The episode did its job challenging viewers with the question, because people still argue about this today. But to me there’s an actual, unambiguous answer: 4.823 seconds after transport autosequence initiation, when the emitter array completed the materialization cycle.
There’s a line in the episode around that point:
But that’s the whole point of the episode - it’s a moral quandary with no real “right” answer. It’s Hugh of Borg all over again.
The episode did its job challenging viewers with the question, because people still argue about this today. But to me there’s an actual, unambiguous answer: 4.823 seconds after transport autosequence initiation, when the emitter array completed the materialization cycle.