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In Star Trek The Original Series, there was one episode in which Dr. McCoy (??) called Mr. Spock a "half-caste" or a "half-breed". I don't remember which episode it was, and googling "Memory Alpha, Mr. Spock, half-caste" would require that I read the entire scripts of several episodes, of which This Side of Paradise looks the most promising.

I am more interested in the viewer reaction, if any, to this term which today would be regarded as highly offensive. I saw The Original Series when it first aired (1966) and even then I was startled by the use of this term.

It would be a bonus to know in what episode this occurred, but the question is about the viewer reaction, or lack or reaction, to the use of this term. If there was no reaction, could the context have made the term excusable?

Addendum In reading the link provided by @Valorum, it was Kirk and Scotty who called Spock a half-breed, not McCoy, and, from the short excerpts in the link, it seems that they were not in their right minds when they did.

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    Half-breed is repeatedly used; scriptsearch.dxdy.name/…
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 21:36
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    Half-caste is not used at all
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 21:36
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    Reluctant to make this an answer, as it's a bit fuzzy: I have never heard that anyone watching in the 1960s or even early reruns in the '70s ever found McCoy's casual racism odd or even noteworthy..because it was against someone who wasn't fully human. Even as recently as Star Trek Beyond, McCoy's casual insults are somehow just shrugged off, despite the fact that, in a modern workplace, they certainly would constitute Hostile Working Environment territory. It's harder and harder to reconcile McCoy's character, and others' tolerance of his behaviour as time goes on.
    – Michael Scott Shappe
    Commented Sep 19, 2017 at 22:41
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    McCoy called him a 'green-blooded hobgoblin' once
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 2:20
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    @DisturbedNeo: To extend that, there is a difference between saying racist things and doing racist things. At the time of the 50's and 60's, people recognized that acting in such a manner is not acceptable (WWII likely drove the point home), but statements were still not considered a faux-pas. This is consistent with McCoy in the show, who is allowed to verbally point out Spock's different features, but never really abuses Spock. His anger stems from his lack of understanding, he is emotional (and essentially the human "real McCoy"), Spock's logic doesn't make sense to McCoy's feelings.
    – Flater
    Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 14:36

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Writing this as an answer, as per the suggestion of other commenters. Credit to @DisturbedNeo too, as my comment was in response to his:

Also, in the 50's and 60's, racism was pretty commonplace across the United States, so it's not surprising that it was written into the show, despite the fact that the Federation is supposed to be this ideal future for Humankind that would have abolished discrimination towards any one trait.

To extend that, there is a difference between saying racist things and doing racist things.
At the time of the 50's and 60's, people recognized that acting in such a manner is not acceptable (WWII likely drove the point home), but statements were still not considered a faux-pas.

Pointing out that someone is from a different race was not considered racist at the time (it is, after all, objectively correct).
At the time, people were only starting to learn that segregating or physically attacking people from a different race was not the right thing to do, they weren't yet at the stage where they considered (objectively true) statements to be equally wrong.

This is consistent with McCoy in the show, who is allowed to verbally point out Spock's different features, but never really abuses Spock. We (in 2017) read that abuse from McCoy's statements because we look at it with our modern day morals, but at the time of recording, no one thought of it as an abusive statement.

McCoy's anger stems from his lack of understanding, he is emotional (and essentially the human "real McCoy"), Spock's logic doesn't make sense to McCoy's feelings.
From his interaction with humans (e.g. Kirk, who he likes), you can see that McCoy isn't the most upbeat of characters to begin with. Combined with his frustration about failing to understand Spock (his polar opposite), that explains his behavior towards Spock without necessarily including racism or abuse.

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    "they weren't yet at the stage where they considered (objectively true) statements to be equally wrong." Science is officially dead.
    – RonJohn
    Commented Jun 2, 2021 at 5:04
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    @RonJohn: We're talking interpersonal interaction here, not empiricism. As much at it is disapproved of today, McCoy's statement is factually correct. Spock does have pointy ears. Spock is a person of mixed race (species, even). By today's standards, what McCoy said was wrong, but it wasn't factually incorrect. That's a really important distinction to make. It's not an excuse, but it is precisely why the original showrunners saw no issue with McCoy's statements. They were definitely unkind, but did not cross what was considered the line of good taste at the time.
    – Flater
    Commented Jun 2, 2021 at 8:08