fun, but when he voiced most of the show's villains and with not much of a difference to each other it did start getting predictable. The writing does have some entertainment value and intrigues in other places, but also feels stale. Shaggy and Scooby have funnier material in other episodes.
Have never been properly sold on the mystery. The episode is actually pretty short on it and the story is really quite thin with not enough clues, the final third literally does feel like a series of repititious chasing very reliant on coincidence. What there is of the mystery lacks atmosphere and it is very uninspired and predictable, with an over-obvious reveal that for me has always been seen from miles off. That Juan Carlos and the perpetrator sound fairly similar to each other adds to the obviousness. The villain, again from personal opinion, is very bland, with no real menace or the fun factor. He also has very limited material, most of the time he literally laughs maniacally and chases around.
In summary, lacklustre. 4/10.
