Trivia / Star Trek S3 E15 "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"

• Creator's Favorite Episode: Following his tenure on the show, producer Fred Freiberger stated that this was one of the episodes that he was the most proud of working on.
• Reality Subtext: The aesop about the destructive futility of racial hatred came shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
• Science Marches On: Spock rightly points out that "evolution is man evolving from apes" is a grossly misleading and deliberate mischaracterization—but describes evolution as life forms evolving from "lower" to "advanced" stages. When the episode was filmed, this was the generally-accepted public understanding often taught in schools and still had a lot of hold in scientific circles proper and in academia. In the decades after the show's airing, evolution came to be understood as life forms changing over time to suit their environment. While they usually become more complex than their ancestors, they do sometimes become less complex if losing a trait 1. makes them more successful in their environment or 2. doesn't hurt them either way.^note This is why "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean survival of the strongest or healthiest: "fit" means fitting to a given environment and climate.
• Similarly Named Works: Wouldn't be the only episode of a show from from the Sixties original finale season that has the title of a famous phrase...
• Working Title: Down from Heaven, Down from Heaven, Up from Above.