Pike first appeared as the main character of the original unaired pilot episode for Star Trek: The Original Series, "The Cage", portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter. When this pilot was rejected, Hunter withdrew from the series, and the character of Pike was replaced with Kirk.
The real-world reason for William Shatner replacing Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Kirk was due to network dissatisfaction with Star Trek's pilot, which led to recasting the Captain role.
As far as the story goes, in the original canon, Captain Pike ended up on Talos, “unfettered by his natural body”. That was the end of the episode The Menagerie. In the rebooted universe Pike was killed during a terrorist attack on Star Fleet (that was in Into Darkness).
NBC reportedly called the pilot "too cerebral", "too intellectual", and "too slow" with "not enough action". Rather than rejecting the series outright, though, the network commissioned a second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which led to an order for the series for fall 1966.
Pike commanded the Enterprise for at least 11 years, during which time Spock served as his science officer. In the mid-2260s, he was promoted to fleet captain and relinquished command of the Enterprise to James T. Kirk.
Captain Pike’s Story So Far: Timeline to Tragedy | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Why did they get rid of pike in the original Star Trek?
Pike first appeared as the main character of the original unaired pilot episode for Star Trek: The Original Series, "The Cage", portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter. When this pilot was rejected, Hunter withdrew from the series, and the character of Pike was replaced with Kirk.
UPN canceled Star Trek: Enterprise due to low ratings and a lack of network support for the series. Enterprise season 4 involved a creative shift with Manny Coto taking over as showrunner, but it couldn't save the series from cancelation.
YES [there was camaraderie on set of Star Trek]. Except for one, who was a prima donna. But the rest of us shared a great camaraderie. One of the gifts from Star Trek was not just longevity but colleagues that became lasting friends.
Why was Leonard Nimoy limping in the Star Trek pilot?
As Leonard Nimoy pointed out over the years, this limp wasn't a real injury, rather, it was an artistic choice, saying “[Star Trek creator] Gene Roddenberry told me to limp.”
The former admiral felt that Starfleet no longer espoused the morals that once compelled him to enlist once the Federation later banned the use of all synthetic lifeforms and abandoned its mission to safely evacuate Romulans from Romulus.
At this point however, Kirk is a lieutenant assigned to the Farragut, and was not part of Pike's bridge crew. As Kirk succeeds Pike as captain of the Enterprise, he would not be a predecessor of Pike, but a successor.
Pike was shot in the chest, and Spock carried him to safety. As Pike lay dying, Spock attempted a mind meld to comfort him, but Pike suddenly died. Kirk, after disabling Khan's vehicle, returned to find that Pike was dead. The incident left Kirk consumed by grief and anger.
As Spock explained to Kirk in Star Trek: TOS, his union with T'Pring was "less than a marriage but more than a bethrothal." Indeed, Spock was meant to finally undergo the koon-ut-kal-if-fee marriage ritual with T'Pring in "Amok Time" before she invoked her right to have Spock fight to the death for her.
Hunter declined to appear in a second Star Trek pilot requested by NBC in 1965 in order to concentrate on film roles. He told the press, "I was asked to do it, but had I accepted, I would have been tied up much longer than I care to be.
Captain James T. Kirk was originally played by William Shatner. Shatner played the first (and arguably most iconic) captain of the Enterprise for for all three seasons of "The Original Series" ("TOS") which aired from 1966 to 1969, before getting canceled.
For decades, Star Trek fans have wondered about the hidden years on the U.S.S. Enterprise before Captain Kirk. In “The Menagerie Part 1,” Spock said he'd served with Captain Pike for “11 years, four months, and five days,” and in Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, we finally saw some of that!
In case you were wondering, Spock's hair was no wig. Nimoy had to rock the bowl cut in everyday life, too, while in production. We love his living room art. See, we didn't need cellphones to record our vocal notes.
TOS episodes "The Empath," "Whom Gods Destroy," "Plato's Stepchildren," and "Miri" were all banned. Although TNG's "Conspiracy" may be the most well-known episode to have been banned, this kind of censoring wasn't new to Star Trek.
Who is the only person to have ever had a cameo in a Star Trek TV episode as themself?
Stephen Hawking - Scientist, who played a holodeck version of himself on the Next Generation episode "Descent" (thus becoming the only person in a Star Trek episode or film credited as "Himself").
For many of those years, there was more than one Trek show airing, not to mention movies regularly hitting the silver screen. This overload of content created franchise fatigue; John Billingsley even cited this fatigue as a reason when asked why Enterprise failed.
While on NBC, Star Trek's Nielsen ratings were low and the network canceled it after three seasons and 79 episodes. In the United Kingdom the series was not broadcast until July 12, 1969, coinciding with the Apollo 11 mission to land the first humans on the Moon.
