10 Star Trek Episodes That Seriously Deserve A Second Chance
5. How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth
This is an episode that remained almost the same from pitch to release, with minor notes from Gene Roddenberry. It was actually D.C. Fontana who put writers Russell Bates and David Wise on the task of writing about Native American legends. Bates was a Kiowa Native American, something that interested Fontana greatly.
Kukulkan is a deity from Mayan culture, but the script had deliberate jibes toward revisionist history. Particularly, Bates said, toward Europeans. He noted that the grand claims made by settlers - that there was no way that Native Americans could have made the great cities and pyramids without external help - allowed him to get a dig in in this episode.
Kukulkan is revealed to have visited Earth of the past, spending hundreds of years there, teaching all of the peoples how to build their great marvels. This, Bates joked, was his revenge. If the Native Americans couldn't have done it alone, then no one could have!
The episode is easily one of the strongest stories of the Animated Series, with beautiful designs from Filmation, along with the inclusion of Walking Bear - a Native American officer serving in Starfleet.