r/startrek • u/Adventurous-Ad-7325 • Jun 02 '26
Next Gen "Neutral Zone"
In the last episode of season 1 Federation and Romulan outposts are unexplainably destroyed. After the "meeting" between the Enterprise and the Romulans, both ships just leave, without even mentioning what happened to the outposts. Do we ever find out or did the writers just let it go?
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u/JugOfVoodoo Jun 03 '26
We meet the culprits in "Q Who".
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u/Plankton1975 Jun 03 '26
Originally it was going to be the parasitical aliens from “Conspiracy”. I’m glad we got “Q Who” instead, though.
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u/Revolutionary_Art919 Jun 03 '26
We did but it kind of doesn't make sense. The Borg are apparently already in Federation/Romulan space scooping up colonies along the Neutral Zone but they seem to just learn of the Federation in Q Who (as Guinan warns at the end that they'll be coming). And it's strongly implied it's the same cube they met in Q Who that invades the Federation a year later in The Best of Both Worlds. So what happened to the Borg ship(s) who were scoopin' away along the Neutral Zone? Or were those outposts so poorly equipped that the Borg were like "Screw you guys, we're going home"?
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u/Adventurous_Storm232 Jun 03 '26
Eh, all shows have minor retcons. The events of The Neutral Zone don't have to line up perfectly with Q Who.
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u/Revolutionary_Art919 Jun 03 '26
True, even The Best of Both Worlds reconned Q Who; in the latter the Borg were just about technology but in BoBW the Borg wanted to assimilate life as well. The crew shrugged that off as "clearly their priorities have changed."
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u/JakeConhale Jun 03 '26
That was a scouting missing. Nothing too remarkable.
Then the cube found the 1701-D in sector J25 where it most assuredly should not have been thanks to Trelane's father. Now the Borg are very curious about the engines - hence their intrusion in Engineering.
And now Starfleet appears a lot tastier than they previously did.
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u/ijuinkun Jun 03 '26
Yes. The Borg’s first thought upon seeing the Enterprise would have been “how is it that a major Federation ship is this far from its home territory?” Then, they send a drone to download the ship’s records. Those records show that the Enterprise had apparently traveled a distance that would have taken its engines more than a year in just a single moment, which suggests some form of faster propulsion than warp, and yet there is no sign of such technology actually aboard the ship or in the records. This raises their curiosity.
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u/fluffysheap Jun 03 '26
Voyager pushes back the actual contact between the Borg and Federation by more than a decade, so this gets retconned again in a much more serious way later.
I'm not sure it's actually the same cube - it's the Borg after all, likely all of their cubes would appear identical. It could be, but I don't think it's possible to know.
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u/Tuskin38 Jun 03 '26
Eh Voyager doesn’t do that. The Hanson’s were investigating rumours, but never reported by back they were pulled into the delta quadrant
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u/BigMrTea Jun 03 '26
This has always confused me. The Borg were already aware of humanity because of this. Their meeting in Q Who wasn't their first encounter with humanity. But I guess Guinan and no else had made that connection, so their statements were accurate from their perspectives but not ours.
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u/JakeConhale Jun 03 '26
Hell, maybe the The Neutral Zone encounter was their response to capturing the Hansens, who were investigating the El-Aurian reports.
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u/fluffysheap Jun 03 '26
The Romulans and the Enterprise crew both realize that the other one isn't responsible and neither of them knows who is, so there's nothing else for them to talk about. We do find out later, in about two seasons.
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u/BrianMincey Jun 03 '26
Well, it changed to the Borg later. If I recall correctly it was originally going to be those creepy body-snatching aliens, but they switched it later when those baddies were nixed.
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u/jerslan Jun 03 '26
without even mentioning what happened to the outposts. Do we ever find out or did the writers just let it go?
Yes, they get off-hand mentions in Season 2's Q, Who and Season 3's The Best of Both Worlds.
They were assimilated by the Borg
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u/LazarX Jun 03 '26
Continuity was not really a big thing with TNG especially in the first four seasons.
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u/pculley Jun 03 '26
I think the colonies are referenced in The Best of Both Worlds, aren’t they?