Who was responsible for destruction of the Federation outposts in TNG: The Neutral Zone?
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1 Answer
"The Neutral Zone" was originally intended as the first part of an arc to introduce the Borg.
Maurice Hurley had something more in mind with this episode. The attacks the Romulans complain about in "The Neutral Zone" dangled as an unresolved plot device for quite some time, but there was a plan: Hurley had meant for this episode to comprise part of a trilogy in which the Borg would be formally introduced. The opening episode of the second season further explored matters, including a possible alliance between the Federation and the Romulan Empire to counter the new threat. Such plans, however, were ruined by the writer's guild strike of that year. As such, the Borg's introduction had to wait until "Q Who". (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion)
In "Q Who", when the Enterprise first meets the Borg, they discover a planet in System J-25 that has been wiped clean by the Borg. Data remarks that "it is identical to what happened to the outposts along the Neutral Zone".
Which Borg were these that attacked the outposts? Probably a scouting party. The Borg were not entirely unknown in the Alpha Quadrant prior to "Q Who". 60 years prior, "Generations" mentions refugees fleeing the Borg. Ten years before the events in "The Neutral Zone", USS Raven went exploring rumors of The Borg (this is the ship which carried Annika Hansen aka Seven Of Nine). It's likely The Borg did not see The Federation or the Alpha Quadrant as a threat until they tangled with them in "Q Who".
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The Borg had the message from the Borg that woke up 200 years in the past during the Enterprise episode Regeneration. So the Borg definitely knew of the Federation, though it is unknown how much of that signal got through to the Delta Quadrant. Commented Nov 16, 2014 at 8:17
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2I assumed the outposts were "hit-and-run" tactics employed to assess the threat level of both The Federation and The Romulan Empire. As we later find out, the Borg could zip in and out of the Alpha Quadrant as they pleased using the extensive transwarp network. Commented Dec 3, 2014 at 22:06
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1@James Sheridan - That might be an altered timeline, different from the timeline we were seeing in "The Neutral Zone". Star Trek is not too consistent about the way time travel works, though. Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 17:39