Plot
A bust at a museum sends the team chasing a ghost through the exhibits. Peter Venkman thinks he has it lined up and fires, only to hit Slimer. Ray Stantz brings Slimer along to track the real target by scent, and the trail leads through an aquarium and into the planetarium. Ray finds the little ghost adorable, but Peter reminds him the museum is paying them $5,000 to bag it. Ray traps the spook, and he and Winston Zeddemore feel guilty about caging something that looks so innocent.
Back at the Firehouse, Slimer panics at the sight of Janine Melnitz in a facial mask and blunders into Ray, knocking the Ghost Trap loose and freeing the ghost. Janine is charmed and asks to keep it. Egon Spengler figures a captive ghost could be useful for study, Ray notes the Containment Unit is crowded anyway, and Winston makes the creature promise to behave. Janine names him Victor, after her nephew.
Victor quickly turns destructive. He overloads a dimensional inverter in Egon's lab, eats the last jelly doughnut from the kitchen, and drops the hood of the Ecto-1 on Ray, with Slimer taking the blame each time. When the others find Slimer choking Victor in the sleeping quarters, Egon threatens to put both of them in the Containment Unit. In the garage bay, Victor finds a Ghost Trap, shifts into a huge, muscular, monstrous form, shoves Slimer into the trap, and seals the closet, then reverts to his cute shape before Egon and Peter walk in.
That evening Janine takes a call from an elderly woman in Tribeca complaining of a poltergeist, and the team heads out in Ecto-1 (Peter eager to get home for The Bob Newhart Show). At the apartment Egon's P.K.E. Meter reads nothing, and the nightly rattling turns out to be the Seventh Avenue Local subway passing by. Meanwhile Janine finds the loaded trap left behind and, while emptying it into the Containment Unit, accidentally frees Slimer, who explains Victor's betrayal. Victor flees the parked Ecto-1, reveals his true form in an alley, and wrecks the team's Proton Packs, picking off Ray, Egon, and Winston one by one. Janine pilots the Ecto-2 in to give cover fire and drop spare packs; the team re-arms, pins Victor in their streams, and Slimer throws the final trap. Afterward they grovel to Slimer in apology.
Characters
Victor is the title entity, voiced by Arsenio Hall. He first appears as a small, white, harmless-looking ghost who wins the team over, but he is a malevolent, intelligent spirit using the disguise to sabotage their gear, frame Slimer, and burrow into their headquarters. Unobserved, he turns into a massive, heavily muscled form strong enough to rip doors off their hinges and smash Proton Packs. As Peter puts it when Victor first arrives: "It'll be nice to have a ghost around who doesn't drip." Victor is a shape-changer: his cute form lets him float freely, while his true form sacrifices flight for enormous physical strength.
The elderly woman in Tribeca calls the team about what Janine assumes is a routine poltergeist. The disturbance is really the subway, and although Peter complains about not charging her, Winston points out she is someone's grandmother. She was voiced by Frank Welker.2
Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore all let Victor's cuteness override their judgment and break protocol by keeping a ghost as a pet. Janine Melnitz takes to Victor at once and names him after her nephew, and she later flies the Ecto-2 to save the team after they are disarmed. Slimer is the only one who sees through Victor, gets blamed for the sabotage, and finally throws the trap that ends the threat.
Victor's design later had an influence in IDW Publishing's comics: on page 12 of Ghostbusters 101 issue 2, Jenny Moran's scary form is visually based on Victor's true form, and Victor makes a non-canon cameo on Cover B of Ghostbusters: Crossing Over issue 2.
Equipment and vehicles
The team uses standard gear: Proton Packs, particle throwers, and Ghost Traps. Egon's P.K.E. Meter reads no activity during the Tribeca call. Victor causes a dangerous overload by tampering with a dimensional inverter in the lab. The Ecto-1 carries the team to Tribeca, and during the climax Janine flies the Ecto-2 to provide aerial cover and drop replacement Proton Packs. The Containment Unit figures in twice: the team nearly stores Victor in it, and Janine later opens it while trying to empty the trap that actually holds Slimer.
Production
The episode's voice cast recorded on January 9 and January 16, 1987, with guest and additional voices, including Frank Welker as the elderly woman, recorded on the 16th.2 Regular cast for the recording included Lorenzo Music (Peter Venkman), Maurice LaMarche (Egon Spengler), Laura Summer (Janine Melnitz), and Arsenio Hall as Victor.2
Lorenzo Music, the voice of Peter Venkman, was a co-creator of The Bob Newhart Show, the program Peter keeps trying to get home to watch in this episode.1
Dan Riba worked on the episode as a storyboard artist and character designer, as he noted in his introduction on The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection DVD box set.1
Animation errors
In several shots during Janine's flight in the Ecto-2, the vehicle's wings appear closed rather than extended. In the shot immediately after Janine drops a single spare Proton Pack from the Ecto-2, all four Ghostbusters are shown wearing packs a moment later, before any of them could have retrieved the dropped equipment.
Trivia
The $5,000 the museum pays for Victor is the same fee the team charged the Sedgewick Hotel for catching Slimer in the original 1984 film.1 At the Tribeca apartment, Peter mockingly calls the woman's small dog a "Terror Dog," a nod to Gozer's minions from that film. Janine's nephew Victor later appears in Janine's Day Off, squirting Egon with a water gun. This episode is the only one in the series in which Janine is shown piloting the Ecto-2.
The Casper the Friendly Ghost connection extends to the franchise's branding: when designers were refining the "No Ghost" logo (after Dan Aykroyd contributed the original concept), they had to take care that the ghost figure did not resemble Casper too closely.
The episode appears on the official Real Ghostbusters DVD release Slimefighters alongside three other episodes.
References
