Silver Blood
The "Silver Blood" was a biomimetic lifeform from a Y Class "demon" planet in the Delta Quadrant. Appearing as metallic liquid in its natural state, this deuterium lifeform had the ability to change itself into that which it came into physical contact with, be it biological or technological.
Sentience
Silver Blood copies of the Voyager crew
The Silver Blood was encountered by the crew of the USS Voyager in 2374. While attempting to mine the Silver Blood for deuterium, Tom Paris and Harry Kim came into contact with the substance and were duplicated down to their memories, Starfleet uniforms and combadges. Upon duplicating the Humans, the Silver Blood became sentient for the first time and quickly hungered for more. Holding Voyager physically hostage on the surface of its homeworld, the Silver Blood copy of Kim negotiated to have Captain Kathryn Janeway give over samples of her crew's DNA so that they could be copied. She agreed and Voyager was allowed to leave with a supply of deuterium. (VOY: "Demon")
USS Voyager
The Silver Blood USS Voyager losing cohesion
By 2375, the Silver Blood had replicated Voyager itself, including its computer memory and programs, as well as The Doctor. By this time, the crew was able to breathe oxygen and had forgotten that they were copies of the original Voyager crew. Traveling across the Delta Quadrant while trying to return to Earth, which they thought was home, the crew had begun to utilize an enhanced warp drive. While the effect of this new warp core had no harmful side-effects on cellular life, it did however cause all people and objects made of the Silver Blood to eventually break down and die, striking first the engineering staff and subsequently spreading.
Having discovered their true nature after determining that the degradation only affected objects that had been on the ship before their visit to the demon planet – as well as testing the body of the recently-deceased B'Elanna Torres duplicate – the crew tried to land on another Y-class planet, only to be thwarted by the planet's claimants. Although the Janeway duplicate was initially resolved to continue their remembered journey to Earth – despite such issues as Tom Paris wondering why they should even bother obeying her since she had no "real" rank – the death of Chakotay forced Janeway to recognize that they couldn't continue in this manner, prompting her to order the ship to turn around so that they could reach the demon planet.
With the ship's degradation increasing as they progressed despite their use of Borg nanoprobes to try and stabilize the ship, the crew made a log buoy from non-Silver Blood components detailing their history for others to find, but it was destroyed in the torpedo tube before it could be launched. The ship and remaining crew literally fell apart in sight of the real USS Voyager; all hands were lost and the real Voyager never knew of the fate or even the existence of its counterpart, its discovery simply being a brief recording of an unknown tragedy. (VOY: "Course: Oblivion")
