Michele Erica Green, writing for TrekNation in March 2006, said she thought that the episode would have been dated, but found it was "as funny as ever." She thought that Scotty's lines were "unforgettable" and the scenes between McCoy and Spock were "priceless". Eugene Myers and Torie Atkinson reviewed the episode for Tor.com in April 2010. They described it as "easily the most celebrated episode of the entire Original Series (if not the whole franchise)". They went on to describe it as a "perfect episode", and both gave it maximum scores of six out of six.
