Plot
One evening, a man aboard a ferry sees something swimming on a collision course with the boat. As it rams the front of the ferry, his wristwatch shorts out, and a whale briefly leaps from the water. In the Lincoln Tunnel, cars pile into each other; the woman in the toll booth sees the whale moving through the ground toward her and screams.
At the firehouse, Eduardo Rivera is caught reading the newspaper, though it turns out he is only reading the Marmaduke comic strip. Roland panics over a misplaced electronic planner, and Kylie Griffin and the others tease him for being over-reliant on his gadgets. Janine Melnitz and Slimer turn up with the planner, which Slimer had tried to eat because the screen saver looked like food. A call comes in from the Lincoln Tunnel, where every car has been wrecked. Roland's P.K.E. Meter goes dead at the scene.
An eyewitness insists the culprit is the Loch Ness Monster, big as a battleship and scaly. Kylie notes the disturbances in the tunnel floor point to a serpentine creature. A second call sends the team to a construction site on West 18th, where a runaway concrete truck, a front-end loader, and a crane all go out of control. The foreman confirms a large creature surfaced through the ground and every machine malfunctioned. Once again, the P.K.E. Meters fail near the disturbance.
Back at the firehouse, Kylie maps the sightings across the greater New York area. In each case a serpentine creature rises from the ground and makes machines fail, and the residual energy even crashes the meters. Egon Spengler suspects the entity is capable of ecto-magnetic emanations and runs the data for a pattern, only for the creature to pass the firehouse and knock out all the equipment, including his computer. The team chases it on foot, splits up, and corners it at a multi-vehicle pileup caused by a dead traffic light. Garrett Miller jokes that it is Roland's worst nightmare come true. Their Proton Packs power down the instant they open fire.
A second ghost appears: an old but finely dressed man riding a small wooden boat and wielding a harpoon. He throws the harpoon at the whale-like ghost, misses, and hits a minivan, triggering a large explosion. The whale surfaces, headbutts him out of his boat, and vanishes back into the ground. The team takes the knocked-out ghost and his boat back to the firehouse, where Egon revives him using a modified defibrillator tuned to deliver an electrical charge compatible with the ghost's ecto-metabolism.
The ghost calls himself Maiikrob and the whale Lotan. He has been tracking Lotan for seven centuries. Lotan can disrupt anything mechanical, from wheels and spears to modern machines, and travels through time choosing cities to destroy. Maiikrob has made it his destiny to destroy Lotan and refuses Egon's suggestion of an alliance, insisting he works alone.
Roland, meanwhile, has retreated to the roof, admitting he is too dependent on technology. The rest of the team heads out in Ecto-1, with Kylie driving on a stack of wood blocks and phone books because she cannot reach the brakes. They tail Maiikrob, who only loses to Lotan again when the creature flips Ecto-1 onto its side. A terrified Garrett screams that he cannot feel his legs. After the team's blunt encouragement, delivered through Garrett's reverse psychology, Maiikrob agrees to work with them.
From the firehouse radio, Egon reports that Lotan attacks targets of progressively complex technology, escalating from the cars in the Lincoln Tunnel toward bigger prey. Janine relays that Lotan is heading east toward Queens. Eduardo jokes that Lotan could wipe out the New York Mets even more easily than the team can. Kylie deduces the real target is John F. Kennedy International Airport. By then, Roland has already left on his own.
At the airport, Lotan causes a landing plane to crash into a building and starts moving on the air traffic control tower, where failing radar and computers would put thousands of lives at risk. Roland arrives in time to warn that the Proton Packs are about to overload. Maiikrob reveals Lotan can only be destroyed from within, by piercing his "center of being." Roland turns the overloading gear into the plan: throw the Proton Packs and Proton Pistol into the creature. Maiikrob volunteers for what is effectively a suicide run, jams Lotan's jaws open with his harpoon, and leaps inside with the equipment. Lotan flies away from the tower and implodes, destroying both the creature and Maiikrob, and undoing all the damage Lotan had caused. Roland's meter and watch come back to life, and the runway lights return. Garrett caps the moment by suggesting it is time to get Roland a girlfriend.
Cast and crew
Regular voice cast included Tara Charendoff (later credited as Tara Strong), Maurice LaMarche, Jason Marsden, Pat Musick, Alfonso Ribeiro, Rino Romano, and Billy West. Guest voices were Hamilton Camp and Tony Jay.
The episode was written by Richard Stanley and directed by Alan Caldwell. It belongs to the show's first season.
Ghosts
Lotan is a massive whale-like entity that travels through solid ground and emits ecto-magnetic emanations capable of disrupting any mechanical device in its vicinity, from ancient wheels and spears to modern electronics and P.K.E. Meters. Lotan has been moving through history, selecting civilizations and destroying them by paralyzing their technology, before moving on to the next target. Its one vulnerability is its "center of being," which must be pierced from the inside. Lotan is destroyed at JFK Airport when Maiikrob dives into its gullet with overloading Proton Packs, triggering an internal implosion. Despite being destroyed here, Lotan appears among the captured ghosts in the Containment Unit during the earlier-aired episode "Slimer's Sacrifice," suggesting the episode was broadcast out of production order.
Maiikrob is a centuries-old ghost in the guise of a formally dressed harpoon hunter who pursues Lotan from atop a small flying wooden boat. For seven centuries he has attempted, always unsuccessfully, to destroy Lotan on his own. His sole known advantage is that he knows Lotan's one weakness. After being revived by Egon and initially refusing to cooperate, Maiikrob eventually joins forces with the team and sacrifices himself at JFK Airport, jamming Lotan's jaws with his harpoon and descending into the creature with the overloading packs. He is destroyed in the resulting explosion, fulfilling his centuries-long mission. Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick" served as the basis for Maiikrob's obsession, mirroring Captain Ahab's pursuit of the white whale.
Notes and trivia
Lotan and Maiikrob's centuries-long hunt loosely echoes Captain Ahab's pursuit of Moby Dick, which the episode title plays on. Eduardo nicknames the harpoon-wielding Maiikrob "Popeye" after the cartoon sailor. Garrett nicknames Roland "Rolster" in this episode. Eduardo's newspaper reading turns out to be the Marmaduke comic strip, which centers on a family and their Great Dane. The team jokes that Roland, lost without his gadgets, would not last two days on Gilligan's Island. Eduardo also quips that Lotan could wipe out the New York Mets at Shea Stadium.
Kylie drives Ecto-1 in this episode, seated on a stack of books so she can see over the dash and reach the controls. The later episode "Ghost in the Machine" establishes that Eduardo has no driver's license, leaving Roland and Kylie as the only members who can legally drive.
Although Lotan is destroyed here, the creature also appears among the captured ghosts in the Containment Unit during "Slimer's Sacrifice." That episode aired earlier (23rd by air date) yet shows Lotan already contained, which suggests "Moby Ghost" was broadcast out of its intended order. One in-universe reading is that Lotan re-manifested in a weaker, trappable form after the events of this episode. The production order number of "Moby Ghost" has not been publicly confirmed.
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