The Ice Age Cometh

A young palace guard named Phillip lets Orko's magic trick distract him from his post just long enough for Whiplash to nearly make off with a restricted Ice Raider, and only He-Man's intervention stops the theft. Phillip's refusal to take responsibility for the lapse earns him a scolding from King Randor and a reassignment to the remote weather station at Eternia's north pole, a transfer meant as punishment but one Skeletor sees as an opening: the Ice Raider Phillip must pilot there carries the override codes for the station's protective screen.

Still too embarrassed by his first mistake to pay full attention to Man-At-Arms' briefing, Phillip fumbles the screen's controls just long enough for Skeletor's icy agent, Icer, to slip inside as a sheet of meltwater, and Icer quickly disables Phillip and begins turning the station's weather controls against all of Eternia. As a massive glacier bears down on the kingdom, He-Man, Teela, Orko and Cringer head north in the Attak Trak, fighting past a hostile band of trolls and reaching the station only to find Phillip outside, still too ashamed to admit what happened. Inside, Teela is flash-frozen and nearly carried off, and Orko's curiosity nearly wakes a dormant ice creature called the caterchiller sleeping beneath the station before He-Man can put it back to sleep.

Orko is left in charge of guarding a captured, half-frozen Icer, and a mix-up with his own magic powders lets the villain escape, something Orko admits to plainly rather than cover up, surprising Phillip with how little the honesty seems to cost him. He-Man eventually taps into Eternia's own geothermal heat with his sword to force Icer to flee for good as the ice melts around him. Back at the palace, Phillip finally owns his part in the whole crisis and earns Randor's praise for learning the lesson at last, while Teela is left wondering, not for the first time, why Adam and Cringer always seem to vanish right when she needs them.

Prince Adam: "Well, how are things going at the weather station, Phillip?"

Phillip: "Well, it's lots of work and plenty of responsibility, but you know, part of growing up is learning how to be a responsible person."

Teela: "That's for sure. Whether a job is big or small, it's nice when you know that you're the kind of person people can depend upon to get the job done."

Prince Adam: "That's right, Teela. Being responsible means you can be depended upon, and that's a big step toward becoming a winner."

John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam, Whiplash and Icer

Alan Oppenheimer as Skeletor, Man-At-Arms and Battle Cat/Cringer

Linda Gary as Teela and Phillip

Lou Scheimer (credited as Erik Gunden) as Orko, King Randor, troll and an unnamed weather station guard

"It looks as though you've learned to take responsibility, Phillip."

- King Randor

"The Ice Age Cometh" spends its cold open on a character the show has never used before, and that choice tells you what kind of episode this is going to be. Phillip, a young palace guard posted to watch the Ice Raider, lets Orko's sparkling magic trick pull his eyes off his post for just long enough. Whiplash makes his move, and the rest of the episode follows from that one lapse rather than from anything Skeletor planned in advance. Snake Mountain barely gets two scenes this time. The weight instead sits on a guard we have never met, an unusual bet for a twenty-two minute adventure script built mostly to put He-Man through an ice cave!

Teela reports the incident, and King Randor reassigns Phillip to the Eternian Weather Station as punishment. Phillip spends the trip north too distracted by his own humiliation to listen properly when Man-At-Arms briefs him on the station's protective screen. That inattention is what lets Icer slip through a second time, seeping under a door as melted water while Phillip checks the wrong thing at the wrong moment. The script is careful not to make him incompetent so much as preoccupied, a kid still smarting from his first mistake and about to compound it because he cannot stop thinking about the first one.

The best scene in the episode has nothing to do with He-Man. Orko, cornered earlier in the story and made to admit he mixed up his magic powders and let Icer get away, is asked why he would volunteer that kind of admission when it only makes him look bad. Admitting a mistake loses you friends, goes the argument put to him. Orko's answer, that he would not have a friend in the world if that were true and he happens to be a very popular fellow, lands because the show immediately proves it: nobody treats him any worse for owning up. It is a small exchange, tucked into the middle of an ice-cave rescue, but it does the thematic work the episode's closing moral only states outright.

The ice-cave stretch itself is competent, familiar Filmation business. Teela gets flash-frozen and later thawed; Orko finds a warning in a station manual about a sleeping caterchiller, the creature wakes and grabs him, and He-Man puts it back down with the sword before it can do any real damage. None of it is bad, but none of it is where the episode's real attention sits, and the caterchiller in particular exists to be defeated rather than to mean anything. Icer is a thinner villain than the setup promises too, a one-note henchman who seeps, freezes and eventually melts, with none of the personality Skeletor's more frequent lackeys get.

What the episode gets right is the ending. Debriefed in front of the king, Phillip takes the blame for Icer getting in rather than making excuses the way he did at the start. Randor's praise for him, that it looks as though he has learned to take responsibility, only works because we just spent twenty minutes watching him fail at it. Prince Adam and Teela close things out on their own small joke about Adam's habit of vanishing whenever trouble starts, which has nothing to do with Phillip's arc but leaves the episode on a warmer note than a straight moral statement would have managed alone. This was a good one for a character we will probably never see again.

1. Behind the scenes: Script was approved April 4, 1984 and final script revision was done May 3, 1984.
2. Continuity: The low angle of He-Man holding his sword and chopping down towards the camera was previously seen in House of Shokoti Part 2 and The Cat and the Spider. The Weather Station was first seen as Stardica in Like Father, Like Daughter, as Polonia in Castle of Heroes and would be seen again as Station Zeta in Happy Birthday Roboto.
3. Animation errors and goofs: When Phillip receives his Freeze Rod, the background changes from a solid wall in the wide shot to a corridor in the close-up. During scenes in which Adam and Teela are traveling in the Attak Trak, when viewed from the side, it appears that Adam's head is positioned outside the front window.