All the main characters (except Bones, really) had a bigger, more challenging role to play and some growing up to do.
Bones may've gotten short-changed a bit in terms of screen-time, but really he was given a lot to do (relatively speaking) in the first film, and the implication is that he -- like Scotty -- is older and more 'grown up' than Kirk and the rest, including Spock (who, due to the much longer Vulcan lifespan, is really still just a fresh-faced kid among his own people, in spite of his greater years of experience and education).
We didn’t really get to know Pike in the original series, ...
All we really knew about Pike in the original series was that the unemotional Mr. Spock was willing to risk not only his career but also his LIFE (only death sentence left on the books was for visiting the forbidden planet of Talos IV) in order to give his former captain the chance for a better (if illusory) life than being a brain trapped in a lump of unmoving flesh with only a blinking light with which to communicate his 'yes' or 'no' responses to the outside world. It was IMPLIED that Spock was acting emotionally, out of some deep well of feeling for his previous commander, but the excerpts from the first ST pilot with Jeffrey Hunter as Christopher Pike didn't really support that sense of a deep emotional connection (even with the much younger, much more emotional Spock depicted in that early footage).
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Bones may've gotten short-changed a bit in terms of screen-time, but really he was given a lot to do (relatively speaking) in the first film, and the implication is that he -- like Scotty -- is older and more 'grown up' than Kirk and the rest, including Spock (who, due to the much longer Vulcan lifespan, is really still just a fresh-faced kid among his own people, in spite of his greater years of experience and education).
We didn’t really get to know Pike in the original series, ...
All we really knew about Pike in the original series was that the unemotional Mr. Spock was willing to risk not only his career but also his LIFE (only death sentence left on the books was for visiting the forbidden planet of Talos IV) in order to give his former captain the chance for a better (if illusory) life than being a brain trapped in a lump of unmoving flesh with only a blinking light with which to communicate his 'yes' or 'no' responses to the outside world. It was IMPLIED that Spock was acting emotionally, out of some deep well of feeling for his previous commander, but the excerpts from the first ST pilot with Jeffrey Hunter as Christopher Pike didn't really support that sense of a deep emotional connection (even with the much younger, much more emotional Spock depicted in that early footage).