How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth

DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth)

I'm not surprised 'TAS' didn't make it beyond a couple of years with stories like this, indoctrinating children into the idea that humanity has progressed beyond the need for God. Of course it's couched in a much safer and less direct message (unlike 'The Magicks of Megas-Tu' which was distinctly overt in its message that the Devil isn't such a bad guy, just misunderstood!), that of an alien being who visited Earth and gave rise to various cultures such as the Mayans and their serpent god, or the Chinese dragon - a mishmash of cultures which this creature thought it was helping, but has now returned in vengeance because humanity is warlike, judged based on… The historical messiness didn't make any sense: if the kinds of things Mayans did was so good why did they practice human sacrifice and that sort of thing? I didn't understand how or at what point this serpent worm (another Satanic connection!), arrived and what effect it had on the cultures it encountered, but then it is only a kiddie cartoon with less than half an hour running time.

It is disturbing that this kind of specifically anti-God story was just included as part of the package, children absorbing it passively and no doubt many parents not even aware of the kind of messaging being presented. But as I hinted, it could also be used to show that false gods of other cultures that never knew the Judaeo-Christian God of the Bible misled people into all sort of things. Except that the idea is this being was supposedly trying to do good for them, its 'children' as it calls humans. But what did it do? As much as I could gather was that it required a perfect recreation of a city to its specifications which has no bearing on morality or behaviour and sounds like slave labour to me! Perhaps if they'd made it clear that this was the ideal way to live at the time, for sanitary needs, water, food and of course some kind of worship culture of this being, but in the episode it's just a riddle to be solved like some puzzle out of 'The Crystal Maze' - just turn the heads of all four snake statues so they all look towards the top of the pyramid and you win!

It reminded me of various Trek ideas, most obviously for the time would be Apollo and the ancient Greek gods that we learned in 'Who Mourns For Adonais?' were actually aliens that stopped off at Earth for a little devotion and worship, then eventually moved on, except for this one guy, Apollo, who couldn't quite bring himself to exit this galaxy because he missed the good old days when people believed in him. In his case he hadn't sent a probe back to Earth to see how things had progressed in order to decide whether to return and exact vengeance for failing him so badly, but it's the same story. Interestingly, you can also see another part of the Q character who took a lot from Trelane in 'TOS,' this seemingly omnipotent being (though clearly not), who puts humanity on trial at the start of 'TNG.' Then there's the Caretaker, a Sporocystian life-form the USS Voyager encountered in its pilot episode that Janeway ends up explaining to it that it's no longer needed by its children any more, the most overt 'we don't need God these days' sentiment expressed in Trek. I prefer it when they remain agnostic rather than come down so heavily on the subject, though of course they can always argue that in these cases they are specific enough and correct that these are false gods, so that they hardly ever actually mention The God in Trek (though I wouldn't be surprised if that changed), so as not to alienate a chunk of their viewership in Western nations.

It comes as more of a jolt in a children's animation than in live action Trek which has the luxury of a bit more time to explain itself and is really for adults, though suitable (for the most part), for the whole family (or used to be, can't say that for the new stuff). It's a shame they were wasting their time with such propaganda rather than trying to do something different that hadn't been done before in Trek, but is interesting from a historian's point of view to see the attitude shifts from 'TOS' to 'TAS' to 'TNG' and beyond as (Western) society has gradually become more and more secular and the pillars of faith and belief have been repeatedly undermined. It's not even that the episode is that entertaining - a mysterious alien probe self-destructed after arriving so the Enterprise goes to investigate only to be trapped in a 'force bubble' (unfortunate connotations with 'Star Wars'). A ship approaches and takes on the guise of a giant snake or dragon, then people get beamed away to some false reality to solve the mystery of the city. And then they get brought into the creature's zoo, which contains a large variety of outlandish, wild and weird alien animals, sadly none of which we know.

Kirk wakes up a Capellan Power Cat (presumably from the planet Capella IV which they visited in 'Friday's Child'), and its natural electrical charges threaten this apparently powerful godlike flying snake creature, showing it's not that powerful after all. Kirk saves it and it's happy ever after, with Kirk making his humanistic speech that seems much more akin to the 'TNG' attitude than 'TOS.' I liked that Spock was pompous enough to mention that aliens visited Vulcan, too, but in their case they left wiser than they came! I wonder when this happened because Vulcans had interstellar travel before the 'enlightenment' Surak brought, since when he changed their society some Vulcans left to become Romulans, so I don't know what was so wise about the Vulcans before that time, they were savage and violent, but after it, it wouldn't have made sense for aliens to visit in order to help inferior beings, since Vulcans weren't confined to their planet and so could have met them anywhere!

There's a rare appearance of a Native American Indian, one of the Comanche tribe, whose name is Mr. Walking-Bear - an interesting addition, especially as you'd think that such tribes would have moved with the times and started calling their people after things other than Earth creatures or situations. Maybe he should have been Mr. Tribble-shuffler, or Mr. Star-walker (Skywalker?), but maybe his parents were particularly traditional! It's fortunate that he happened to be in Mr. Sulu's position at Helm (not so fortunate for George Takei…), since he's the one to recognise the serpent image as being from Mayan legend. The fun thing is that you can tell he's voiced by James Doohan, while sitting next to Lieutenant Arex, also by Doohan, and Scotty calls up to the Bridge, too! Not only that, but Walking-Bear and Scotty are both part of the enforced Landing Party, and the serpent creature is also voiced by Doohan so it was a bonanza for him! I keep avoiding mentioning the creature's name, and that's because we hear at least three different pronunciations: Walking-Bear calls it what sounds like 'Cococan,' to Kirk it's 'Cuklocan' and Spock pronounces it 'Cuklucan'!

All this and Uhura turning pink? Yes, it's true - when the Enterprise is attacked by Coco's ship we see a shot of the Bridge and for some reason she's depicted as pink! There are other little mistakes, too, as I've come to expect with this series, such as McCoy turning the head of a statue but the voice which tells Kirk 'this is the last one, sir' is Walking-Bear's! And Coco's teeth change from white to green as it talks. It was certainly a colourful episode, I'll give it that (and nice to see what I assume was one of McCoy's anterooms in Sickbay), but I could do without the simplistic humanistic pride in how developed 'we' are now, especially in the light of 'Discovery,' 'Picard' and no doubt every other production of the Kurtzman era, throwing doubt on that 'evolved sensibility' and making the denizens of both 23rd and 24th Centuries the same as contemporary viewers. Sorry Gene, your vision didn't work out after all, because more 'Gritty,' 'Realistic' views make more money and less people feel insecure. The cherry on the cake is when they throw in some Shakespeare at the end as if to add some profundity, which is preferable to profanity, but has about as much place in a cartoon. Not to say there shouldn't be Shakespeare in 'TAS,' just that it made no sense - we're thankless children because we turned away a false god? Okay… Here's hoping the last ever episode will be a good one, it would be sad to go out on the quality of this.

*