8 TV Shows Saved By Ridiculously Last Minute Changes

There have been a lot of Star Trek series, but we’re going back to the 60s to the original run for this one. Everything about the original series is iconic, from the costumes and sets to the actors – William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy have become synonymous with their roles as Captain James T. Kirk and Dr. Spock that even the retooled and rebooted blockbuster film versions of Star Trek feature lead actors largely doing their best Shatner and Nimoy impressions.

But as amazing as it may seem, Shatner wasn’t the shoo-in for the Captain Kirk gig that you might have thought. In its 1965 pilot episode called The Cage, Shatner wasn’t even recording the captain’s log. Instead the role went to Jeffrey Hunter (best known for co-starring with John Wayne in The Searchers) and the character was called Captain Christopher Pike. Nimoy was there as Spock, though his character was not First Officer and displayed many more human characteristics than the cold, logical Spock fans would later come to know and love. The actual Spock-like role went to a character called Number One, played by creator Gene Rodenberry’s then-wife, Majel Barrett.

NBC chose not to pick up the pilot, deciding it needed more action and was too “slow” and “cerebral” for audiences. Instead of rejecting the show outright, though, the network ordered a second pilot, and this became the show’s first official episode. The second pilot featured Captain Kirk, with Shatner in the role (reportedly after Hunter had turned down filming the second pilot to concentrate on his film career) and had jettisoned Number One in favour of promoting a newly logical and less human Spock. From then on, the show was able to boldly go where no man has been before.