Season 6 will bring in Captain Ed Leslie, who will berate the Discovery crew for their unprofessional behavior and ignoring the rules. He gets demoted to Crewman.
Perhaps he could appear, but, I'd rather Discovery not become a stage for the TOS characters to return just because it's in their era. I wouldn't mind a low-key name drop on occasion, though. It would be funny to hear Kirk's name mentioned during that time period given that he isn't the famous Starfleet legend he eventually becomes.
If they were doing a new show and told me Sonequa Martin-Green was going to be playing the captain, I think it would work. But I don't think Michael Burnham as captain does.
Captains of Discovery: Season 2: Captain Pike Season 3: Commodore Nogura Season 4: Captain Saru Season 5: "" Season 6: "" Season 7: Captain Killy Final Episode: Acting Captain Burnham
I thought it was because everybody thought that Kirk had nice legs. "A stack of books with legs," Mitchell called him.
Not just because his mum is one of the producers, but Jake Cannavale (nepotism from two Hollywood film families) strikes me as a little Kirkian. He was okay in The Mandalorian. I’d also live for the meltdowns over Kurtzman making Kirk mixed race and covered in tattoos...
If JTK shows up at any point in any Discovery season..I hope it's just a photo, and if they do, they use Chris Pine just to watch people's heads explode
If they had kept Discovery in the 23rd Century I have no doubt we’d have seen him. But now I’m sure he’ll get named dropped as someone on the crew does research on Federation history. Something along the lines of “widely regarded as the greatest Captain in Starfleet history, James Tiberius Kirk...”