Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, Shaggy Rogers and Scooby-Doo were driving in their psychadelically painted van The Mystery Machine, on a country road one day in the summer holidays. (After all, think how much schooling they would have missed, if their adventures had occurred during school term time).
"Creepers!" said Fred, "That looks like a green bottom, brown boat with a monkey in a blue t-shirt, all in that field over there."
"Jinkies," said Velma, "The boat looks badly damaged."
"Well it is a long way from the water," said Daphne.
"Zoinks! There's a dead hippopotamus lying beside it the boat!" said Shaggy.
"Looks like we have a mystery on our hands," said Fred, steering the Mystery Machine onto the field and over to the boat.
"Can we help?" asked Scooby-Doo.
Being the only talking animal present, he thought that he stood the best chance of communicating with the monkey.
"I'm So So," said the monkey in what turned out to be perfect English, "But it's too late to help. Peter Potamus, my friend and owner of this time/space craft was shot for the mere sport of it, by a big game hunter who called himself Hannibal. With Peter dying, we lost control of the ship and crashed here. The time/space mechanism doesn't seem to be damaged, but the boat has seen its last journey."
(Hannibal was defeated, a year after "the Peter Potamus Show" ended, by Birdman in the "Birdman and the Galaxy Trio" episode "Hannibal the Hunter", when he tried to hunt Birdman for sport as well.)
"How awful," said Daphne."
"Now I'm all alone, unable to go on any more adventures, and I'm too small to be able to move Peter and give him a decent burial," said So So.
"We could help you with that," said Fred.
"And you're welcome to come with us in our Mystery Machine. We usually have lots of adventures too," said Velma, who had quickly taken to the idea of adding a monkey to their gang.
Fred and Shaggy took some shovels from the boat and dug a grave deep enough for Peter Potamus, while Daphne and Velma used the boat's paint supplies (originally intended for repainting the boat when needed) to paint a grave sign on a large piece of wood which had been fractured off the boat when it crashed.
The sign simply said:
HERE LIES PETER POTAMUS, HURRICANE HIPPO, HERO, AND NEVER A HIPPO-CRITE.
"Before you take me with you, I have an idea," said So So, "We could transfer the time/space mechanism from Peter's boat into your Mystery Machine. It would then still function as a car, but also be able to travel in time and space."
"I could help with the technical work on it," said Velma.
"Think of all the adventures we'd have then," said Daphne.
"Like, hasn't this idea already been done twice at the same time with Doctor Who and Time Tunnel?" said Shaggy.
"But we'll make it funny," said Scooby-Doo.
"And think of all the different food outlets you can find throughout the time stream," said Fred.
"Like, I never thought of that!" said Shaggy, "We could try to arrive at each new time period just as they're about to serve lunch or dinner."
Under So So's direction and guidance, Velma and Daphne disconnected the time/space mechanism from the boat. Then Fred and Shaggy carried it to the Mystery Machine, where Velma and So So installed it, and fastened its control panel to the dashboard of the Mystery Machine. Then they all stepped out to take one last look at the boat, and noticed that Daphne had been busy with the remains of the paint supplies.
The van was now labelled "The History Machine."
The newly formed History Inc gang, which included So So, climbed aboard the History Machine, and activated the time/space controls. It took them to the early 1980s, where they ran into Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels.
"Like, I remember you guys from the days when Scooby and I competed in the Laff-a-lympics every week," said Shaggy, "You're Brenda, Taffy, and Dee-dee."
"Yes, you and Scooby-Doo and we were all on the Scooby Doobies team, with Scooby as our captain," said Dee-dee.
"When we're not playing sports, we solve mysteries and catch crooks," said Taffy.
"So do we," said Fred, "But how did you end up with a caveman in the late 20th Century?"
"Well to paraphrase what radio announcer Gary Owens said about us," said Brenda, "Captain Caveman was trapped in a block of glacier ice and frozen for a very long time, until we found him. He thawed out and became our team super hero." (And that's how Gary Owens narrated the opening title theme of Captain Caveman's segment of "Scooby-Doo's All-Star Laff-a-lympics" later followed by his own show.)
"Isn't that what happened with another Captain titled super hero when a team of buddies of those Fantastic Four guys revived him?" asked Velma.
(Hanna-Barbera made a Fantastic Four series in 1967 and a Thing/Benjy Grimm solo series in 1979).
"We can't comment on that," said Taffy.
"It must be hard for a long haired super hero to have a secret identity," said Fred.
"After our time on the Laff-a-lympics, everyone knows he hangs with us. So there's no point in giving him a dual identity," said Brenda.
"But he did have one back in his own time," said Dee-dee, "He wore glasses and doubled as Chester the Copy Boy at the Daily Granite Newspaper, where Betty Rubble and Wilma Flintstone also worked as staff members."
(Captain Caveman had a regular segment with Wilma and Betty in the multi-titled cartoon series, known at one point on Australian television as "The Flintstone Frolics").
"Cavey miss old life," said Captain Caveman.
"We could take you back in our History Machine," said Fred.
"The van has time travel capabilities now," said Velma.
Then Dee-dee began to cry.
"I'll miss you too much, Cavey."
"I think she's in love with him," whispered Brenda to Taffy.
"You could come too and marry Cavey," said Captain Caveman.
"I thought you'd never ask," said Dee-dee.
"Like, what a proposal," said Shaggy.
"We'll miss you both," said Taffy, "But I don't think I'd like living in the prehistoric past."
"Me neither," said Brenda, "But it's been fun solving mysteries with you both."
Dee-dee and Captain Caveman climbed into the back of the History Machine. Fred and the girls rode up front, while Shaggy, Scooby, So So and Captain Caveman opened the entire food supplies that had been brought over from the disused Peter Potamus boat (even though the author forgot to mention it at the time).
"Like, it's incredible, Scoob! Captain Caveman eats even faster than us! If only one of the Laff-a-lympics events had been an eating contest, the three of us would have won the Laff-a-lympics gold medal that week all by ourselves with all the bonus points we'd have gotten," said Shaggy.
Eventually the History Machine arrived in the prehistoric past. The scenery looked familiar to Captain Caveman. So he and his new fiance Dee-dee got out, and thanked the gang for the ride through time. The History Machine took off into the timestream once more, leaving the happy couple to plan their next move.
They soon found out that they had arrived a little too early, at a time long before Cavey had first gotten frozen in the ice. Betty and Wilma were only babies, and nobody had heard of Captain Caveman yet, as he wouldn't be fully grown and fully active for at least 2 decades. (In fact, another of this author's stories suggests that Chester didn't get his club and become Captain Caveman until the club was passed onto him by Hanna-Barbera's first stone age super hero Mightor.)
So Cavey and Dee-dee quickly got married, and had a son named Cavey Junior.
Then Captain Caveman earned a living by selling his memoirs to the primitive counterpart of a television station. They used the stories for a Captain Caveman and Son television show, which was watched by the Flintstone Kids, when they were slightly older than Cavey Junior. (See the Captain Caveman and Son segment on "The Flintstone Kids" show, and the above paragraphs are my way of explaining all the discrepancies in the cartoon timeline of HB shows in which Captain Caveman appeared from 1977 to 1987).
