I remember seeing an interview with Roddenberry once. He said that after the original pilot, the network suits were uncomfortable with the fact that the Enterprise had both an alien and a woman as senior mates. They told him he could keep one. “So I kept the alien and married the girl.”
–Cliffy
You say that like it would have been a bad thing.
It is my understanding the network execs thought the pilot episode was too cerebral, so they had Roddenberry rework it. Did they also complain about Hunter, so Shatner replaced him?
Note also Spock’s more emotional in The Menagerie…like the missing Klingon cranial plates in the DS9/TOS crossover, this is never explained…
So far as I know, Hunter was replaced by Shatner only because he didn’t sign back up and the only cast member that NBC didn’t like was Majel Barrett’s Number One.
Walloon, to coin a phrase, thank you for the straight dope on Hunter’s death. Yes, I think the accident story has deliberately been positioned as a cover, as it is given out straigt-faced by many credible sources. BTW, who was his last wife who had her bio written by her daughter? And to use a bit of cruel humor–Hunter must have been pretty brain-dead in 1969 as I understand he lobbied HARD to get the role of Mike Brady!
To other posters: I take the “too cerebral” label that Roddenberry often ascribed to the NBC brass when viewing The Cage with an ocean-full of salt. As noted by others, they found it slow and disliked most of the actors (in particular, Majel Barrett), but really there is nothing so deep about this story that even an average “suit” of 1964 couldn’t understand. The people with big buttheads are making Jeff Hunter have dreams and visions that seem real to him, and they want him to do the nasty with Susan Oliver. What is so “cerebral” about that?
Interesting topic, sorry to have continued the hijack.
Sir Rhosis
There’s actually an episode of TNG where the Enterprise gets sucked into a wormhole and emerges in an alternate universe where Jeffrey Hunter played Pike for five seasons and seven movies. Afterwards he had a long career as a soap-opera heart-throb and was eventually elected governor of California. This alternate universe is otherwise exactly like the normal TBG universe, except Patrick Swayze is the captain of the new alternate universe Enterprise instead of Patrick Stewart. And they’re all Nazis.
According to the book Inside Star Trek by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, Hunter’s wife pressured him into declining the role as Captain Pike feeling science fiction beneath him and as a movie star TV work was slumming.
The decision to ax Number One seems also to be a myth, NBC had no objections to a female second in command but felt Majel Barrett, Gene’s “girlfriend” was not up to the role.
She’s very busy with Andromed and a new show that she’s shopping. She wasn’t even ever approached about Enterprise.
Part of her StarTrek.com chat from last month:
Q: Why aren’t you in Enterprise? (Or are you going to be soon?) See, because if you were, then you would be in all the series and that would just be the coolest thing ever.
—Amanda K.
MB: Wouldn’t that be lovely? I would love to do it but I have not yet been asked.
I thought the canonical explaination (from one of the novels, anyway) is that Spock was still “green” when he was serving with Pike, and had not yet completely mastered control over his emotional human half. The emotional outbursts were follies of his youth, as it were.
I didn’t mean to suggest that she didn’t want anything to do with it, just that things haven’t gone that way.
NX 01 doesn’t have a talking computer, so there’s not much of a chance of voiceover work for her.
His third wife was actress Emily McLaughlin, who starred on General Hospital for 27 years. They married only three months before his death.
Why did Hunter want The Brady Bunch so bad? Because he was broke.
I wasn’t trying to imply there was some feud between Majel and Bermaga… I was just curious if there was.
This site
says it was because his career was stalled, but money probably played into it. Love Sherwood Schwartz’s brilliant reasoning for not casting him. I, myself, am far too handsome to be belieivable as a CNC Machinist! 
This site also repeats the explosion/damaged vertebra/concussion story of his death.
I hope the link works–when I brought up the address it trailed off with the ellipsis, but that doesn’t seem right.
Sir Rhosis
My link gets you to the main site. I guess just type in his name or death date, which was 27 May 1969. I got the site by typing “Jeffrey Hunter Brady Bunch” into Google.
Sir Rhosis
Margaret Mead? in a plane with the lass from the Menagerie?
small world eh?
Indeed.
I just read the Jeffrey Hunter obituary.
My mom (77 now) had a friend in High School named Henry MacKinnies. Checking the dates/places, I see it was … Jesus/Capt. Pike/almost Mike Brady.
Sir Rhosis, I had a good laugh when I read the biographical profile of Jeffrey Hunter that you linked to. It was clearly adapted (entire sentences) from a biographical profile on him that I had written and published elsewhere.