In the second season episode Deadlock, Voyager runs into Vidiian star system and tries to hide in a plasma drift. They then hit severe subspace turbulence, which unbeknownst to Voyager causes all of the matter on the ship to be duplicated: virtually creating a second Voyager and a second crew. Both ships are sharing anti-matter (which could not be duplicated) and when they notice that their anti-matter is draining, they decide to use proton burst to keep the anti-matter reaction going. This greatly damages one of the Voyagers and even leads to the death of Harry Kim and newborn baby Naomi Wildman. Eventually both ships learn of each other’s presence. A Vidiian ship comes along and fires on the ship(s). However, the only ship that receives damage is the Voyager that was previously undamaged Voyager. That Voyager gets overrun by Vidiians and Janeway decides to self-destruct her Voyager. But, she first tells Harry Kim to take newborn baby Naomi Wildman to the damaged Voyager since the other Voyager lost their Harry Kim and newborn baby Naomi Wildman. I have a question about this episode: when all is said and done, at the end of the episode who/what did you think was an unduplicated original that belonged to the Prime Universe: Harry Kim and newborn baby Naomi Wildman from the undamaged Voyager that self-destructed or the damaged Voyager that had lost Harry Kim and newborn baby Naomi Wildman??? My guess is that Harry Kim and newborn baby Naomi Wildman from the undamaged Voyager that self-destructed were the ones that belonged to the Prime Universe. Can you say that since the Vidiians could only damage their Voyager it is because that is what originally belonged in the Prime Universe? Meaning that the Voyager that was damaged by the proton bursts is the duplicate / did not originally belong...
How are you defining ``original''? That is, what measurable property is it that's supposed to mark one as sharing identity with the pre-anomaly Voyager and which the other one does not have? If I haven't missed anything there is no such property that can be found, and therefore, they are either both the original or neither is.
They were both part of the Prime universe. It's a common misconception that the episode was about some kind of alternate-timeline Voyager. The ship was physically duplicated, with the duplicates slightly out of phase and occupying the same space as each other so they couldn't perceive or interact with each other (like when Geordi and Ro in "The Next Phase" were able to pass through walls and other people). And the whole point was that neither Voyager was any more or less the original than the other. They were simultaneously split off from the same original, like an amoeba undergoing mitosis. Both had equal claim to "original" status.
Even a perfect copy is not the original, and these copies were not the original. The phase shift is not compared against themselves as is, but against themselves on computer record from before the event happened. The Kim and Naomi who did not die had no phase shift in their DNA, and escaped to the ship who's entire crew had phase shifted DNA. An argument can be made that the act of copying the original crew scarred them with the phase shift and the copies only seem more perfect exactly because a glowing space woogy had not wantonly penetrated them enough while creating a template for the duplication proccess to shift their phase. Here's something to consider. Maybe this space woogy was not a fluke. It's Vidiian technology the same as they used to split B'Elanna into her specieses. They capture one ship, and let the other one fly off so it doesn't seem like they are raping and butchering so many space farers that a massive angry fleet doesn't have to be set up to raize their homeworld.
This! Like the example the episode uses, they were like Siamese Twins sharing one heart. There isn't a copy, they both were the original. It was Harry that got it wrong in the end cause he's an idiot. He was still on the right Voyager and Janeway was still the original captain.
It was a duplication machine. It created copies. A copy is not the original even if it is identical. Do you really think that every time you buy a Zagnut Bar that it's always the same Zagnut Bar just because they seem to be identical copies of each other and the original template? A Zagnut by any other name...would be a good thing.