2.5 — “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”

2.5 — “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”

Plot: While pursuing a suspicious space beacon, the Enterprise encounters an alien being claiming to be the god Kukulcan. Kukulcan appeared to the ancient peoples in the Mayan, Aztec, and Chinese cultures on Earth, in an effort to inspire them to “grow up” to be peaceful. Now, for variety, he is on a return trip to destroy the Earth.

Thoughts: Oy vey. What we have here is a failure to communicate lame rehash of “Who Mourns for Adonais?” in Native American drag, complete with crackpot theories about Peruvian temples being built by aliens. Isn’t that a little offensive? It seems like the South American equivalent of Orientalism. Complete with kooky-sounding made up God name. I suppose reasonable minds can disagree about whether it is offensive, but either way, I find the episode boring.

Let me get this straight. Kukulcan wanted to help Earth, but because he is disappointed Earth never solved his riddles, he now wants to destroy it. He got curious about Earthlings when he saw them on other planets, so he decided to visit Earth–during the time of the Mayans and ancient Egyptians. So the Earthlings he encountered were space-faring cavemen? He has a Holodeck containing projections of fake cities, but hiding behind the fake projections is a real space zoo. Where were the animals when the crew was in the Mayan city?

Reviewing bad episodes is no fun. And this is the worst episode of TAS so far. Strangely enough, the DVD set provides a full-length audio commentary from co-writer David Wise. Wise was 19, and this was his first writing job on television. He says the script was ordered from an outline that had been rejected during the first season. The script was broadcast in just the form it was submitted, with no editing or intercession from former showrunner D.C. Fontana, who had left the series at the end of first season. The animators did nice work, but it seems at this stage that everyone else was phoning it in.

1 out of 5 Capellan power cats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Sharper_Than_a_Serpent%27s_Tooth