Cold Freeze

A shell forms around the central sun of Primus, the temperature falls, and the scientists warn that snow and ice will cover everything before the sunlight returns. Skeletor, listening through a new audio ear on the mothership, offers fuel ore in exchange for surrender and the end of the shield. He-Man and the Galactic Guardians go to Gorn City for a rival supply and bring back what looks like a victory, but Skeletor calls to say the ore is fake. A starship goes to break the shell with its lasers, past a web of rings that no one has attempted to cross. It is trapped there until the sunshine returns, and the Primans discover the listening signal. The closing lesson is to wear a helmet when riding a bike.

Whenever you ride a bike, wear your helmet: it is your head, so use it or lose it.

Who profits when a planet freezes? "Cold Freeze" has a ready answer in Skeletor, who has a supply of fuel ore and a reason to be pleased about the weather, and the story is at its liveliest when it lets him do the sales pitch. The setup is a quiet one: a shell forms around the central sun, the scientists explain that the heat cannot get through, snow and ice are coming, and they bicker over how long the cold will last while Master Sebrian asks for a count of how long the energy reserves will hold. Once someone says that without fuel the Primans are doomed, the next scene has Skeletor praising his intergalactic audio ear as a superb addition to his collection of spy weapons.

That early plant is the best thing in the writing, because it tells us something Primus does not know. Skeletor can hear the plans. Plain words for the spine, then: this is a story about information, in which the fuel fight follows from who is listening to whom. The pitch itself is a pleasure, with Skeletor promising to practically give the ore away, then admitting the small catch, which is that the Primans must surrender, bring down the shield and become slaves; he tells Flogg that he would be the Supreme Monarch, the big cheese, and Flogg repeats the title back in delight. Later, when Skeletor tells Crita to take a squadron and welcome He-Man, Flogg objects that he is the leader and gives the orders, and then repeats the same order himself, only to be told what a stupid idea it is. The sparring between the two is well judged.

He-Man's answer is to go and get fuel, with the Galactic Guardians, from Gorn City, and the trip has a loose, comic energy of its own. The group is turned away from a club that admits only Mutants, goes in regardless, and meets a seller who says he can supply all the ore they want for a price. The ore is close by, Skeletor steps in, and he reveals that the shipment was a trap. It goes against him, the ore is carried home, and the scientists unveil an invention that turns a single nugget into enough heat for a great deal of Primus. Then Skeletor's call arrives: the ore is fake, and the real item is for sale at the price of total surrender.

The second half turns to the sun itself. Someone proposes that a starship might break the shell with its lasers if it can get past the web of rings the suns have made, a place no one has attempted to cross because anyone caught in it would be pulled into the suns and destroyed; a voice on Primus quips that at least it will be warm. Crita's fighters hound the ship into an asteroid field, it gets through the rings and fires, and then it is trapped, the temperature climbing, until a voice tells He-Man that the sunlight is not his enemy and that he should use it as a guide. Next we hear the sunshine is back, with He-Man crediting three brave friends.

The weakness is how quickly the spectacle is resolved. The lasers fire, the ship is stuck, a line of advice arrives and the sunshine is back, and the dialogue does not say how the one led to the other. A 22-minute slot has to fit a fake-ore trap and a sun rescue into the same running time, and the second suffers.

Verdict: a brisk, witty winter adventure, strongest in its villains' bickering and its early clue about the audio ear, and weaker once the suns take over. It closes where the early clue pointed, on the Primans' discovery that Skeletor has been monitoring every word they say, the right note to leave before the bike-helmet tip.

1. Voice cast: Campbell Lane voices both Skeletor and Sagitar here, per the He-Man wiki cast list.
2. Voice cast: Don Brown plays both Hydron and Gepple, and Venus Terzo plays Crita and the Sorceress, according to the He-Man wiki cast list.
3. Continuity: The He-Man wiki plot summary says Crita installed a new Intergalactic Audio Ear on the Mutant Mothership, which is how Skeletor overhears the Primans' plans.