Plot
In the Firehouse basement, Kylie writes in her journal, imagining a letter to her late great grandmother and wondering about her own future. Slimer startles her, and slime ends up all over her and the journal. As she wipes the pages clean with a curtain, the basement suddenly appears in ruins and she sees New York City destroyed. A man in tattered clothes is standing there, stunned to be in a basement he says was wrecked years ago. Kylie realizes this is a Time Slip, a rift in the space-time continuum that causes two eras to overlap. A ghost named Tempus appears, mocking the man for thinking himself destroyed, then abruptly splits in two, throwing time into flux between present and future.
Eduardo Rivera, Roland Jackson, and Egon Spengler rush in as time stabilizes on the present. Kylie is gone, the stranger remains, and only one Tempus is left. Garrett Miller arrives through the side door. In the future, the other Tempus flies off while Kylie watches ghosts, including giant slug creatures, hauling away human prisoners.
The Ghostbusters open fire on the present-day Tempus, who retaliates with ecto projectiles and a tornado. A trap is knocked off the wall in front of Garrett, who throws it under Tempus and triggers it, but Tempus seeps back out and flees. The stranger identifies himself as Isaac and says he is from the future. When Eduardo demands to know what happened to Kylie, Isaac is awestruck to be standing among the Ghostbusters, whom he calls legends.
In the future, a man pulls Kylie into an alley, saving her from passing ghosts, then holds her at gunpoint and asks what she did with Isaac. When he recognizes her as Kylie Griffin, he bows, saying a prophecy of her return has come true and that it marks the end of the tyranny of Tempus.
Up in Egon's lab, Isaac explains that in the future Tempus led an army of ghosts, conquered the world, and kept humanity as slaves. Egon examines the trap and concludes Tempus is a Class 6 Bi-Temporal Apparition, able to exist in two eras at once, which is why a single trap captured only half of him. Isaac recalls throwing a Ghost Bomb at Tempus, a prototype rigged from the original design specifications of Dr. Roland Jackson. Roland is amazed to learn he becomes a doctor, and Isaac tells Eduardo he is the hero of the Great Ghost War. He does not recognize Garrett at all, and Eduardo presses the point by calling Garrett an "unknown soldier."
Egon theorizes the Ghost Bomb, meant to disperse ectoplasmic matter, split Tempus in two and opened the Time Slip that sent Isaac to the past. He demonstrates with a jelly doughnut, splitting it in half, and proposes that rejoining the two halves of Tempus could reopen the slip and bring Kylie home. With no working Proton Packs left in the future, Eduardo sarcastically suggests shipping one forward in time, which gives Roland an idea.
In Times Square, Tempus is baffled by the crowds of humans and the absence of his minions. His throne appears with his future half seated on it, who reveals the date is July 30th, the day of the Great Spirit Uprising. The future Tempus orders his present self to make sure the event happens by releasing the ghosts trapped in the Firehouse Containment Unit.
The resistance fighters, who call themselves The Griffinites, take Kylie to their underground headquarters, where her belongings, including her journal, are kept as sacred relics. Every page up to her death has been preserved. Roland's plan is to pack a Proton Pack and bury it like a time capsule, with a message written into Kylie's journal so her future self can find it. The team digs near Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park, which Isaac says is the safest place in the future.
Following the message, Kylie leads the rebels to Central Park. In the present, Tempus destroys the buried time capsule and tries to bury the Ghostbusters alive in the hole, then blasts the Ecto-1 to slow them down. The team climbs out, calls a Code Red to Egon, and reburies a second pack inside a garbage bag. In the future, Kylie falls into the hole, finds the Proton Pack, fights off Tempus, and flees with the rebels toward the ruined Firehouse. After blasting the future Tempus away, she refers to the shot as "the shot heard 'round the world."
Egon and Slimer guard the Containment Unit. Tempus arrives and orders Egon to open it; Egon refuses and fights him off until the others return. Tempus blasts the unit open, but before the ghosts can escape, the Ghostbusters blast him while Garrett seals the hatch. Egon tells them to move Tempus back to where he first appeared. As the Time Slip reopens and both groups become visible to each other, Kylie pushes her half of Tempus toward the present so Garrett can drop the trap into place. The two halves are forced together and pulled in. Isaac and the rebels vanish back to the future, and Kylie returns to the present, where she spooks Slimer as payback.
Eduardo covers his relief at her return by complaining about how annoying Isaac had become. Roland wonders whether they changed the future, and Egon, sealing Tempus in the Containment Unit, says time is always in flux but they likely did. Garrett suggests checking Kylie's future journal, which came back with her, but Kylie tosses it in the air and blasts it, saying she would rather take the future one day at a time.
Episode characters
Tempus
Tempus is the episode's main antagonist, a Class 6 Bi-Temporal Apparition capable of existing simultaneously in two different eras and sensing disturbances in the time stream. In the alternate future, he opened the Containment Unit on July 30, 1997, triggering the Great Spirit Uprising, and subsequently enslaved all of humanity while destroying most historical records. His unique bi-temporal nature is what allowed only half of his essence to be caught when the Ghostbusters first trap him; reuniting both halves is the key to fully containing him. His powers include flight, phasing through walls, generating and throwing fireballs, and summoning wind. Notably, his memories do not follow his split past-half cleanly: he retains general knowledge of his rule but needs his future-self's instructions to remember the specifics of how to start the Uprising.
The name Tempus is Latin for "time," an in-universe reference to his bi-temporal nature. He also makes a brief appearance in the Extreme Ghostbusters end-credit sequence.
Isaac
Isaac is a resistance fighter from the alternate future who accidentally created the Time Slip by using a Ghost Bomb against Tempus. The Ghost Bomb was a prototype rigged by the rebels from design specifications attributed to "Dr. Roland Jackson." Isaac considers the present-day Ghostbusters legends, and is astonished to meet them in person. Crucially, he has no memory of Garrett Miller, a running sore point that Eduardo exploits to tease Garrett about his apparent anonymity in history.
The Griffinites
The Griffinites are the small band of resistance fighters who kept the cause of the late Kylie Griffin alive in the alternate future. They preserved her journal as a sacred relic and clung to a prophecy that she would one day return and end Tempus's reign. Their two technicians constructed prototype weapons from salvaged records: a Ghost Bomb and a Proton Cannon. When Kylie arrives in their time, she serves as the catalyst that fulfills the prophecy, though the question of whether the episode's events permanently altered the timeline remains open.
Production
The episode was written by Steve Perry and directed by Tim Eldred for the 1997 series. Koko Enterprise Company, Ltd. handled the animation. It carries production number 119 and originally aired on October 1, 1997, between Sonic Youth and Bird of Prey in the show's run.
Continuity and references
Egon's habit of using junk food to explain a problem echoes the original 1984 film, where he used a Twinkie to illustrate the buildup of psychokinetic energy; here he splits a jelly doughnut to explain Tempus.
When Egon classifies Tempus, Eduardo compares the two-era ghost to the Ghost of Christmas Past and Future. The original team encountered those spirits, and the Time Slip phenomenon itself, in the The Real Ghostbusters episode Xmas Marks the Spot.
Isaac's Ghost Bomb is described as a prototype built from Roland Jackson's original design specifications. The Ghost Bomb concept first appeared in The Real Ghostbusters episode The Boogieman Cometh, where Egon built the original device.
Garrett nicknames Tempus "Smokey" during the episode, a reference to Smokey Bear, the United States Forest Service fire-prevention mascot. He also calls Roland "The Professor," a nod either to the character of the same name on the TV series "Gilligan's Island" or to H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine."
Kylie, after blasting the future Tempus with the Proton Cannon, invokes "the shot heard 'round the world," a phrase associated with the start of World War I via the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park is identified as one of the few man-made structures left untouched in the future, for reasons the episode leaves unexplained. It serves as the location for the buried Proton Pack time capsule.
The episode is set on July 30th, the date the future Tempus points out in Times Square as the day of the Great Spirit Uprising. Egon's closing observation that time is always in flux echoes the resolution of "Xmas Marks the Spot," where the original team restored the timeline by releasing the Ghosts of Christmas back to their proper time.
References
- Extreme Ghostbusters, "Ghost Apocalyptic Future" (air date October 1, 1997; production number 119)
- Fandom Ghostbusters Wiki, "Tempus" and "The Griffinites" (character articles)
