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"Sea Fright" is an episode of the animated series The Real Ghostbusters. A ghostly pirate crew sails into New York to reclaim treasure that a museum has put on display, and the Ghostbusters find themselves both outnumbered and, at times, outwitted by the spirits.1
The episode was written by Arthur Byron Cover and Lydia Marano and first aired on November 10, 1987 as part of Season 2.2 It carries production number 76004.2 The recording session was held on July 31, 1986.2
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The regular voice cast included Lorenzo Music, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, and Arsenio Hall. Guest voices were provided by Jack Angel and Burton Sharp.
The episode features Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, Winston Zeddemore, Janine Melnitz, and Slimer, along with the ghost pirate Captain Jack Higgins, his crew, the captain's parrot, treasure hunter Max Palopolis, and the pirate ship Stag. Janine appears but has no dialogue.
A scuba diver recovers a strongbox marked with the emblem of a stag from the seafloor. At the Firehouse, Ray and Winston are tuning up Ecto-1 when Ray brings up Max Palopolis, a famous treasure hunter who has just opened a maritime museum to exhibit his latest find, a hoard of 600 gold doubloons.
Out at sea, a ship sails into a strange fog. The captain says he has never seen anything like it in 24 years at sea before a second ship appears and opens fire. The alarm sounds at the Firehouse and the team responds. Boarding the wrecked vessel, Egon reports tremendous latent P.K.E. Peter finds the crew tied up below deck and watches a parrot pass straight through a wall.
The attacking vessel is a ghost ship crewed by ghost pirates. Captain Jack Higgins declares he means to take back what is rightfully his. Ray identifies the ship by its figurehead as the Stag, vessel of Jack Higgins, whom he calls the blackest pirate to sail the seven seas, and notes that an event of this magnitude was last recorded 200 years earlier. After an exchange of fire, several pirates swim to the docks and toss the Ghostbusters into the water.
The Stag rises out of the water and sails into New York City, where Higgins lets the crew disperse to pillage. The pirates rob a man of his clothes, are baffled by store mannequins, and gorge themselves on produce at a supermarket; one returns with a yellow cowboy hat. Meanwhile Ecto-1 runs sluggishly, and the team discovers Slimer is the cause, hiding under the hood. Ray realizes the strongbox Palopolis recovered belongs to the ghosts, and the crew sets sail for the museum treasure.
Palopolis refuses to cooperate and orders the Ghostbusters out, but Egon judges the area around the museum suitable for an ambush. When the Stag approaches, Peter fires a cannonball into it. In the chaos Slimer fights the captain's parrot. As the pirates gather around the treasure, the Ghostbusters trap the Stag, then the crew, and finally Captain Higgins along with the parrot. Palopolis is furious about the damage, but the Ghostbusters hold their ground. They take Slimer out for an ice cream cone, and he keeps the yellow cowboy hat as a souvenir.
The Ghostbusters use Ecto-1, their Proton Packs, particle throwers, a trap, and the P.K.E. Meter. Winston worries aloud whether the Containment Unit is large enough to hold the captured ship. Locations include the Firehouse and the Palopolis Maritime Museum.
When the call comes in, Peter quips about gremlins at the Guggenheim and porcupines in the park. Gremlins are encountered separately in the episode "Don't Forget the Motor City."
Ray's line that Jack Higgins was the blackest pirate to sail the seven seas echoes the description usually reserved for the real-world pirate Blackbeard.
The trucker who appears in this episode later turns up in "Venkman's Ghost Repellers."
A pair of recurring animation errors crop up: in the opening Firehouse scene Ray speaks with his back to the camera while Winston's lips move, and at the museum the color of Higgins' stolen cowboy hat flickers between yellow and the black hat he wore earlier.
The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection lists the episode as number 055 by air order and number 017 in DVD order, where it is preceded by "Play Them Ragtime Boos" and followed by "The Spirit of Aunt Lois." By air date it falls between "The Spirit of Aunt Lois" and "Ghost Fight at the O.K. Corral."
