How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth

Stardate: 6063.4 - The Enterprise is captured by a highly advanced starship piloted by Kulkukan, an ancient astronaut who visited Earth centuries before and was worshiped as a god. Kulkukan beams Kirk, McCoy, Scott, and Ensign Walking Bear aboard his vessel. There they find themselves in a city constructed in styles reminiscent of many ancient Terran cultures. While Spock attempts to free the Enterprise from Kulkukan's energy field, Kirk discovers the purpose of the city and frees the interplanetary specimens Kulkukan gathered during his travels. Concluding that these humans do not intend to worship him, Kulkukan leaves. Airdate: 10.05.74

Information Contributed by Russell Bates

'How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth' originally was called 'The Thunderbird'. Dawson Walkingbear was of my tribe, the Kiowa. In work, we opted for the more familiar Mayan legends of the winged serpent, Kukulkan. The Thunderbird is the Plains version of the same spirit, something that roared and flew with fire and thunder. As well, Marc Richards at Filmation (story editor after Dorothy Fontana) felt that 'Kiowa' wasn't as well known for audience purposes. I then changed Walkingbear to a Comanche because they are our allies. The surname stayed the same, that of one of my maternal uncles; 'Dawson' came from a map of Alaska. The title comes from a line in 'King Lear' and I accidentally ran across it in a paperback of reprints from The National Lampoon. (No joke!) I regretted losing one particular speech: when Kukulkan's multifaceted city seems to spring from the very air, Scott says, 'I'd swear I was sober, but now I'm not so sure!' In character but Marc Richards said there could be no drinking references in a 'kiddie show'. *sigh* In an interview in a Platinum issue of STARLOG, my erstwhile co-writer, David Wise, claimed that a slug line for Uhura, 'Pointy-eared fool!', made it all the way to the shooting script and that we caught it only as it was about to be recorded on tape. Nope. Not true in even the least iota. First, it would mean that my widely-renowned command of errata and detail had failed, which it did not; and second, the line therefore would have appeared in the storyboard, which it does not. Obviously apocryphal... And the storyboard was accomplished by Hal Sutherland, the same man who had done the ones for the first year. He had retired to Seattle but didn't want the continuity to change. Thus, though uncredited, he really was the 'director'. He especially liked the script, putting happy faces and the phrase 'wee beasties' in the margins every chance he got. Certainly not known is that Filmation had finished 'Journey Back To Oz' but the Japanese animators still were under contract to be on premises. They came to work but had no work, merely sitting together and eating rice and telling Japanese jokes. So, Lou Scheimer put them to work on the last two episodes of the Animated STAR TREK. That's why the two show up much better than all the others, being done in hard acrylics and with Japanese flair that later was to become known as 'anime'. As well, there are five brief 'full-animation' sequences in 'Serpent's Tooth', as compared with the usual 'TV animation' sequences. In the second season, The Animated STAR TREK unexpectedly was nominated for a daytime Emmy in Children's Programming. Filmation immediately sent the blue-ribbon panel 'Serpent's Tooth' and ONLY 'Serpent's Tooth' for credential purposes. There was hubbub all over the place because, though they had been around maybe 25 years in 1975, it was their first nomination EVER! Of course, they won and it made my name gold for a while, and there is a story that goes with this that only I can tell...