Det finns flera förklaringar som erbjuds av showens huvudmän.
Kontinuitet är inte kung
I en AOL chatt visade showrunner Ronald D. Moore handen Problemet med att säga att Scotty var förvirrad ibland.
"The only way to address the Scotty/Relics issue in Generations was not to have Scotty in the movie at all. I wasn't willing to make that trade for the sake of a single line that can easily be rationalized away by saying "Scotty was momentarily confused." I still wouldn't do it."
Vilka tal i förklaringen som erbjuds på StarTrek.com webbplatsprofil för Scott
Not until 2369 was it discovered he was the only survivor of the ship's crash on the exterior of a Dyson Sphere, kept alive only as a transporter beaming loop until, ironically, he was rescued by an away team from the U.S.S. Enterprise-D — so disoriented that he thought Kirk had come to rescue him. After trading barbs and quips with Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge and helping to save that Enterprise, he received a permanently "loaned" shuttlecraft, the Goddard, from Captain Jean-Luc Picard and set off to roam the galaxy.
Scott tror inte Kirk är död
I officiell romanisering av generationer , säger Guinan tårtligen till Chekov att Kirk har " gått till andra sidan ".
Guinan was watching them go when a dizzying flash of memory overtook her. Suddenly she was in the Enterprise-B sickbay almost a century before, in a twi- light world between reality and the nexus, looking up into the dark eyes of a man she later learned was Pavel Chekov and saying, He's gone to the other side. Your friend, Jim.
Som tydligt tolkades av sina vänner som att han inte var död, som förklaras i EU-novel "The return '
“Personnel records?” Riker asked. “Anyone in particular?” Spock hesitated. But he kept his attention focused on the screen. “James T. Kirk… I never really accepted the fact I ... never really believed… that he was dead.”
Riker saw how stiffly, almost formally, the ambassador sat in the child-sized chair. It had been a difficult admission for him to make.
“You were not the only one,” Deanna Troi said softly.
Spock turned to regard the counsellor with an upraised eyebrow. “Indeed?”
Deanna smiled. Riker felt bathed in her warmth, though it was directed at Spock and not him. “Montgomery Scott said the same thing,” she told the ambassador. “Believed as you believed.”
Riker remembered his conversations with the feisty old Scotsman. Scott had been the chief engineer on the original Enterprise, where Kirk and Spock had first served together. After Kirk’s first recorded death, on the maiden flight of the Enterprise-B, Scott had led an intensive search of the sector in which that ship had been damaged by the mysterious energy ribbon known as the Nexus.
Decades later, when the chief engineer had been rescued from transporter storage and had come aboard the Enterprise D, he had explained the details of his search, how he had used experimental sensors sensitive enough to detect individual molecules, let alone the body of his captain.
In his personal quest, Scott had found the remains of other victims of the force of the Nexus—shattered bodies blown clear of the ruptured EI-Aurian ships. But he had not found all of the recorded EI-Aurian dead. And, more importantly to him, he had been unable to find any trace whatsoever of a human body.
“In fact, the first thing Mr. Scott said when he was recovered from transporter storage,” Deanna explained to Spock, “was that he half expected to hear that it was Kirk who had rescued him, taking the first Enterprise out of mothballs just to come after his old friend.”