Flying Dutchman (The Ghost Busters)

Captain Aloysius Beane and First Mate Scroggs of the cursed sailing ship The Flying Dutchman are antagonists in the 1975 Filmation Live Action Saturday morning kids show, The Ghost Busters, in the fifth episode, named for the ship.

Beane and Scroggs, now ghosts, emerge in the cemetery in the Ghost Busters unnamed town, plotting to find a cook and a cleaner to join their crew for a long voyage whose purpose is never specified. Captain Beane is an officious, somewhat pompous old-line British officer given to loud pronouncements and more than a little deluded about simple reality, thinking the series' perennial old castle is a ship. Scroggs, not really dressed like an officer and more like a crewmember, is dim and easily distracted, but seems to have a better grip on reality than his captain. The Captain has a recurring nemesis, another ghost named Moby, who regularly sprays him with a spout of water from offscreen, and who he curses as a big guppy.

At the Ghost Busters ramshackle office, Jake Kong deals with Eddie Spencer's attempts at cleaning and Tracy The Gorilla's attempts at cooking an insane, anime-esque bad meal by pushing them to get their next assignment from unseen employer Zero. Tracy's driving almost puts them into the storefront, but Zero's message informs them of the Flying Dutchman's shanghai efforts, so the trio make for the cemetery, correctly figuring the officers will search for ghost crew while there.

With two sets of cross-wired incompetents wandering the grounds, the ship officers almost capture Tracy and Eddie, but their own foolishness plus a few random sprays from Moby shut down that plan. Tracy, however, sees the pair retreat into the old house/castle. Back in their office, Tracy manages (through charades, and some bizarre manner of three-dimensional sketching) to inform his partners of the officers' location, and they make tracks to the old house. Discovering that his partners left their Ghost Kit in the cemetery, Jake instructs Eddie and Tracy to pose as ghosts seeking recruitment for the crew. Their poor performances don't fool either of the ghosts, but Beane instructs Scroggs to play along, so that the two can be made into ghosts to serve them. However, just as Tracy and Eddie seem trapped, Jake returns with the Ghost De-Materializer, only to have a net meant for his dimwit partners thrown over him. The two ghosts vanish, but Jake engages in a childhood taunt that brings the ghosts back, where they are cornered and banished. To Jake's chagrin, back at the office, a spray of water strikes him, indicating Moby has a new target.

Trivia

 * Owing to the show's low budget, the titular cursed ship is never seen.
 * While the incompetence of the Ghost Busters aided the realization, the ghosts cannot directly sense that Eddie and Tracy were in fact living beings.
 * The villains' lair is described as being the old house on the other end of the cemetery, though it is the same set from every other episode. It is unclear if the show meant that there are two locations or if the castle/house was always adjacent to the cemetery.
 * First Mate Scroggs was played by character actor Phil Bruns; according to Wikipedia, among his many roles was the first actor to play Jerry's father on Seinfeld, in the show's pilot.
 * Captain Beane was played by Stanley Adams, whose best known role is also a highly memorable one. On the classic Star Trek episode 'The Trouble With Tribbles' (and therefore the Deep Space Nine episode 'Trials and Tribble-ations' as well) he played fast-talking salesman Cyrano Jones, even repeating the role on the classic show's animated spin-off. According to Wikipedia, he was the leader of 'The Great Vegetable Rebellion' on Lost In Space.