Plot
The Ghostbusters are on a daytime bust when a building window shatters. They find Egon hiding behind crates, calmly studying his P.K.E. Meter. He has been picking up the same secondary and tertiary readings as the last several cases and concludes an outside force is controlling and directing the ghosts. A large entity then materializes and introduces himself as the Master of Shadows, announcing that he intends to destroy New York City. The team opens fire, but he teleports away, insulted.
Back at the Firehouse, Egon rushes together a device to transmit on the Master's spectral frequency. The hasty build leaves the wiring poorly insulated. The team reaches the Master, who admits that threatening the city is only a way to demonstrate his superiority and that it is nothing personal. Egon goads him into a one-on-one challenge and proposes a midnight showdown at the corner of 15th and Madison. The Master agrees, warning that if Egon fails to appear he will destroy the city in a single night.
Slimer prods the holographic projector, and his ectoplasm shorts out and fuses the circuits, exchanging his mind with Egon's. With Egon now in Slimer's body, the team scrambles to reverse the swap before the deadline. They keep working through more ghost calls, including a chaotic bust at a roller derby where Winston is forced onto the track and Peter coaches him through it using what he learned watching derbies as a kid. Egon, meanwhile, struggles to function in Slimer's body, slimes the real Slimer by mistake, and keeps slipping into Slimer's ravenous personality whenever food is in sight.
The Master moves up the appointment and demands Egon's presence at once. Slimer, in Egon's body, runs off to the meeting and can only answer the Master with gibberish and a raspberry. As the Master hurls blasts of energy, Ecto-1 arrives and Egon flies out to distract him while Slimer is pulled to safety. Ray activates the rewired device, restoring both minds to their proper bodies, and the now thoroughly confused Master of Shadows is easily trapped. Back home, Egon and Slimer briefly prank the others into thinking the swap did not fully reverse, then share a pizza.
Cast and voices
Regular voices were provided by Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, and Arsenio Hall. The episode exists in two recordings. In the original recording, Peter and Janine were voiced by Lorenzo Music and Laura Summer. For the redub, those roles were taken over by Dave Coulier and Kath Soucie.
The Master of Shadows was voiced by William Marshall, known for playing the vampire Prince Mamuwalde in the Blacula films. He was uncredited for the role.1
The episode was recorded on January 7 and 9, 1987, with Arsenio Hall and Maurice LaMarche recording on January 9.2
The two versions
This episode was re-dubbed with Dave Coulier and Kath Soucie because it was intended for syndication but was swapped with the ABC year-two shows. The original version, with Lorenzo Music and Laura Summer voicing Peter and Janine, surfaced in the UK broadcasts of the show and later re-aired in the United States on USA and Fox Family. The redubbed version with Coulier and Soucie was the one released on DVD, as part of Sony's Volume 7 release.
Because the original recording uses the first voice cast for Peter and Janine, the episode's events are placed before "Transylvanian Homesick Blues."
