The changes between the first and second pilots involved both cast and character adjustments. Number One — Majel Barrett’s character — was dropped. This represented a significant compromise of Roddenberry’s initial vision; he had wanted a female executive officer in a command role, and the network’s objections had forced him to remove her. Barrett remained with the production, eventually playing the ship’s nurse, Nurse Chapel, in the series — a character with far less authority than the one she had been intended to play.
The other substantial change was the captain. Jeffrey Hunter did not return for the second pilot. The circumstances of his departure have been described in varying accounts. By one account, Hunter’s wife attended a screening Roddenberry had arranged for NBC on March 25, 1965, in Hunter’s place, and indicated that the show was not what Hunter wanted to pursue. Whatever the precise dynamics, the decision was made that the character of Captain Pike would not continue and that the captain for the second pilot would be a different character played by a different actor.
The character was renamed James T. Kirk. The actor cast to play him was William Shatner.
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## William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
The second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” produced in the summer of 1965, established the template for *Star Trek* as it would eventually exist — the specific combination of tone, character dynamics, and visual style that would run through three television seasons and eventually generate a franchise spanning decades.