Spock has a big connection to Star Trek: Discovery thanks to his adopted sister, Michael Burnham, being the show’s protagonist, but fellow TOS star Captain Kirk has yet to connect to the show in a major way. However, William Shatner is hoping to change that.
Speaking to IGN at New York Comic Con, the 86-year-old actor joked that it would take “a lot of money” for him to appear on Discovery before discussing how he thinks his appearance might actually make for good television:
“I don’t know what you’d do with a character who appeared 50, now 51 years ago. You know, I am 51 years older, with all the exigencies of age … Are there stories to tell about an aging guy? [Terry Bradshaw] was a great athlete. An awkward kid of 15, 16, who matured and then was a quarterback that was third quarterback, then he became the second quarterback. He grew into this great quarterback, one of the great quarterbacks, that he became. Now, he’s older, his knees hurt, his back hurts. … So here’s this aging athlete, who isn’t [what] he was in his twenties and thirties. Still carries himself grandly and has a sense of humor and all, but he’s not the athlete he was. What would Captain Kirk be like 50 years later, with the sagacity of mind, and yet the body doesn’t do what he wants it to do? I mean, it’s an interesting story.”
We’d definitely love to see what Kirk’s up to these days, even though canonically he was supposed to have died in 1994’s Star Trek: Generations, but we’re not sure Discovery is the best fit for him. Unless he’s a time-traveling Kirk who somehow survived Generations and then 23 years later decided to travel back in time to a decade before his own adventures on board the Starship Enterprise for some reason, it wouldn’t make much sense for him to be on Discovery. But with CBS seemingly excited about exploring further Star Trek projects in the near future, perhaps they’ll find a place for Kirk to get the fitting send off he deserves.
