Plot
At the firehouse, Janine Melnitz is interrupted at her desk when The Great Strazinski arrives looking for help. He explains that his vanishing-cabinet act has begun making his assistants disappear for good, and asks the team to examine the cabinet. Ray Stantz, a longtime admirer of the magician's act, is eager to take the case. Strazinski admits that despite being a magician, anything genuinely supernatural frightens him, and he bolts when he spots Slimer.
At the Magic Palace, Egon Spengler studies the cabinet and concludes it is a dimensional gateway, its runes pre-Babylonian and probably activated by a spoken trigger word. While all four Ghostbusters are standing inside it, Strazinski remembers the secret word, "Goombah," and says it aloud, teleporting the team away.
They land in a netherworld and take shelter in a castle, where they find a crowd of vanished assistants and a magician calling himself "The Amazing Gorgani." When Peter Venkman fails at a card trick the magician demands, Gorgani reveals himself as the demon Gorgar, whom Egon classes as a powerful nether-entity. Proton streams have no effect on him, so Winston Zeddemore suggests they offer the demon what he actually wants: real magic. Ray, dressing up as "Stantzo the Magnificent," performs the card trick correctly, and Gorgar, overjoyed at finally meeting a true magician, agrees to show them a gateway home in exchange for Ray's promise to teach him.
Opening the gateway brings the team back to Times Square, but it also drags Gorgar through and opens a cross-dimensional conduit that begins converting the city into part of the demon's realm. Ray takes Gorgar back to the Magic Palace, ushers him into the cabinet, and speaks "Goombah" once more. The cabinet creates an inward flow of nether energy that reverses the outward flow, restoring the city and sending Gorgar back to his own dimension. The cabinet is destroyed in the process. Back at the firehouse, Egon explains the reversal using the "Selbert Theory," which holds that nether energy can flow in only one direction at a time.
Production
Larry DiTillio wrote the episode. He named The Great Strazinski as a tribute to former story editor J. Michael Straczynski; the gesture returned an earlier in-joke in which Straczynski had named a character after DiTillio in the episode "Ragnarok and Roll."
The voice cast recorded the episode on March 28 and April 4, 1990, with Dave Coulier recording alone in the second session.2 Coulier voiced Peter Venkman, with Frank Welker as Ray Stantz and Slimer, Maurice LaMarche as Egon Spengler, Buster Jones as Winston Zeddemore, and Kath Soucie as Janine Melnitz. LaMarche also voiced The Great Strazinski. Guest performers Greg Burson and Louise Vallance rounded out the cast, with Burson voicing Gorgar.2
Surviving storyboards document several scenes that were scripted but cut. Two of the trapped assistants were to be named Carmen and Miranda; Egon and Ray were written to rattle off additional pseudo-scientific theories while examining the cabinet; and a chase gag involving a giant beetle and a giant fly swatter was dropped. An early version of the examination scene also had Winston using the Specter Detector rather than standard gear.
Recurring elements
Gorgar reappears in a later episode, "Guess What's Coming to Dinner," among the ghosts that escape after the Containment Unit is opened.
The premise echoes the earlier episode "The Cabinet of Calamari," in which the team likewise investigates a magic show and a cabinet that sends people to another dimension.
In broadcast order, the episode followed "Janine, You've Changed" and preceded "Ghostworld."
