What would happened in TNG if "Q, Who" never was made?

[Jellico]

The Conspiracy parasites sure got taken care of in a hurry. I wonder if some creators were thinking up a longer story arc for them in TNG. This is probably a subject for a different thread.

 

[Oddish]

With no Borg, we might've seen those little buggers again.

 

[Captain Zog]

In-universe - The Borg show up, albeit possibly a few years further down the line. Starfleet is even more unprepared for the onslaught. Unless reports of the wholescale destruction of outlying colonies tips them off well in advance at least.

In production terms - some other Big Bad is wheeled out. May well have been just the Romulans.

 

[Orphalesion]

We would still have seen the Borg. Remember the Borg were already scooping up Federation and Romulan outposts along the neutral zone.
So they would still have come for the Federation. I always liked the interpretation that all Q did was providing an advance warning to Picard and the Federation.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

During "Q Who," the Borg were already en route to Federation space. System J-25 is located in Beta Quadrant, and the Borg had already been picking off Federation and Romulan outposts along the Neutral Zone.

If Q hadn't thrown the Enterprise into the path of the Borg cube, first contact with the Borg would have just happened a few months later, and they'd be less ready for the onslaught than they were.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

We would still have seen the Borg. Remember the Borg were already scooping up Federation and Romulan outposts along the neutral zone.
So they would still have come for the Federation. I always liked the interpretation that all Q did was providing an advance warning to Picard and the Federation.

Jinx, we had the same thought.

 

[Arpy]

Were the Borg always responsible for those “Neutral Zone” attacks? We found out they were in BoBW but not in “Q Who.”

And if this thread is about them not appearing (why else make it, they’d just be introduced in BoBW), who else would be responsible for the outpost attacks?

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

Were the Borg always responsible for those “Neutral Zone” attacks? We found out they were in BoBW but not in “Q Who.”

Per The Star Trek The Next Generation Companion, the original plan was to introduce the Borg in "The Neutral Zone" but the writers' strike threw a spanner in that works.

Hurley recalled putting this script together in a day and a half, a rushed and possibly unrefined casualty of the continuing Writers Guild strike. Originally, the rendezvous with the Romulans had been discussed as the first of a multi-part story that would have united the two governments against the newly discovered Borg, who were developed as a replacement for the disappointing Ferengi. The strike nixed that idea, thought, and the Borg had to wait (“Q Who”). References to the pattern of destruction, however, remained in the script.