Star Trek: Shatner on "The Cage" Pilot Issues, Getting Second Chance

Posted in: NBC, Paramount+, Star Trek, TV | Tagged: star trek, strange new worlds

Star Trek: Shatner on "The Cage" Pilot Issues, Getting Second Chance

Star Trek star William Shatner shared what the problems were with the original pilot, "The Cage," and how a second chance led to Kirk.

Published Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:37:09 -0500
by Tom Chang
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When people look back at the original pilot, "The Cage" for Star Trek, the look of the characters was quite different, including Leonard Nimoy's Spock, who was far more expressive than the more collected, logic-oriented Vulcan we know today. At the top, you had Jeffrey Hunter's Captain Christopher Pike, along with his first officer, Number One (Majel Barrett Roddenberry), who didn't formally have the name "Una Chin-Riley" until Discovery in 2019, when Rebecca Romijn was cast, and you also had Chief Medical Officer Dr. Philip Boyce (John Hoyt). With NBC rejecting the initial offering from Gene Roddenberry, they gave him a second chance with a new cast led by William Shatner, playing Captain James T. Kirk, retaining Nimoy in his role, and Gene recasting Majel as Nurse Christine Chapel. Speaking with Strange New Worlds star Paul Wesley, who plays a pre-The Original Series Kirk counterpart for Interview Magazine, Shatner shared his thoughts on The Cage, which was repurposed for the season one two-part episode "The Menagerie," showing fans what could have been before it was repurposed for what would be Strange New Worlds.

William Shatner Reflects on How He Joined Star Trek, "The Cage"

"They made a pilot, and they had all these characters, including Spock, who smiled a lot," Shatner told Wesley. "Nobody quite grasped the character they were going to play. They presented it to NBC, and NBC said, 'We don't like it, but it's sufficiently interesting and curious and different.'" The 95-year-old Canadian actor then shared something rare in the TV industry: a second chance at a pilot. "They said something that I've never heard of before or after. They said to Paramount, 'We'll give you another amount of money' — whatever that was — 'to make another pilot, but rewrite it, do another draft of another script, and recast it.'"

With Hunter not returning, it was the opportunity Shatner needed since no other actor was auditioned for Kirk: "They had seen enough of me to make a conclusion based on everything I had been doing…I came back to Los Angeles, saw the pilot, and thought, 'My gosh, that's really different and interesting,'" he said. "They recast everybody except Leonard, who grasped the role, made it his own, and we made another pilot, and this one sold." The rest, as they say, is history, with DeForest Kelley playing the new CMO, Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, along with Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, James Doohan as Scotty, George Takei as Sulu, and in season two, Walter Koenig as Chekov, when TOS would run for three seasons from 1966 to 1969. For more, including Wesley talking about his audition process as Kirk for SNW, and how he tried to make the role his own while honoring Shatner's legacy, and Shatner's podcast, you can check out the rest of the interview.

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