Icebreak

Icebreak is an episode of Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars.

Audio

Icebreak on Megaphone (starting at 0:00)

Cast

WorkJuice Players

• Sparks Nevada - Marc Evan Jackson
• Croach the Tracker - Mark Gagliardi
• Caylum, robot outlaw, martian - Paul F. Tompkins
• Folksy Hal, robot outlaw, Barlok the Wise - Hal Lublin

Guest Stars

• The Widow Johnson, robot outlaw, martian - Shannon Woodward
• John Steelhands, martian - Brendon Small
• Doctor Prime - Jared Logan

Plot

Sparks Nevada is strolling through town, greeting residents, including Wendy "The Widow" Johnson. She and Caylum discuss how Sparks rounded up all the robot outlaws on Mars and froze them in the icecaps to the north. He also sent the martians to the outer plains and brokered a tenuous peace between the tribe and the human settlers. Johnson and Caylum discuss how they are still irrationally afraid of the martians and are glad they are resettled far away despite the fact that it ratchets up the tension. Caylum then asks Wendy to the hootenanny happening that night, and decide that Sparks will spend the evening watching The Baby Johnson, though Sparks wished to take Wendy to the event.

Later, Sparks receives an alert on his badge alarm, that the icecap prison has been compromised. Both the badge and Mercury are brought to Sparks by Dr. Prime. Sparks rides to the icecap prison, where the walls are melting and the robot prisoners escaping, due to John Steelhands, the gentleman thief.

Steelhands explains to another robot that he had purchased a small satellite programmed to fire a laser at the polar prison to free all the outlaws. He tries to keep the other outlaws from leaving to help him enact a plan to defeat Sparks Nevada, but they leave anyway, and Steelhands tries to leave as well, but is too late and is captured by Nevada. Steelhands notes that if the last wall of prison, acting as a dam to all the melted icewater behind it, should burst, would cause a flood that would wipe out the martian settlement, Caylum's mega apple super orchard and town, all in the flood's path.

Sparks shoots Steelhands to quiet him, and attempts to set his laser pistol to freeze mode, but is waylaid by the voice commands on his pistol. He hops on Mercury and uses another device Dr. Prime gave him attached to his lasso to capture the flood into the device-generated wormhole.

Sparks then rides into the martian settlement, where Barlok the Wise, leader of the tribe, thanks him and places the tribe under onus to Sparks. They present to him Croach the Tracker, and depart. Croach explains to Sparks that he bears the unpleasant onus, and will lessen it by tracking Sparks' metal enemies. Sparks mispronounces Croach's name and refuses his help.

The device on Sparks' lasso begins to speak, and Croach turns the volume down as he describes the magnitude of his senses and how onus works. Sparks allows Croach to track down the robots that were broken out the ice prison and increases Croach's onus by being nice to him.

Notes

• This episode was originally performed on March 5, 2010 at the first Workjuice performance at Largo, but the recording was lost.
• Icebreak and Flood at First Sight both tell the origin story of Sparks meeting Croach, however, the exact circumstances around these events are slightly changed in each.
• Instead of "When last we left our hero" as the introduction to the episode, Folksy Hal instead says "When first we meet our hero", as this is intended to be the first podcast episode.
• The episode features a new in-studio recording of the theme song, performed by Craig Cackowski.
• This is the first and only time that town is named in podcast canon -- Hope's Eye.
• Doctor Prime is likely a Science Being.

Continuity

• The previous episode is Cosmic Rotation (FTV #6).
• This is the first segment in Sparks Nevada Universe Continuity performed during the show's run at Largo. The next canonical episode is either the Original Graphic Novel or The Sad, Sad Song of Widow Johnson, Part Four (SNMOM #4).
• The next Sparks Nevada episode is The Space Train Robbery, also part of I'm...From Earth (TC #6).

Production

This episode was recorded in studio and released on April 29, 2019.

• Narrator: Hal Lublin
• Writers: Ben Acker & Ben Blacker
• Musical Themes and Arrangements: Paul and Storm
• Vocals: John Roderick & Paul Sabourin
• Produced, recorded, and engineered by Forever Dog
• Created by Ben Acker & Ben Blacker