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"How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" Full Reaction! - Star Trek: The Animated Series Season 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-04-07 18:00:08
Imported:
2026-06
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Follow along with me using your own copy of the episode!

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"How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" Full Reaction! - Star Trek: The Animated Series Season 2

Comments

Greg

Once again Bunny I agree with most of your thoughts. I think this is a solid episode -- nothing original, but entertaining for what it is, and sits about average for me. I also agree I don't think TAS has any really 'bad' episodes, the lowest mark I'd give some episodes is 'meh' where I can take it or leave it and not care either way. I heard Kirk at the end say that asian arch was actually Chinese. Besides that one, the Egyptian stuff, and the Aztec/Maya stuff, I didn't reconize anything else. Digging into this episode, I discovered the one of the two writers for this episode was Native American, so that explains why there was a Native American character on the bridge. I like his inclusion as being another nod toward the 'diversity' that Star Trek has always pushed for, although I wish he had more screen time then this one episode. The name of this episode, as mentioned, actually comes from King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4. "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" really drives home how this ancient alien felt -- he tried to help and raise the people of various worlds including Earth but none of them 'need' him anymore, and being the last of his kind, I'm sure he feels very lonely, and the anger he feels really is about not having a purpose. Interesting facts about this episode, taken from Wikipedia: The episode had joint writers. Russel Bates knew the series' story editor, D. C. Fontana, through Star Trek: The Original Series producer Gene L. Coon, under whom Bates had apprenticed. Fontana told Bates about The Animated Series, asking him to try writing something for it. Bates did pitch several stories for the show's first season, but all of them were rejected. Bates met David Wise at the Clarion Science Fiction Writer's Workshop. Wise suggested that after the workshop was over they collaborate to try to sell a story for Star Trek. Bates was a Kiowa, and the story incorporated Native American elements. This was David Wise's first writing credit. He went on to have a long career writing episodes for shows such as Transformers, TMNT, Batman: The Animated Series, and He-Man. He sadly passed away in 2020 due to lung cancer. This episode won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Entertainment Children's Series in 1975. This made it the first Star Trek episode to win an Emmy award. Finally, since we're almost done with TAS, I feel this is as good time as any to talk about this. I'm sure the thought must have crossed your mind at some point -- "Do we ever see or hear about any of this stuff again?" For a long time, TAS was not considered canon. There was a deal made between Roddenberry and the production staff at Star Trek and Paramont during the first season of The Next Generation (1987-1988) about who had rights to what and what was to be considered canon vs non canon. Part of that deal meant that nothing from the cartoon would be considered 'official' in terms of Star Trek. However, many years later, once Roddenberry had passed away and the Star Trek franchise was in new hands, writers started to dip into TAS to take ideas and concepts from it and use it in their shows, starting with Deep Space Nine and going forward from there, and since THOSE shows were canon, they managed to kind of 'backdoor' stuff. Nowadays, a LOT of stuff from TAS is considered canon, including the 'first Captain' of the Enterprise NCC-1701, whose name is given in the next (and very last) episode of TAS. While OFFICIALLY Paramount still says TAS is not canon, so much has been taken from TAS now and used in later shows and movies the whole thing might as well be. It's kind of murky, but I hope that explanation makes sense.

JoeyVettes

I love shatners pronunciation of kukle khan. He keeps saying kuk le khan. Lol too funny....

William Terry

I agree this has a frequently used theme, ancient aliens and how the humans react to them now that they have crossed the warp drive threshold. More kid friendly than TOS as at least the alien doesn't die in the end like Apollo. I also agree that Doohan's work on TAS is solid and for me elevated this to the fourth season, IMHO, of ST:TOS. I'm also pleasantly surprised by the artwork. Often I have gone back to the sixties cartoons such as Johnny Quest or Speed Racer and have found them lacking in original ideas as far as looks but TAS has never had that problem. I think the meso American pyramids were built exclusively by the Mayans. The current view on who built the pyramids is they had a core group of expert contractors who hired temporary workers for particular tasks but did not keep them mobilized for the entire project. TAS seeks to have gotten input from fairly new sci-fi stories as I get some Matrix vibes from the story. Instead of having them running around with Vina in The Cage, the whole thing is AI. Thanks bunny it's been a lot of fun! Can't wait to see what's happening next but I'll be watching!

Lee

There's an excellent reason for this episode feeling very similar to TOS's recurring "omnipotent being meets Enterprise crew" premise. As Greg mentioned earlier (but not as early as me -- check the comments on "One of Our Planets Is Missing"), Russell Bates was recommended to Dorothy Fontana by none other than Gene Coon, who passed away only a few months before the premiere of the animated series. Bates wanted to honor Coon's memory and so used "Who Mourns for Adonais?" as a template, as that was one of his favorite Coon-written episodes. (This information was sourced from Memory Alpha, whose article on the episode includes a highly detailed account of how it was made. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/How_Sharper_Than_a_Serpent's_Tooth_(episode)#Title,_story,_and_script)

Matthew Graves (Graviton)

Yeah, not much to add on this one, since it is such a retread. Nothing bad about it, just nothing really new thematically or plot-wise. I'd say the art is the highlight hear, as the alien designs (especially Kukulkan) are cool looking and the backgrounds have all that neat architectural stuff going on.

bunnytails

Ooh! Yes, thanks for that explanation!

Trilogian

I don’t consider Next Gen or subsequent Trek “canon”, it contradicts too much of TOS for me. Not that I would criticize TNG fans, it’s their thing. Some even prefer it to TOS (they are, of course, insane). Serpent’s Tooth is absolutely retreading some old ground, but I’d still love to have an original animation cell from it!

Chad Woodward

This was the only Star Trek episode ever to win an Emmy

Carlos Stevens

Bunny... You do know that the aliens from Megas 2 were same aliens in Cat's Paw....don't you???

Carlos Stevens

There is only one other Native American character in the Star Trek universe that I can think of. I will not utter his name because it will be a long journey until you see him Bunny. But... he was a VERY significant character. Indeed, he was among my top 10 favorite characters.

MntrTodd

Ensign Walking Bear appears played by a life actor in the Star Trek New Voyages episode "The Mind Sifter."

Timothy Bennett

If you visit Cancun, there's a shopping area names Kukulkan, and Cancun is somewhat near ancient Mayan ruins