Plot
Eager to begin, Garrett Miller asks when training starts. Egon wants to start right away but finds the old equipment falling apart and Ecto-1 in poor shape. Roland Jackson offers to rebuild the engine and rewire the gear, producing his Swiss Army Knife. After he finishes, Janine Melnitz starts Ecto-1 and it runs like new. In the city, Achira, still inside Kylie, infects two people at pay phones and then an entire subway car, leaving only a blind passenger until she infects him last. In Egon's lab, Roland checks the equipment's interior circuitry; Eduardo Rivera connects a cable incorrectly and gets shocked, to Slimer's amusement. Eduardo later tracks a P.K.E. reading that leads him to Slimer raiding the refrigerator.
During target practice, Roland accidentally shoots a fire engine. Egon warns the recruits never to cross the streams, telling a skeptical Eduardo it would cause a nuclear explosion rather than a shock. Egon then demonstrates the P.K.E. Meter. Across the city, a doctor and nurse realize the sickness is not a virus but an outbreak, and a waiting room fills with Achira's victims.
Roland, Garrett, and Eduardo take Ecto-1 out on faint readings. Achira's victims stagger up to the car seeking help; Eduardo, unsure what to do, gives one a quarter and tells him to move along. Over the radio Egon relays his analysis of the P.K.E. data he took of Achira before being attacked: she is a symbio-apparitional entity that needs a host. The team parks on a stronger reading. Eduardo stays with the car while Roland and Garrett search. Kylie, still possessed, appears and tries to lure Eduardo into a kiss, admonishing him for taking the Ghost Beacon, and admits she felt an attraction when they first met. Roland stops Eduardo just in time, shouting that she is the ghost. Eduardo shoots Kylie, forcing Achira out, and the three blast the ghost, but no one has a trap and Achira escapes. An unharmed Kylie tugs on Eduardo's goatee and demands to know how the Particle Thrower works; she recalls that Achira had impersonated her Great Grandma Rose.
Back at the lab, Egon explains that Achira is a destroyer of civilizations, though the records do not say how. Eduardo proposes his theory: the boils made people unattractive, so civilizations stopped procreating and died out. No one agrees. Egon sends the team to the new subway tunnel. There they find a false door leading into an ancient sealed tunnel, scattered remains, and a tablet bearing Achira's image. Kylie explains that certain cultures used incantations and talismans together with a physical barrier, like a set of bars, to imprison her; Roland realizes the subway crews broke the spell by drilling through. An Appendage Minion attacks and Eduardo destroys it, but the tunnel caves in. Garrett melts the imprisoning bars, and the team climbs out through a manhole.
Egon studies the tablet with the Ecto Goggles and warns that Achira's offspring is the real threat, troubled that she is one of the most highly evolved ghosts he has encountered. Downstairs, the phones light up; Janine counts fifty calls and tells Egon the Ghostbusters are back in business. Egon initially refuses to send the recruits back out because the gear cannot handle Achira, then concludes the Proton Packs and Traps can be upgraded after all. He draws the specifications while Roland welds and Garrett and Kylie modify the Traps. Kylie discovers the hard way that Slimer has eaten one of the screwdrivers. After Egon tests the new Trap, the team suits up.
Achira attacks from the Brooklyn Bridge, scorching Ecto-1 with flames and cutting off radio contact. She summons her spawn from across the city, pulling them out of every victim, and the swarm overwhelms the team. Garrett directs everyone to focus fire on Achira, and Kylie throws the trap as the ghost is pulled down. Achira vows to take them with her. An explosion follows, and people across the city are healed. The team returns to the firehouse, and Egon deposits Achira into the modified Containment Unit. Eduardo asks Kylie what she said while possessed; she says she does not remember, then grabs Garrett's chocolate bar and announces she needs to put on a few pounds. The episode ends on an ominous note: back at the Crosstown Subway, a horde of ghosts escapes the broken tunnel and scatters into the city.
Ghosts and Entities
Achira is the central antagonist of this two-part premiere. A symbio-apparitional entity, she requires a living host to exist in the physical world and spreads a supernatural disease to the humans she touches. Egon identifies her as a destroyer of civilizations, though the ancient records offer no clear method. Historical cultures imprisoned her using a combination of talismans, incantations, and a physical barrier: the discovery of her ancient sealed tunnel in the Crosstown Subway, drilled through by construction workers, released her during Part 1. Once trapped in the modified Containment Unit, Achira makes no further appearance in the series outside the end credits. She later appears as a boss in the Game Boy Advance game Extreme Ghostbusters: Code Ecto-1 (as the first boss) and in the PlayStation game Extreme Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Invasion (as the final boss). Her entries in Tobin's Spirit Guide (Insight Editions) note her first appearance in "Darkness at Noon, Part 1."
Achira's Appendage Minions are tentacled creatures she commands. One attacks the team in the ancient tunnel; Eduardo atomizes it with a Particle Thrower shot.
Spawn of Achira are Achira's offspring and, per Egon, her greater threat. They inhabit Achira's victims and emerge during the Brooklyn Bridge battle, swarming the Extreme Ghostbusters. They disperse when Achira herself is trapped.
The Crosstown Horde is the closing threat of the episode: a large collection of ghosts that had been sealed in the ancient tunnel alongside Achira. They escape through the breach in the Crosstown Subway after the Ghostbusters depart. The horde includes One-Eyed Menaces (green, roughly humanoid ghosts with a single large eye) and Ectoplasmic Owls (red, pterodactyl-bodied ghosts with large owl-like eyes). Both types reappear in the later episode "The Pied Piper of Manhattan" as emanations of the villain Piper.
Cast
The regular voice cast includes Tara Charendoff as Kylie, Maurice LaMarche as Egon, Jason Marsden as Garrett, Pat Musick as Janine, Alfonso Ribeiro as Roland, Rino Romano as Eduardo, and Billy West as Slimer. Guest voices are provided by David Prince and Susan Tyrrell.
Equipment
Equipment featured in this episode spans both the legacy Ghostbusters hardware and the upgraded Extreme Ghostbusters gear:
- Ectomobile (Ecto-1)
- Proton Pack: both the original Real Ghostbusters configuration and the upgraded Extreme Ghostbusters version appear
- Particle Thrower: both versions, matching the Proton Packs
- P.K.E. Meter: both versions
- Ecto Goggles: used by Egon to examine the ancient tablet
- Ghost Trap: upgraded in this episode to capture Achira
- Proton Pistol
- Proton Canister
- Ghost Vacuum
- Containment Unit: modified to receive Achira
The upgrading sequence, in which Egon draws specifications, Roland welds, and Garrett and Kylie modify the Traps, is one of the key scenes added when the single-episode story was expanded to two parts.
Locations
- The firehouse (Ghostbusters headquarters)
- Crosstown Subway: the ancient sealed tunnel beneath the modern subway construction, source of Achira's imprisonment and the Crosstown Horde's escape
- 42nd Street subway station: the train car where Achira infects an entire carload of passengers
- 135th Street Subway
- Brooklyn Bridge: site of the final battle, where Achira calls her spawn to swarm the team
Production
According to series production coordinator Shannon Muir, "Darkness at Noon" was originally written as a single episode and made it through storyboards before the crew found it ran too long. Material such as the sequence building and upgrading the new equipment was added to fill out the two-part running time. The second half was assigned production number 140 rather than the 121 it would otherwise have carried, a rounder number chosen for convenience.
Trivia
Egon's warning never to cross the streams echoes the same caution from the original Ghostbusters film. When Egon describes Achira as a ghost that needs a host, Eduardo compares it to a game-show host, a nod to Alex Trebek of Jeopardy! Eduardo also tells the possessed Kylie she was "doing the Linda Blair bit," referencing the actress Linda Blair and her role in The Exorcist. Eduardo additionally thinks Garrett has watched too many Jackie Chan movies; Garrett pointedly does not care for Jackie Chan or people from Long Island. Garrett confirms he is from the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. Eduardo also mentions having read "The Odyssey of Homer" the previous semester.
Eduardo calls the subway "Spook Central," the term Ray Stantz used for Dana Barrett's apartment building in the first Ghostbusters film. Returning to the firehouse, Garrett declares "We came, we saw, we kicked ghost butt," riffing on Peter Venkman's line after Slimer is trapped in the original film. Janine's "I think we're back" similarly recalls the Ghostbusters returning to business in Ghostbusters II. The final battle on the Brooklyn Bridge echoes previous large-scale battles from The Real Ghostbusters, several of which also took place on that landmark.
Kylie's closing gag, grabbing Garrett's chocolate bar and saying she needs to put on a few pounds, is a callback to Eduardo's earlier comment that she could stand to gain weight.
After being trapped here, Achira does not appear again in the series outside the end credits. She later returns as a boss in the games Extreme Ghostbusters: Code Ecto-1 for the Game Boy Advance and Extreme Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Invasion for the PlayStation, appearing as the first boss in the former and the final boss in the latter.
Quotes
Egon: "The important thing to remember is that you must never, under any circumstances, cross the streams."
Eduardo: "Why, what'll happen, another electric shock?"
Egon: "No, nuclear explosion."
Garrett: "We came, we saw, we kicked ghost butt."
References
Fandom Wiki, "Darkness at Noon, Part 2" (Extreme Ghostbusters episode article). Tobin's Spirit Guide (Insight Editions), Achira entry.
