A Small Matter of Faith

===Background===
* At this point in the series, the [[Paramount Pictures]] licensing approval for [[comic]]s was being made stricter. As a result, it was not known at the time of this issue's publication that the series would be canceled for retooling.
* One detail of this story that may have proven contentious to the studio was the use of a [[religion|religious]] plot-line, since dealing with belief (and [[God]]) was rare for ''Star Trek''. This also crossed into story territory covered in {{m|TOS|Star Trek V: The Final Frontier}}, which was in production at the time. 
* In both this story and the film, the {{uSS|Enterprise|NCC-1701}} was lured by a transmission, commandeered by a religious zealot with unusual healing abilities and a group of his followers, forced on a pilgrimage, taken through a spacial phenomenon, and [[orbit]]ed a planet with religious significance. After some initial resistance, Kirk and Spock acquiesced to the takeover. On the planet, the zealot discovered a different entity than he expected and was killed during the encounter.
* This story takes place after {{e|TOS|Shore Leave}}, when Barrows was an ''Enterprise'' [[yeoman]], but before {{e|TOS|The Tholian Web}}, when the {{ship|USS|Defiant|NCC-1764}} was subsequently lost.
* This issue was the first time cover artist [[Jerome K. Moore]] inked his own work. ([http://jerome-k-moore.deviantart.com/art/CLASSIC-STAR-TREK-1-41693192 "A Small Matter of Faith"] article at [http://jerome-k-moore.deviantart.com Jerome K. Moore's] blog)
* McCoy stated that his father was a preacher who never forgave him for going into [[medicine]]. A different account stated that [[David Andrew McCoy]] had himself been a doctor, in {{ss|TOS|sub=Strange New Worlds|Bum Radish: Five Spins on a Turquoise Reindeer}}. Leonard's statement that his dying father refused medical treatment somewhat contradicted information from another source that his father's [[pyrrhoneuritis]] was incurable at the time, in {{mn|TOS|The Final Frontier}}.