Beslutet fattades mellan Det oupptäckta landet och Generationer , för att ha en "ren" paus mellan de ursprungliga och nya casterna på den stora skärmen.

William Shatner adresserar tidpunkten och motiveringen bak Kirks död i sin självbiografi, Upp till nu (s. 284-285):

I had been James Tiberius Kirk for almost thirty years when Paramount called me and asked if I was willing to play his death scene.

I was Jim Kirk but I didn't own the rights to me. Paramount owned the character and could do anything they wanted to him. The decision had been made by the studio that after twenty-five years the original crew of the Enterprise had finished its "five-year mission". The Star Trek movies had an average gross of about $80 million. The executives believed they might make more money with Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his Next Generation crew in command. They were determined to kill off Captain Kirk so the movie torch could be passed cleanly to Patrick Stewart's Picard. They explained their decision to me with the great sensitivity I came to expect from the studio: Kirk was going down, baby!  There was a New Generation in space. If I wanted to appear in the movie [Generations] it would be to play his death scene. But whether I agreed to appear in the movie or not, Kirk was going to die.

Du kan också vara intresserad av att veta det:

In the early drafts of the script, Kirk took control of the Enterprise[-D] from Picard and flew it into battle against the Klingons — and died fighting for mankind at his station.

Kirk överlevde händelserna i filmen i en alternativ verklighet, kallad "Shatnerverse". 1996 publicerades romanen The Return , skriven av Shatner, Garfield Reeves-Stevens och Judith Reeves-Stevens. I det återuppbygger Borg honom genom användning av nanoteknik. Den här boken följdes av Avenger , av samma skrivteam.