Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery season 3, episode 12, "There Is A Tide..."
Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) is no longer on Star Trek: Discovery, but the series still found a way to homage him with a new character, Invigilator Aurellio (Kenneth Mitchell). As CBS All-Access' flagship series warps towards its season 3 finale, the USS Discovery has been taken over by the Orion and Andorian syndicate called the Emerald Chain. The Chain's leader, Osyraa (Janet Kidder), brought Aurellio aboard to unlock the secrets of Discovery's unique spore displacement hub drive, but the Invigilator is handicapped and he needs a hoverchair that looks just like Captain Pike's to move about.
As every Trekker knows, Captain Pike (originally played by Jeffrey Hunter) was the commander of the Starship Enterprise before Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner). But perhaps Pike is best known for the fact that he was in a wheelchair when the Starfleet hero was reintroduced in Star Trek: The Original Series' first two-parter, "The Menagerie". As his legend goes, Fleet Captain Pike was horribly injured by delta radiation as he saved cadets aboard the damaged USS Republic, which left him disfigured and requiring constant life support. Pike's black wheelchair (or life-support chair) became instantly iconic, with its circular sensors tied to the Captain's brain that allowed him to give only the most basic answers to questions: beeping once for yes and twice for no.
In Star Trek: Discovery, Invigilator Aurellio requires a very similar chair, which also has an identical circular sensor. However, Aurellio's seat hovers, which makes sense since it's 32nd-century technology (and his chair may even be comprised of programmable matter like many things are in Star Trek: Discovery's far future). By contrast, it was never clear if Pike's life support chair technically had wheels and, thus, was a wheelchair, or if it also hovered but was much lower to the ground because of its bulky size. Aurellio also doesn't appear to require his hoverchair to provide him life support, and the "defect" he described his physical ailment as merely appears to be not having use of his legs. Osyraa also described Aurellio as the greatest scientist in three sectors, so it's possible the Invigilator designed his hoverchair himself.
In the Kelvin Timeline, Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) was critically injured when he was captured by Nero (Eric Bana) and, by the end of J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek movie, Pike required a normal wheelchair by the time he passed command of the Enterprise to Captain Kirk (Chris Pine). Curiously, despite the far more advanced visual effects and 23rd-century technology in Abrams' Star Trek, they opted not to replicate Pike's distinctive, ebony life-support chair, perhaps because Pike was not so seriously injured compared to his Prime Universe counterpart.
Pike's reboot as part of Star Trek: Discovery season 2 took the character to new heights of popularity but it also increased his tragedy. When the Captain traveled to the Klingon monastery on Boreth to retrieve a time crystal, the price Pike paid was the horrifying knowledge of his future accident and disfigurement - a fate he chose not to avoid. This means that Pike knows that his life will ultimately be permanently altered and he has to carry this burden going forward. This will color all of Captain Pike's actions in his upcoming spinoff, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, since no matter what he does, Pike's destiny is to end up in that frightening life-support chair.
And yet, as Star Trek: Discovery season 3 proves with Invigilator Aurellio, the overall design of Pike's chair endures for another 920 years. It may even be possible that Aurellio's seat and others like it all purposely follow the basic design of Captain Pike's wheelchair, which may have become the standard in the galaxy.