Harlan Ellison was as influential on TV science fiction as he was on the world of literature. Not only did he write a “Twilight Zone” episode based on a Stephen King story, but he also penned “The City on the Edge of Forever,” considered by many to be the apex of the original “Star Trek.” As a writer of prose, he was perhaps best known for provocative tales like “A Boy and His Dog” and “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” — but he was also, famously, quite provocative himself. This is why it’s perhaps a bit surprising that Ellison once appeared on an episode of “Scooby-Doo,” of all things.
In “The Shrieking Madness,” a Season 1 episode of “Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated,” a fictionalized Harlan Ellison appears as a guest lecturer at Darrow University, located in the haunted coastal town of Crystal Cove. The series wastes no time establishing a professional rivalry between Ellison and local professor H.P. Hatecraft (Jeffrey Combs), an obvious pastiche of horror author H.P. Lovecraft.
When announcing his appearance on “Scooby-Doo” on a now-defunct forum on his website, Ellison reportedly described the experience as “a hoot” (via File 770). Indeed, episode writer Adam Beechen once recalled Ellison’s fervor in the recording booth. “Harlan was attracting a lot of gravity in the room,” he explained in a 2024 interview with “Scooby-Doo” devotees “JayBee & Milly.” “And he was at the point where he was not only rewriting his own lines, but he was telling the actors how they should say their [lines].”
Mystery Incorporated was the most speculative Scooby-Doo series out there
The fictional Ellison was such a standout character
The fictional Ellison was such a standout character that “Mystery Incorporated” brought the author back for the series finale, “Come Undone.” Now a professor of subnuclear sciences at Miskatonic University (another reference to Lovecraft), Ellison — going by the alias “Mr. E” — takes the gang under his tutelage.
It was no wonder that a creative mind like Ellison’s would fit in so naturally with the show’s strange mythology. From tackling Lovecraft-inspired monsters like “Char Gar Gothakon” and the interdimensional Anunnaki to heavy-handed references to the horror films of Vincent Price and shows like “Twin Peaks,” this was a Scooby series unlike any other. Harlan Ellison fit so naturally into the serialized cartoon that, when it was revealed that he was the only one besides the gang to remember alternate timelines, it just felt right. “Mystery Incorporated” even riffed on “The Terminator,” a film that Ellison famously claimed stole its plot from two of his “Outer Limits” episodes, earning him an acknowledgement credit in the movie.
While there hasn’t been another serialized “Scooby-Doo” program quite like “Mystery Incorporated,” Netflix is currently working on a live-action reboot titled “Scooby-Doo: Origins.” It won’t feature the late Harlan Ellison (who died in 2018), but it may just give fans their fix of talking dogs solving mysteries.
