Deep Dive Disney: Wes Looks at Island of Fear

This Article is Dedicated to friend of Deep Dive Disney, Agatha Vile. Keep on experimenting on crabs, taking no shit from bullies and transphobes and making Twitter a more tolerable place.

Welcome friends. If you’ve been following my Twitter lately, you know I’ve been getting all my Halloween articles written well in advance, but at the last minute I decided to start the celebration a little early with an article that was requested some time ago when Mad Scientist, Internet Personality, frequent guest on various podcasts I listen to and all around awesome human being, Agatha Vile became my eight hundredth follower on Twitter. As a reward for helping me reach that milestone, I told Agatha that she could pick the subject matter of a future Deep Dive Disney article and naturally, she chose the episode of The Little Mermaid animated series that just so happens to feature her own Great Grandfather, Dr. Vile, and his… CRAB EXPERIMENTS! We’ll get into our friend’s ancestor in the article itself, but for now, let’s discuss The Little Mermaid animated series. The show ran from 1992 to 1994 with thirty-one episodes spread out over three seasons and served as a prequel to the original film, featuring the adventures of Ariel and her friends in and around the kingdom of Atlantica. Now, it is no secret that I do not have a lot of nice things to say about Disney’s 1989 classic and more specifically it’s air-headed horny ginger protagonist. If you’re new around here and curious what I had to say about it, I will leave this link right here. As for the show itself, I was definitely aware of it, but due to my dislike for the movie, I didn’t watch a whole lot of it and gravitated more towards shows like Darkwing Duck, Gargoyles and the Aladdin series (which STILL isn’t on Disney+, seriously what the hell). Still, the show certainly garnered a loyal fanbase, managed to get most of the original cast to reprise their role and has gained a few new fans in recent years thanks in large part to this episode being spotlighted on the Escape from Vault Disney Podcast. So I suppose I can’t hate too much. So let’s all dive deep into the world of… CRAB EXPERIMENTS… as we look at The Island of Fear!

We open with Ariel doing her usual thing of gathering up bits of old junk from the wreckage of what we now know is not the sunken ship of King Agnarr and Queen Iduna from Frozen, no doubt caring nothing for the wellbeing of her friends as she does so. Fortunately, Flounder is not almost eaten by a shark this time as Ariel brings her findings to Scuttle, who naturally pretends to know what he’s talking about as he tries to convince Ariel that a change purse is a designer hat of some variety. By the way, Scuttle was one of the few characters not to have their original actor return for the series but that’s okay because he’s voiced by voice acting veteran and all around great guy Maurice LaMarche, known for many iconic roles, most notably The Brain from Pinky & The Brain and Kif from Futurama. Speaking of voice actors, Flounder’s voice is sounding a bit deeper than it did in the movie. I’m sure that the real world reason for this is because Flounder’s original actor either aged or was replaced since 1989, but since this is a prequel, one must wonder, do fish experience puberty in reverse? Anywho, while all this is going on, Sebastian is taking the Crab Scouts to the surface for some much needed rest and relaxation. Good for him. If anyone needs a vacation after babysitting Ariel 24/7, it’s good old Sebastian. However, Sebastian’s day in the sun doesn’t last long as a stream of green sludge is seen oozing through the ocean, making any fish who gets near it incredibly sick. Sebastian volunteers to go warn Triton, but Ariel insists the Crab Scouts can handle that and she needs Sebastian to come with her to investigate the source of the sludge. I will remind you, Sebastian is Triton’s royal court composer. He was hired to write music for entertainment of the royal court, babysitting Ariel and accompanying her on her crazy adventures is NOT HIS JOB!

Ariel’s investigation leads them to a terrifying gothic castle. Ariel, Flounder and Scuttle are raring to go but Sebastian is understandably too scared to go any further and agrees to stay behind as lookout. I would argue that leaving the one guy who will try to stop Ariel from doing anything stupid behind is a very dumb idea, but it’s not like Ariel listens to the poor little Crab anyway so I guess it doesn’t matter. While Ariel leads her clearly reluctant friends into certain doom… again, Sebastian paces back and forth outside the castle where he’s grabbed by none other than Dr. Vile. So, from what I understand, this episode is at least partially based on reality and Dr. Vile was a real person. Whether this episode nailed the man to a T or was a hatchet piece on an otherwise decent Mad Scientist I cannot say for sure. What I can say is that Dr. Vile looks a bit like a cross between Dr. Drakken and The Green Goblin and seems just as crazy as either one of them (according to Agatha, this is an unfortunate side effect of inbreeding). And of course, in Sebastian, he’s found the perfect specimen for his… CRAB EXPERIMENTS!

As he hooks up Sebastian to one of his sinister looking machines Dr. Vile claims that this time, he’ll finally get it right, no more mistakes like his assistant, a crab monster the size of a small human named Igor, or is it Eye-gor. This means one of two things. Either A. Igor was made up for this episode and the writers were too lazy to come up with a crab-based pun for Igor, or, Igor was the assistant of the real Dr. Vile and, as per the mad scientist code, any creepy hunchbacked assistant in one’s employ must have their name legally changed to Igor. As it turns out, Dr. Vile is trying to perfect the crab species and make them bigger, fatter and tastier, or, failing that, use them to fight Nazis. In any case, Sebastian wants no part of these… CRAB EXPERIMENTS… and runs for his life, only to be stopped by more of Dr. Vile’s monstrous failed experiments.

The monsters corner Sebastian who falls into a dungeon filled with even more monsters where he’s found by a little kid who looks like the emo lovechild of Montana Max and Sid Phillips. This is Daniel, Dr. Vile’s other assistant. I assume he came on after Dr. Vile had already created Igor and thus was not obligated to change his name. In any case, Daniel is fascinated by the fact that Sebastian can talk. This actually brings me to an interesting point. Sebastian is a crab with human level intelligence, the ability to speak, and in fluent English no less, mad skills when it comes to singing and dancing and, if the other Little Mermaid prequel is anything to go by, mild precognitive abilities that allowed him to be able to sing Harry Belafonte's Jump in the Line years before that song would have been recorded. He may not be one of the… CRAB EXPERIMENTS… but frankly,Dr. Vile should have won a Nobel Prize for discovering this marvel of nature. Anywho, Daniel assumes that Sebastian is just the latest of Dr. Vile’s… CRAB EXPERIMENTS… and thinks he’s gone too far. Daniel promises that he won’t harm Sebastian and plans to keep him as a pet.

While Ariel and Flounder are chased through the flooded bowels of the castle by a large monster that resembles a giant tarantula with crab claws, Sebastian and Daniel play together on Daniel’s toy train. When Sebastian asks how the train works, Daniel shows Sebastian Dr. Vile’s electric water wheel, the device that powers Daniel’s toys as well as the devices that Dr. Vile uses in his… CRAB EXPERIMENTS! By the way, if you think I’m being facetious by typing out …CRAB EXPERIMENTS… like that every time, that’s literally how they say it in the episode, I’m just following suit. After a bit more playtime, we learn that Daniel doesn’t really agree with Dr. Vile’s …CRAB EXPERIMENTS… but took the job anyway because his family needed the money and despite being a super villain, Dr. Vile apparently pays well, another think he seems to have in common with Dr. Drakken. Sebastian tries to talk Daniel into walking away from all this when Dr. Vile bursts into the room and grabs Sebastian to continue his… CRAB EXPERIMENTS!

Just as Dr. Vile is about to douse Sebastian in the toxic sludge from earlier, Scuttle swoops in and saves Sebastian at the last minute. Meanwhile, Flounder and Ariel are cornered by the big fuzzy crab monster when the green sludge starts pouring out of the pipes. You know, I could just stop right now, pretend that Ariel died by either drowning in toxic waste or being eaten by a giant crab and live a much happier life, but sadly, I’ve seen The Little Mermaid, so I know that’s not the case. In any case, all of our heroes manage to narrowly escape Dr. Vile’s castle but Sebastian insists they go back to save Daniel.

Back in the castle, as punishment for stealing Sebastian from Dr. Vile in the first place, Daniel is about to be turned into a human ...CRAB EXPERIMENT! Wow, what a terrible boss. Eh, still beats working at AutoZone. As Igor pulls the switch, Ariel and the gang throw a monkey wrench into Dr. Vile’s water wheel. This causes part of the castle to explode and Daniel emerges from the debris unharmed. Daniel has learned a valuable lesson, never get stuck in a bad job where you’re horribly mistreated. Sadly, it’s too late for Sebastian to take his own advice and is still doomed to a few more years of babysitting an idiot teenager with a hoarding problem. In any case, Sebastian bids a heartfelt goodbye to his spooky little friend, Triton uses his magic to disperse the pollution from Dr. Vile’s castle (why the hell didn’t he do that to begin with) and our episode ends with Dr. Vile brooding in the wreckage of his castle and vowing a revenge that will hopefully one day be carried out by his great granddaughter.

And that was The Island of Fear. Despite my incredibly rocky relationship with this franchise, I honestly had fun with this. Once our seasonal articles are done dropping, we’ll be revisiting the world of The Little Mermaid in a less well-received capacity so it was nice to have a palette cleanser before we get there. Be it true to life or fictionalized, Dr. Vile made for an interesting and appropriately creepy villain and it was nice to see Sebastian take center stage since he was always my favorite character in the original film. Also, it says a lot about this franchise when its villains are a Luciferian Tentacle Witch and a Goblinesque Mad Scientist and both are somehow more likable than the so-called protagonist. But hey, I’m glad I got to do this, if for no other reason than to pay tribute to our good friend, Agatha Vile. I said it at the top, but I’ll say it again, thank you for being awesome and making Twitter a less shitty place to hang out. I urge all of you reading this to go follow Agatha on Twitter if you’re not already as well as seek out her various podcast appearances. This one was for you Agatha, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope I did your great grandfather justice. As for me, next time our Halloween celebration begins in earnest with The Scream Team!