But that puts them way too close to Federation space, and they also would have assimilated humans and other Federation people way before they should have.

Hey it was mentioned and shown that the colony seemed to have been scooped off the surface in Best of Both Worlds when Shelby goes out to investigate like it was mentioned in Neutral Zone so I think that was clearly done to connect the events of The Neutral Zone with BOBW.And maybe those Borg ships in TNZ was just a reconnaissance vehicles for the upcoming invasion of Federation territory.They don't have to explain everything it's fiction after all.

Long before BOBW, even in Q Who with their first actual Borg encounter thanks to Q, they find a planet where the cities/inhabitants seemed to have been scooped up. Unless you see the episode on a channel that edits it for more commercials.

From Memory Alpha on the episode The Neutral Zone;

While writing this first season finale, Maurice Hurley intended for it to be the first part of a trilogy that would continue in the second season, in which the Borg would be formally introduced and an alliance would be formed between the Federation and the Romulan Empire to counter the new threat. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion)

So as you can see The Neutral Zone always was intended to be the first "informal" introduction to the Borg in the first place as the first part of a trilogy that would be further explored in consecutive episodes.

Well then they screwed it up, by having the Borg be too far away to have been responsible for events in The Neutral Zone.

Maybe ,But then why did Q choose to introduce the Borg at that particular moment?,sure he wanted to "punish" Picard for his hubris but knowing Q he would also have ulterior motives to introduce the Borg,certainly as a warning of what would be coming ahead.Q probably knew the Borg were much closer then expected and gave them a taster of what The Federation needed to be prepared for.

I guess you could retcon it that way if you like. But everything in that episode, and some later episodes too, seemed pretty clear that the Borg had been far away and unaware of humans. At least up to that point. There was also no reason for the Borg to appear unfamiliar with humans in that episode, if they had assimilated humans already from the Neutral Zone.

It's also possible that Q was just throwing them into range of the worst enemy he could think of that would scare the humans sufficiently yet not just instantly destroy them, so Picard would have time to come begging to him for help.

It's like Picard said, "If we all die, here, now, you will not be able to gloat."

As it turns out, it doesn't make sense because yes the Borg were too far away to be attacking Romulan and Federation outposts when they're supposed to be 7k LY away. But, like Nexus71 pointed out, the episode The Neutral Zone was supposed to be the first part of a trilogy of episodes, so who knows what developments we would have seen in the following two episodes? My guess is some time during those lost episodes the Borg would have shown up. It makes sense that Q Who and Best Of Both Worlds are retcon work for what happened in The Neutral Zone - it's a bit sloppy, but it more or less works.

Or maybe the scooped-up outposts were supposed to be some other alien group entirely, which got scrapped, and then later someone tried to shoehorn the Borg in and never mind the contradictions.

It makes sense that Q Who and Best Of Both Worlds are retcon work for what happened in The Neutral Zone - it's a bit sloppy, but it more or less works

Yes that's what happened but from what I have read The Neutral Zone was always intended to be the first episode introducing the Borg,but hey inconsistencies exist within the franchise people tend to give a lot of flack to Enterprise for being inconsistent but heck in TNG we have them between seasons

Maybe that's partly because TNG could only contradict TOS. Nothing else had existed prior. Enterprise was last, it could contradict TOS, TNG, DS9, AND Voyager. And it often DID.

Of course, ST:D has it even worse. And they're taking full advantage, not even trying to be consistent with anything else. For all we know, they even spell names differently too. Kaptun Curc. Misstur Cpoc. etc.

@Nexus71 said:

I'm pretty sure it was made mention of in the two parter The Best Of Both Worlds where the Borg take to scooping up outposts, which is probably why when I heard it in a rewatch of The Neutral Zone I immediately thought it was the Borg.

Revengine is correct and this is why the Borg were responsible for the disappearing outposts in The Neutral Zone plus I believe that Seven Of nine's parents went out to investigate that region of space because of these disappearances .Finding out later that it had been the Borg who were responsible for those outposts disappearing

It's been a while since I've watched that episode of Voyager, but I must admit I didn't notice (or I don't remember taking notice) that the part of space the Hansen's were investigating was the same area where those scooped up outposts were. That is a pretty cool detail and good on the writers for adding it.

But that raises another question: How did the Hansens get there in less than 50-60 years? Since that's how long we were told it would take Voyager to get home from there. And it seems unlikely the Hansen's ship was a whole lot - or even any - faster than Voyager.

So even when they try to make things "fit" they end up adding another problem.

According Memory Alpha: Annika's parents, Magnus and Erin Hansen, were exobiologists investigating the existence of the Borg. After a great deal of persuasion, the Federation granted the Hansens the use of the USS Raven, a small long-range craft, to aid them in their investigation. In 2353, they took Annika, then aged four, along with them. They spent a good deal of time aboard the Raven in search of the Borg; Annika celebrated three birthdays aboard the ship. Eventually, the Hansens encountered a Borg cube and followed it through its transwarp conduit into the Delta Quadrant,

Except that was never mentioned in the show, and in at least one other place in the Voyager series, we're told that there are only trans-warp EXITS in the Alpha Quadrant, no entrances.

Also, the Borg weren't that close to start with. More retcon.