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In season 6 episode 4 of of Star Trek: TNG; Captain Scott is recovered from a transport buffer after 75 years on the Jenolen.
He asks if Jim Kirk was still alive and if he'd come to rescue him.
But in Star Trek Generations, Scotty witnesses (indirectly) Kirk's 'death' when he gets sucked into the Nexus Ribbon.
Why would Scotty think Kirk was alive if he knew Kirk was dead from the maiden voyage of the Enterprise B?
(Real world answer: Generations was written 4 years after that episode, lol)
First, let's establish the timeline
That's about 76 years. Which leaves less than one year between when Kirk vanishes and when Scotty has his accident involving a Dyson sphere.
So let me paint the picture I have of the situation. Scotty, an aging Captain who is already being pushed out by the younger generation witnesses the seeming death of one of his oldest friends. Unable to deal with the tragedy he embarks on a deep space mission on a rundown ship with a crew of nobodies - in search of who-knows-what.
On the way, he begins to make peace with the death of Kirk, meeting new people, having new adventures. Until he happens on something truly new. The Dyson sphere.
But a crash. All his new friends die. He is alone. Even more useless and out of date than he's ever been.
Perfect backdrop to the events of Relics. I think we can understand why he couldn't, in that moment, come to grips with his closest friend's death.
I always assumed that Scotty was disoriented after the experience; seventy-five years in a state of suspension could certainly do that. (Especially since, in the world of Star Trek, there is consciousness while inside the transporter beam, of a sort.)
There are several explanations offered by the show's principals.
In an AOL chat, showrunner Ronald D. Moore handwaved the issue by saying that Scotty was momentarily confused.
"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."
Which tallies with the explanation offered on the StarTrek.com website profile for 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.
In the official novelisation of Generations, Guinan tearfully tells Chekov that Kirk has "gone to the other side".
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.
Which was evidently interpreted by his friends as meaning that he wasn't dead, as explained in the 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.”
To be honest, I thought it was simply poking fun at the way the original series stuck to the old 'Status Quo is God' concept -- That is to say, by the end of the episode, everything was back the way it was before. As a result, major characters were in effect, immortal.
Kirk ALWAYS came and rescued (or arrange the rescue of) major characters, so Scotty automatically assumed it had happened, knowing at the time of no reason it couldn't have.
The key is that Kirk, at the beginning of "Generations", is "presumed" dead, and there is no body. Scotty has seen enough of the galaxy to know that Kirk, without a physical, lifeless body to seal the notion that he is indeed dead, may in fact be alive somewhere, and if there was a way for a human to beat the odds and live, Kirk would be the human to do it. As humans, we will sometimes hold on to the idea that someone we are close to may still be alive, even when we know that the odds against it are quite high.
And, let's not forget - at the time Scotty was rescued from the transporter buffer, Kirk was in fact alive....living in a fantasy inside the Nexus. So, if Scotty had been holding on to the hope that Kirk was still alive, he would have been right.
When the crew announced themselves as from the Enterprise Scotty was affectionately or jokingly saying that Captain Kirk was there to rescue him. That is all it was. He knew Kirk was dead. The fact that during that episode he never again mentioned Kirk indicates this to be so.
It wouldn't be the first time one of the crew came back from the dead. And Kirk had cheated death so many times, perhaps Scotty just felt as if it would be the most likely situation.
