How Each Star Trek Captain Got Cast

The Cage was the first pilot of Star Trek, which itself was originally titled The Menagerie. Hunter was, at the time, notorious for his portrayal of Jesus Christ in the 1961 film King of Kings. His youthful looks had led to the film being somewhat scathingly referred to as 'I was a teenage Jesus'.

After this, he appeared in a show called Temple Houston, which in his opinion suffered from an incorrect approach by the studio. The idea came from humour, delivered in deadpan seriousness. The show did not last, leaving him free to appear in The Cage in 1965.

In another turn of either good luck or bad luck, depending on how you view it, The Cage was rejected by the network. However, Hunter declined returning to refilm the pilot, as he felt that cinema was where his true passion lay. Though he was under contract to continue as Pike for six months after filming, he was crucially not under contract to refilm a pilot, which was what allowed him to turn it down.

He formally requested to be allowed out of contract, even as William Shatner's star was rising thanks to James T. Kirk.

Jeffrey Hunter died in 1969, one week before the airing of the final episode of the Original Series. Though he only ever acted in one episode, he is remembered today through the longevity of the character and the inclusion of his footage in the Star Trek Discovery episode If Memory Serves