6. Jack Lord as Captain James T. Kirk
Following The Cage, Jeffrey Hunter declined to reprise the role of Captain Christopher Pike for the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before. This ended up being extremely beneficial for the franchise overall, as Hunter died in 1969 however it is unclear whether or not an explosion on a film set in Spain caused a skull fracture which resulted in a cerebral haemorrhage on his return to the United States. Needless to say if he had kept the role and still died, then it would have caused major problems in re-launching the show as a movie franchise. Plus everyone loves Shatner. Despite all this love, William Shatner was not the primary choice of Gene Roddenberry to replace Hunter as the Captain of the Enterprise. In was in fact Jack Lord, who at the time had only predominantly done westerns on both the small and big screen and also appeared as Felix Leiter in Dr. No, the first James Bond mainstream film. Perhaps this idea of taking a western star to appear in his "Wagon Train to the stars" series was later reused to hire DeForest Kelly as Doctor McCoy from the first non-pilot episode onwards. Lord agreed to appear, and was in the process of negotiating the terms of his contract. It was then Lord's greed that opened the door for Shatner as Lord wanted 50% ownership of the Star Trek brand. This was about thirty years prior to percentage deals for stars become commonplace, and a good fifteen years before Alec Guinness came up with a similar idea for Star Wars. What is unusual is the percentage he wanted a whole half of the franchise. Perhaps he thought it had legs, or perhaps he didn't want to be seen to turn down a role and decided to put in an unreasonable request so that they would push him out. Roddenberry declined the contract point and he wasn't hired. In walked William Shatner and the rest is history. Lord went on to appear in 281 episodes of Hawaii Five-O. So perhaps he made the better choice for the 1960's, but with the exception of that one show, his career pretty much ended in 1969. This must have been due in part to the decline of westerns, but perhaps he got a really good contract on the series and simply never needed to work again. Shatner must have got the better deal overall after all, while Hawaii Five-O is a big show it doesn't have the fan base historically and in a hundred years I'd bet that more people will remember William Shatner than Jack Lord.