Thursday, November 26, 2009

Don't be Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth

“How Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth.” By Russell Bates and David Wise. Perf. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, and George Takei. Dir. Bill Reed. Star Trek: The Animated Series. Season 2, episode 5. NBC. 5 October 1974. DVD. Paramount, 2006.

Let's avoid the sharpness of serpent's teeth all the time—but particularly on Thanksgiving.

As a reminder and an object lesson, here's a clip from Star Trek: The Animated Series! Animated Kirk begins the clip by saying "Just an old, lonely being who wanted to help others." That's not a direct reference to Lear—it's to some sort of ancient Aztec alien that they've just encountered. But it might actually be one way of reading his character.

In any case, the message is the same. We desire others to be thankful:


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! And keep those serpent's teeth to yourselves!

For more connections between Star Trek and Shakespeare, head to Shakespeare and Star Trek Complete.

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest