Trivia / Star Trek S2 E26 "Assignment: Earth"

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: Spock discusses how chaotic the time period is and mentions that, "there will be an important assassination today." Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated six days after the episode aired. Also, the episode's plot involves stopping the U.S. from launching a nuclear weapon into space, which involves plenty of Saturn V Stock Footage. A Saturn V rocket carrying Apollo 6 was launched on the same day that King died.
• Creator Backlash: Teri Garr (Roberta) did not like working on the episode, having later said she experienced various forms of sexual harassment, and is decidedly not a fan of Trek, getting agitated when this episode is brought up in interviews. She's said that she's happy the spin-off never happened because, "otherwise, all I would get would be Star Trek questions for the rest of my natural life—and probably my unnatural life."
• Prop Recycling: The Beta 5 computer contains many components from the M-5 multitronic unit in "The Ultimate Computer".
• What Could Have Been:
  • The episode's nature as a Poorly Disguised Pilot obviously raises the question of what could have been had the series been picked up.
  • It was originally written as a straight pilot. When no one would produce it, it was re-written to include Kirk, Spock, etc. so that it could be produced as a Trek episode. Notably, this required changing Gary Seven's backstory. Originally, he was to be a time-traveler from the future, but that couldn't be reconciled with the Trek universe, so he was changed to being a twentieth-century human raised on an alien planet.
  • The first draft of the Trek version had the Enterprise bridge crew watching an episode of Bonanza on the viewscreen.
  • Star Trek: Voyager was going to have the species that sent Gary Seven to Earth via long-range transporter as a Season One antagonist (they would refuse to send the Voyager crew back to Earth due to their own Prime Directive).