The way the theatrical cut of “Generations” ran was that Kirk was located in a fore section of the Enterprise-B repairing a vital system during a crisis. The Nexus outside was damaging the ship and the Enterprise had trouble breaking free from its gravitational pull. Just as the Enterprise was escaping, the ribbon zapped the ship, blew a hole in the hull, and bodily removed Kirk. Scotty and Captain John Harriman (Alan Ruck) rushed to the section where Kirk was located to make sure he was okay, only to be greeted by a massive hole in the wall, staring out into space. Checkov then ran in to join them. “My God!” Chekov said. “Was anyone in here?” Scotty, knowing Kirk was gone, gravely replied “Aye.” The action then almost immediately faded to the year 2371.
Koenig felt that he and Scotty should be allowed at least a brief scene where they could express a moment of mourning. He didn’t even recall the final scene because, well, there wasn’t a scene. He said:
“I wanted the moment. When Kirk gets blown out of the ship in the beginning of the film, there is a moment when you go back and look at it, where Jimmy and I stand together, and we say something on the order of … I don’t know what we say, [but] we say something. And the reason I don’t know what we said is that we didn’t say what I had written.”
It seems that Koenig had actually penned a brief moment where he and Scotty got to finally talk a little bout about how they felt, and Koenig was eager to play the scene because of a personal tragedy he had recently experienced.