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 a Swiss Army Knife. After he finishes, Janine Melnitz starts Ecto-1 and it runs like new. In the city, Achira, still inside Kylie, infects people at pay phones, then an entire subway car. In Egon's lab, Roland checks the equipment's interior circuitry; Eduardo Rivera connects a cable incorrectly and gets shocked, to Slimer's amusement.
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. 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, and Kylie, still possessed, appears and tries to lure Eduardo into a kiss. Roland stops him 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. Kylie is unharmed and 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. He 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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 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.
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."
