Star Trek Generations originally opened with a bitter old Captain Kirk trying to relive past glories by skydiving from a shuttle in earth orbit. Upon landing, Scotty convinces him to go along to the Enterprise-B launch. These scenes (and many others including Kirk being shot in the back and Worf fighting Romulans) were cut from the final version of Generations, and to my knowledge these deleted and alternate scenes have never been released. 15 years after Generations, in the new Star Trek, we actually see young Kirk skydiving (along with Sulu and someone else) from Enterprise in orbit to Nero’s drilling platform raining death on Vulcan. It seems almost like a bit of very clever reverse continuity. (which of course is totally ruined if you start whinging about alternate timelines and reboots) Anyone else think this might be the past that old Kirk was trying to relive? And have the Generations deleted and alternate scenes ever been released?
I just thought to look on YouTube for the deleted scenes just after posting. There they are! Thanks ;-)
Considering one of the writers is a big fan, it wouldn't surprise me if he had this in mind when they wrote the scene.
Yeah, the possible connection between that deleted orbital skydiving scene and this one has been pointed out before. Orci and Kurtzman have said outright that there will be a number of references to persons, events, etc. in the various series and even some of the novels. This one sounds likely enough.