Plot
Centuries ago, the Italian scientist Antonio Garibaldi mutters in his sleep about "celestial clockwork" and the "music of the spheres" while Luko hovers above him. Garibaldi wakes with an idea, sketches it, and forges the parts for a machine. Once it is finished, Luko possesses it, and Garibaldi grabs a crowbar to fend off his own creation.
In the present, a museum tour guide describes Garibaldi as a 17th-century inventor credited with the Filbert Press, the Skidmore, and the Clopstock, who was imprisoned for heresy in 1697. The same machine sits on display. When a boy and his mother leave the exhibit, Luko abandons the machine and possesses the boy's Robobot action figure.
At the Firehouse, Eduardo Rivera and Garrett Miller play one-on-one basketball while Kylie Griffin studies her Tarot cards, insisting her interest is purely academic. She draws the Tower card for Eduardo and explains its grim meaning before a racket interrupts them. Egon Spengler comes downstairs to find the noise is coming from Roland, who has been inspired by a documentary on a sculptor. In the workshop, Roland shows off a device the others mistake for modern art; it turns out to be a trash compactor. Eduardo's mockery leaves Roland fuming.
That night, Luko wakes the boy and, frustrated that the toy body cannot hold his power, demands the boy build him a proper machine. The team is called out and finds the boy claiming his toy attacked him. Kylie's P.K.E. Meter spikes. As they search the house, Luko jumps from a light fixture out a window, then hops between a Robobot, a lawn mower, a garbage truck, a power saw, a cement mixer, an elevator control panel, a nail gun, and finally a construction crane at the Laurel Construction Site. The chase nearly kills Garrett several times before Eduardo destroys the crane. The team concludes Luko is gone, over Kylie's objection. They never realize the demon has slipped into Roland's P.K.E. Meter, and as Roland sleeps it implants knowledge into him.
The next day Roland falls into a trance and refuses to stop working on his machine, grabbing parts from around the Firehouse. Kylie persuades the others to leave him alone and be supportive. Retracing the case, Egon studies Garibaldi's Principia Mathematica at the New York City Public Library, translating the Latin to learn that Garibaldi tried to reproduce the mathematical order of the universe late in life but was tricked by the demon Luko into building a perfect host. Garibaldi destroyed the machine hoping to trap Luko inside.
Roland completes his own version, the Infernal Machine, and activates it. Luko leaps from the P.K.E. Meter into the new device and begins a rampage, blasting everything with lasers. Egon reclassifies the entity as a Perambulating Techno-Symbiotic Specter. The team cannot escape in Ecto-1 because Roland stripped its engine for parts; Egon flags down a taxi instead. With their proton cartridges also missing (Roland used them too, wired as an ionic transference circuit for added power), they realize the machine will overload and explode when the circuit exhausts its ions. Roland climbs onto the rampaging machine and activates a Ghost Trap, pulling Luko in just before the Infernal Machine safely detonates.
Ghosts and entities
Luko is an ancient demon whose goal is to punish humanity for overreaching by destroying it with its own technology. His primary ability is a temporary symbiosis with human beings: he implants knowledge and repetitive behavior into a host until the target task is complete. Once embedded in a piece of machinery, he can possess it directly. The P.K.E. Meter describes his readings as "jumping off the scale." After possessing the completed Infernal Machine, Egon reclassifies him from demon to Perambulating (Moving) Techno-Symbiotic Specter.
In 1697, Luko implanted the obsession with the "Music of the Spheres" into the elderly inventor Antonio Garibaldi, then possessed the machine Garibaldi built. Garibaldi disabled the device and tried to warn others, but was imprisoned for heresy. He recorded his encounter in a book he titled Principia Mathematica. Three centuries later, Luko escaped when the Infernal Machine went on museum display, eventually stowing away in Roland's P.K.E. Meter after the team's failed crane-site bust. The full sequence of machines Luko possessed across both eras: the Infernal Machine Mark I, a Robobot action figure, a lawn mower, a garbage truck, an electric buzz saw, a cement mixer, an elevator control panel, a nail gun, a construction crane, Roland's P.K.E. Meter, and the Infernal Machine Mark II.
Luko makes non-canon cameos in IDW comics: on Cover B of Ghostbusters #12 (visible in the letter "L") and in Ghostbusters Volume 2 #11 (his depiction from Garibaldi's Principia Mathematica appears above the Spectral Almanac).
Antonio Garibaldi is a 17th-century Italian scientist credited by the museum with inventing the Filbert Press, the Skidmore, and the Clopstock. He believed his inspiration to reproduce the mathematical order of the universe came from an angel, not realizing Luko had implanted the obsession. After disabling the first Infernal Machine and attempting to warn others, he was imprisoned for heresy in 1697. His account of Luko is preserved in his book Principia Mathematica, which Egon locates at the New York City Public Library.
Production
The episode was animated by Hanho Heung-Up Company, Ltd. It aired as part of the first and only season of Extreme Ghostbusters, the 1997 follow-up to The Real Ghostbusters that paired an aging Egon Spengler with a new team of college-age recruits.
References and allusions
The script is dense with real-world references. Luko's implanted obsession centers on the "Music of the Spheres" (Musica Universalis), the ancient philosophical idea that the proportions in the movements of celestial bodies form a kind of inaudible music.
Roland's documentary inspiration is the sculptor Constantin Brancusi. When the team mistakes his trash compactor for modern art they invoke Marcel Duchamp (the French surrealist), the anti-Bauhaus Gestalt school, and Jackson Pollock (American abstract expressionist). Garrett nicknames Roland "Roll" throughout the episode.
Kylie's Tarot session covers three cards: she draws the Tower for Eduardo (representing the danger of building on a false foundation, whether personal ambition or bad science; examples she cites are the Tower of Babel, the Titanic, and the atomic bomb), the Emperor (the need to accept that some things cannot or should not be controlled), and the Sun (good outcomes for current struggles). She later cites the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy to argue Luko cannot have been destroyed by the crane's collapse. She is also shown studying the I-Ching, one of China's oldest texts, and mentions its use in stock trading.
While searching the boy's room, Garrett riffs on the horror film Child's Play and its killer doll Chucky, then after Eduardo blasts a stuffed animal he name-checks Mr. Potato Head. Eduardo also insults Kylie by calling her "Night Crawler," a reference to the 1992 Judas Priest single from the album Painkiller. Interrupting the team's basketball game of 21, Eduardo learns Garrett always keeps score.
The three Ghostbusters admit they were each dreaming of a celebrity before the call: Garrett of Christie Brinkley, Eduardo of Christy Turlington, and Kylie of Christian Slater. Eduardo later mistakes Luko's name for "Luka," the boy portrayed by Jason Cerbone in Suzanne Vega's 1987 music video for the song "Luka" from Solitude Standing. Egon warns that the machine's rampage will be a "disaster of biblical proportions," echoing his line to the Mayor in the first Ghostbusters film.
Garibaldi's book shares its title, Principia Mathematica, with the early 20th-century three-volume treatise on mathematical logic by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell.
A framed photo on Roland's nightstand shows him with his younger brother Casey Jackson, who appears in the later episode "Grundelesque." The construction-site chase, with the crane attack and the elevator entrapment, mirrors a similar bust the original team suffers in the Real Ghostbusters episode "The Joke's on Ray."
Episode navigation
Previous episode: "Casting the Runes." Next episode: "Home is Where the Horror Is."
References
- Fandom Ghostbusters Wiki, "The Infernal Machine" episode article.
- Fandom Ghostbusters Wiki, "Luko" character article.
