Goosebumps #58:
Deep Trouble II
© 1997 by Parachute Press. Cover Art by Tim Jacobus.
Sequel to: Deep Trouble
Spoiler-Free Review
Deep Trouble II was a story about scientist being really bad at science. There were so many holes in the logic of the villain that he ended up being the only part of the book I enjoyed. If you think about him a non sequitur joke instead of the primary driver of the plot, then this book works as a self parody if you squint just right. Because evil plans are hard when you’re a villain who is bad at planning things, and they can go very poorly if you’re a marine biologist who doesn’t understand basic math. This wasn’t a good book, but I genuinely enjoyed the faulty logic of it all. Stine does really well when he leans into the weird, but he does even better when he matches that with context and good characters. Deep Trouble II felt rushed and uninspired, but it managed to eek out just enough charm to occasionally feel like a self aware B-movie.
Score: 2
If you enjoy my blog, please consider liking my reviews on GoodReads.
It might not seem like much, but it has a big impact!
ERMAHGERD #58: Deep Trouble II.
© 2024 by Daniel Stalter. All rights reserved.
Photo and editing by Daniel Stalter.
Stock photo by NDABCREATIVITY; Standard Adobe Stock License.
Observations & Spoilers
Deep Trouble II has us pick up after the events of Deep Trouble. Unfortunately, the mermaids did not make a return appearance in the sequel. Billy and Shena are spending another summer with their marine biologist, uncle Dr. Deep. He lives on a boat in the Caribbean and the kids just swim unsupervised in the ocean in their downtime. Billy tries to play a prank on Shena by pretending to be a shark, but then they immediately almost get eaten by a shark.
Things start to get weird when Dr Deep discovers a giant fish he’s never seen before, then they realize it’s a giant minnow. He then gives Billy some plankton to feed to his pet snail and goldfish. Later, Billy and Shena are swimming and Shena gets eaten by a giant jellyfish. Billy swims in and saves her. When they go to report this to Dr. Deep, they find him trapped under Bily’s snail, which has grown to a massive size along with his goldfish. The goldfish flopping around causes Dr. Deep’s boat to almost tip over but they manage to push it out into the ocean. That’s when Dr. Ritter shows up on their boat with his two henchmen.
Dr. Ritter tells Dr. Deep and the kids that they have stumbled upon his experiment. He has been developing plankton that can make sea creatures rapidly grow to several times their size. He plans to use this to end world hunger, and has been testing it by randomly dumping this altered plankton into the ocean and letting giant sea creatures run amok. Dr. Ritter decides that, after telling them about his plan, he now needs to kill them so they don’t steal his idea. He and his two henchmen take Billy, Shena, and Dr. Deep captive.
The Deep family is taken off the boat to Dr. Ritters floating lab where all the bad science happens. They manage to escape onto a life raft then get caught in a storm before eventually landing on a remote island. Don’t worry, they aren’t stranded for long because they get rescued by giant dolphins who pull them back to their boat on a raft. They are about to call authorities when they are one again thwarted by Dr. Ritter, who has come back to Dr. Deeps boat. Now he is going to make them eat the plankton, which will turn them into sea creatures. He is alone because he already turned his henchmen into sea creatures, too.
Billy takes a jar of plankton and drinks it, but nothing happens. Dr. Deep uses this moment to surprise tackle Dr. Ritter. But Dr. Ritter decides he would rather be a sea creature than be captured and drinks a jar of his own plankton. He swims off into the sea. Billy reveals that he had staged a fake jar of plankton earlier to play a joke on Shena, so he knew which one to pick and fool Dr. Ritter. Dr. Ritter turned out to not be very bright, so this wasn’t that much of a fete. Shena then reveals she also hid a fake bottle and drinks it, but then looks uncertain she picked the right one. The End!
I love how Dr. Ritter’s plan did not account for catching and harvesting giant fish, or for devastating the ecosystem, or for the fact that the giant fish would also need to eat. He decided to do his experiments in open water and then got mad that people discovered all the giant sea life created by his plankton. His lack of logic was giving me Sarabeth from Monster Blood and Mr. Toggle from Piano Lessons Can Be Murder. As terrible as both of those books were, I think about their logic-defying villains all the time. It’s something about their relentless determination to follow through on objectively terrible plans that I find utterly fascinating. So even though I did not like Deep Trouble II, the book somehow ended up being somewhat enjoyable because of the unhinged presence of Dr. Ritter.
To end this review, I am going to summarize the plot as poorly as I can:
An evil marine biologist who doesn’t understand controlled experimentation (but wants to solve world hunger) infuses plankton with growth hormones, feeds it to the entire ocean, and makes which makes a wide variety of sea creatures quadruple, but his plot was discovered (because he doesn’t understand controlled experimentation) and now he has to murder two children and their uncle in order to stop them from stealing his ideas.
Score Card
For the scoring of each book, I decided to rate them based on five criteria worth 1 point each.
I then add that up to give it a rating out of 5 stars. Those criteria are:
Concept: the strength of the overall idea
Execution: the mechanics of storytelling
Character: the protagonists, antagonists, and villains
Intent: does it succeed in being the kind of book it wants to be?
Originality: subversion and reliance on genre tropes
Concept: .5
It wasn’t a novel or interesting concept, but at least it made some (very unscientific) sense.
Execution: .5
It relied way too heavily on fake scares for my liking. A lot of these felt like they served no further purpose than to add pages and draw things out. Pacing was fine, though.
Character: 0
Dr. Ritter was yet another Goosebumps villain with unfathomable logic. Being that his actions drove the entire plot, this was problematic. I found Billy and Sheena a bit annoying and Dr. Deep was cartoonishly incompetent.
Intent: .5
It had some good scares with the giant jellyfish and surviving a storm in an inflatable life raft. The dolphins scene was also fun. But it was ultimately really hard to let go of how pointless everything felt because the villain was an idiot.
Originality: .5
Meh. It wasn’t a total rehash or old ideas but was essentially the aquatic Monster Blood. I liked the first one better and I wish they had somehow brought the mermaids back. This would be full credit if we got giant mermaids, but we didn’t.
Based on GoodReads aggregate ratings, Deep Trouble II is:
Ranked 38th of 62 books in the original Goosebumps series.
TV Adaptation – Bullet Review
For every book that was adapted for the Goosebumps TV series, I will watch and do a bullet review.
“Deep Trouble II” is Episode 4×07 & 4×08.
• Billy has an A+ haircut.
• They made their Uncle, Dr. Deep into a total creep.
• The fish with shooting spikes felt more inspired by the cover art than anything in the book.
• Oh?! Who is this mysterious maid? And she’s mean? Tell me more.
• Follow the random slices of chocolate cake though the forest in order to meet your new fish god.
• There is nothing scarier than a 90s haircut.
• Dr D is going Salute Your Shorts energy.
• I like that they made Shena more of the main character than Billy.
• GIANT LIZARDS!!
• This plot is much more coherent than either book, but I like that it takes elements from both.
• “What do you want? JUSTICE!”
• Dr. Ritter has been demoted from shitty doctor to lowly assistant.
• I like that this ended with Dr. D getting getting a hot new assistant. I’d watch that adult movie.
• A fun little twist with Dr Ritter at the end.
• Honestly this episode was better than either book.
Don’t miss the next post in my Goosebumps blog series:
Goosebumps #59: The Haunted School
Also, be sure to check out the latest from my Fear Street blog series:
Fear Street Super Chiller #10: Goodnight Kiss 2
0 Comments