Star Trek: 10 Biggest Historical Events That Never Happened

The Brush Wars, introduced in A Private Little War, officially never actually happened. They are discussed in the abstract by Kirk and McCoy, with the latter lamenting the years that they ruined. Their legacy was so unpopular that, despite the wars themselves being confined to Asia, riots broke out worldwide. In Future's End, the Santa Monica riot of 1967 was inspired by the Brush Wars.

Though never directly confirmed on-screen, the Brush Wars were a direct analogy for the Vietnam War. In the context of Kirk's actions on Neural, this once again saw the Federation serving as a stand-in for the U.S. In this case - arming the locals to stand a chance against their Klingon-backed rivals - U.S. Foreign Policy, chiefly their presence in Vietnam, was Gene Roddenberry's 'morality play' of the week.

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield offered another analogy to Vietnam, when Lokai asks the Enterprise crew how they would feel if their brothers or sisters were sent off to a foreign war.

Dr. McCoy, the stern but kind Southern gentleman, is the one to describe the hell that the Brush Wars wrought on Earth. By the episode's airing in 1967, he represented those audience members who wanted the real-world conflict to end.