When you last as long as Star Trek, and reuse the amount of characters they do, you're going to eventually need to recast. A franchise that's been around for 60 years and keeps telling stories involving the same characters will demand that of you. Star Trek's current top-dog show, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, features a character that has been around since the beginning.
Christopher Pike is the featured character for Strange New Worlds. It's a story that essentially takes the original pilot for the franchise and expands upon it. The original pilot, for those who don't know, featured Pike and not James Kirk, as the captain of the Enterprise. It got shelved because some felt i wasn't good enough, but it was later repurposed as the two-parter The Menagerie.
Since then, Pike has been part of Star Trek canon, but it hasn't always been the same man behind the hair. There have been four men who have played two different versions of Pike and we're going to rank them right now.
4. Sean Kinney
For Sean Kinney, Pike wasn't a bad role to get. The only problem was that the role he got depicted Pike after a brutal accident that left him unable to move or speak on his own. So that meant Kinney didn't get to act much when he took over the role of Pike in the Menagerie two-parter. Bound to a moving chair the entire time, he made no real impact as the first captain of the federation, but the makeup department sure did.
3. Bruce Grennwood
The long-time actor played Pike in the Kelvin era of Star Trek films. He's the man who recruits James Kirk into Starfleet in the 2009 Star Trek film. He's then captured and tortured by Nero and his goons. In the follow-up, he's killed by Khan Noonien Singh in the opening minutes of Into Darkness. While a solid actor, Bruce Greenwood was given very little to do and probably had less screen time across two films than the original Pike, Jeffrey Hunter, had in his lone pilot.
2. Jeffrey Hunter
Limited by his appearance in just one episode of Star Trek, Hunter did show off quite a bit of his acting chops in his lone outing as Pike. The original pilot, entitled "The Cage", didn't flush out Pike as a character. A major complaint and one of the many reasons it was reshot. Yet, Hunter was a get for the studio at the time. Hunter didn't want to be part of Star Trek, and turned down the option to return for the new pilot, thus forcing the powers that be to go with a new actor and a new character.
1. Anson Mount
The face of the biggest Star Trek series of the modern era is number one. Even if he wasn't as captivating as he was as the lead on the series, he'd still be number one due to the sheer amount of screen time he has. He's easily spent more time in the role than anyone else, but that's not the only reason to go with him as the top choice. He's the first actor to bring out Pike's personality. He's the ultimate good guy. Faced with an impending doom he knows he can't avoid, he still chooses to be good to those around him. He's not cavalier like James Kirk or curt like Jean-Luc Picard. He's not willing to trade in his morals like Benjamin Sisko or start a coup like Michael Burnham. No, Mount's Pike is the one person in Star Trek who's known for being a good guy above all else.