When the Daily Planet team's trip to China gets disrupted by a number of attacks, Lois is suspicious, especially given the involvement of Lex Luthor. Soon the group discovers Luthor's plot du jour: he wanted to trick Superman into excavating a treasure room under the Great Wall by trapping the others in a cave-in. Unfortunately, Luthor hasn't considered one important thing — the curse on the treasure and its ferocious guardian, a magical dragon.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Clingy MacGuffin: The dragon's tooth sticks to Luthor's hand after he removes it from the statue. The villain lampshades this to try to get out of returning it, saying that he couldn't even if he wanted. However, it turns out that the one way to unstick it is to put it back in the dragon's mouth.
- Comically Missing the Point: Invoked by Clark to protect his secret. After he complains about his Disco Mozart tapes ending up on the bottom of the bay during the initial attack, Lois asks if he realized why someone blew up the shipyard. Clark answers that clearly, someone in China hates Mozart.
- Damsel out of Distress: Lois attacks the saboteur with her purse. He's already done some severe damage, and she does lose her grip eventually. However, she does succeed in stopping him.
- Death by Materialism: Played With. Luthor refuses to put the dragon's tooth back when Mrs. Nikua begs him to do so before the dragon comes to life, saying that it's worth a fortune. He keeps refusing even as the dragon rampages, instead trying to flee. Superman puts a stop to it by grabbing him, giving him no choice but to restore the tooth to prevent being turned to stone. Luthor does.
- Enemy Mine: Invoked by Superman, who grabs Lex and takes him up close to the dragon to restore the tooth. As he points out, this gives Lex two options: either he cooperates with Supes to stop the rampage or he becomes a victim of it. Luthor lampshades this and agrees to a temporary truce.
- Faint in Shock: Clark pretends to faint when a saboteur comes close to sawing through the cable while he and the others are riding the lift. This causes Lois to leave to handle the problem herself, allowing Clark to disappear and reappear as Superman to solve the situation.
- The Glomp: Jimmy tackles Clark when he reappears after apparently being turned to stone and falling into a lake.
- No One Gets Left Behind:
- Clark falls into the bay during the beginning attack at the docks. When Jimmy tries to tell Lois they need to escape before the spreading catastrophe kills them, she insists they're not leaving Clark.
- Later, Jimmy and Lois collaborate to carry "Clark"'s statue with them as they try to find Luthor.
- Pun-Based Title: The title refers to the idiom "by the skin of one's teeth", meaning "barely", and concerns a magical dragon's tooth that awakens the Dragon King if removed.
- Skewed Priorities: A bombing at the docks knocks Clark into the water and almost kills the Planet's other reporters in the ensuing fire. What does Clark "try" to call Superman about when he crawls out of the bay? His Disco Mozart tapes, which fell out of his suitcase into the water in the commotion.
- Taken for Granite: The team's local liason says that taking the treasure was supposed to turn thieves to stone. It turns out that the Dragon King can fire eye-beams that turn whatever he's looking at to stone, as demonstrated on Lois' purse and one of Superman's legs. Superman also exploits this by carving a statue of Clark while he's "separated" from the others and claiming he was turned to stone, hence protecting his secret.
