Operation Big Freeze

Mon*Star orders an ice storm big enough to freeze the Galaxy of Limbo: no space traffic, no communication and no SilverHawks. While the rest of the galaxy is frozen, the Mob will be free to rob Dollare, take over Automata and turn Bedlama into its capital. Windhammer promises the Planet Master a space blizzard and whips one up from an asteroid.

Quicksilver and Tally-Hawk, out on patrol, trace the storm to that asteroid and find the Mob. Windhammer turns it on them and brings Quicksilver down, and Quicksilver sends Tally-Hawk to tell the Commander that the storm is out of control. Windhammer reports that the space lanes are frozen solid and two scouting SilverHawks with them, and Hardware offers to freeze the rest of the team faster, for a price.

At Hawk Haven a frozen object on a collision course turns out to be Tally-Hawk. The Steel twins thaw him with a hyper laser welder, and Stargazer pushes the weakened bird for Quicksilver's position until he manages part of it, 1715 Alpha Sector, leaving the Copper Kidd to work out the rest. Then Hardware arrives with an ice gun, freezes the entry, the monitors and the main antenna, and tells Windhammer he is safe to ice over the rest of the galaxy.

The Steel twins break the team out, and the Mirage heads into the storm, with the SilverHawks flying out into it. Back at Hawk Haven, Stargazer, unable to raise a single SilverHawk, sends Tally-Hawk out again to find Quicksilver. The bird finds him, and Quicksilver leads the team to stop the storm at its source, sending Bluegrass round the back to outflank the Mob, whose members flee for Brim*Star. The galaxy thaws, the rescue is credited to a little help from a friend, and Tally-Hawk, still half frozen, is sent to rest.

The Silverhawks try to reverse Mon*star's galactic ice storm, which is threatening to ice over the entire Limbo Galaxy.

Commander Stargazer: "Nonsense. Come on, Tally-Hawk. You can do it."

"This is a storm for the space books, Tally-Hawk, and it seems to be coming from that asteroid."

"I think he's gonna be a difficult patient."

The storm in "Operation Big Freeze" takes out every radio in the galaxy, and the message gets through anyway, carried by the one SilverHawk who never needed a radio, Tally-Hawk! Jeri Craden's script is a disaster story, with the Mob icing the space lanes to cut off traffic, communication and the SilverHawks, and the plan works almost everywhere: Hawk Haven's entry is frozen, its main antenna iced, and Stargazer ends up at a console with only Tally-Hawk for company, unable to raise a single SilverHawk. Windhammer promises the Planet Master a space blizzard and then whips one up out of an asteroid.

Tally-Hawk is the one line of communication the storm cannot cut. Quicksilver, going down, sends him back to the Commander rather than asking to be saved, and the bird arrives at Hawk Haven frozen solid, picked up on the scanners as an unidentified object on a collision course. The thawing scene that follows is the best thing in the episode: the Steel twins work on him with a hyper laser welder, one warning "Slow down, sis. His pulse just jumped," and the other soothing "Easy, boy. Easy. It's going to be all right." The twins talk to him the way they would talk to a wounded teammate, and the scene is played straight.[1]

Stargazer's part in the scene is the sharpest piece of characterisation. Told the patient is still too weak, he answers "Nonsense. Come on, Tally-Hawk. You can do it," and the bird manages half a set of coordinates before he gives out. Stargazer is not wrong to push, since Quicksilver is freezing somewhere in Alpha Sector, but he is not entirely right either. The script then hands the Copper Kidd the job of working out the rest of the coordinates. The Kidd never says a word, and the rescue still depends on him.[2]

The weakness is Hardware. His side deal with Mon*Star, to freeze the rest of the SilverHawks for a price, repeats the fee-for-service joke from Race Against Time and then never pays off, and his ice gun gives us a second freeze on top of the first. The result is a middle act where two villains do the same thing in turn, while the storm itself, which should be the threat, becomes background. The likely reason is the running time. A disaster story needs a villain on Hawk Haven's doorstep to raise the stakes quickly, and Hardware was the one to hand.[3]

Stargazer sends Tally-Hawk out a second time to find Quicksilver, and this time the bird finds him. Once Quicksilver is back, the Mob does not last long, with Bluegrass outflanking them to the sound of what he calls "these crazy sounds" and the rest of the villains heading for Brim*Star. The coda credits the thaw to "a little help from my friend", the friend is named as Tally-Hawk, and the last word is the prediction that he will be "a difficult patient." This is Tally-Hawk's episode, and he earns his rest.

1 ^ The transcript does not name who speaks either line over the welder, but "sis" places Steelwill and Steelheart at the table, and Steelheart calls her brother "Will" later in the episode.

2 ^ The coordinates Tally-Hawk manages are "1715 Alpha Sector". The Kidd works out the rest offscreen.

3 ^ The teaser promises that Hawk Haven is turned into an ice-encrusted prison. In the episode it is Hardware's ice gun that does it, not the blizzard.

1. The storm is traced to an asteroid, and Mon*Star is addressed throughout as "Planet Master".
2. The Mob's stated aims while Limbo is frozen are to rob Dollare, take over Automata and make Bedlama its capital.
3. The Steel twins thaw Tally-Hawk with a hyper laser welder; Steelwill calls his twin "sis" and she calls him "Will".
4. Tally-Hawk gives Quicksilver's position as 1715 Alpha Sector, and the Copper Kidd is left to work out the rest of the coordinates.
5. Hardware's ice gun freezes Hawk Haven's entry and its main antenna and shuts down its closed-circuit monitors.
6. Hardware offers to freeze the SilverHawks for a price, the same fee-for-service arrangement Timestopper strikes in Race Against Time.
7. Quicksilver sends Bluegrass round the back to outflank the Mob with "Bluegrass, run around the back and outflank them!", and Bluegrass answers "Aye aye, Skipper."
8. Bluegrass's closing quiz is on constellations: a mighty hunter, the lion Leo and the winged horse Pegasus. The Copper Kidd gets all of them right.

Appearance lists compiled from the episode articles on the ThunderCats wiki, checked against this site's encyclopedia. Names we have no entry for are shown without a link rather than left out.