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Klingon Blood
WHY IS KLINGON BLOOD PINK
IN STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, AND RED IN EVERY OTHER INSTANCE
SINCE?
The Canon Answer:
Not addressed.
The Lowdown/The Non-Canon Answer:
The Powers that Be were concerned that
the assassination and zero-g scenes of STVI:TUC would be too graphic and
bloody to warrant the MPAA rating they wanted, so they came up with a clever
solution: if the "blood" looked more like Pepto-Bismol, it wouldn't seem
as gory. The problem is, every time we've seen Klingon blood since--Worf
and K'Ehleyr's bloodletting in "The Emissary" and Soran bloodying the lip
of one of the Duras sisters in "Generations," to name just two--it's been
as crimson as human blood.
Of course there are many possible explanations
for this (for example, Klingons have different colored blood types), but
in coming up with an explanation, I wanted to take into account the following
factors:
-
Klingon complexion doesn't hint at pink
blood. Our human hues are partly influenced by our red blood (particularly
evident when we blush); Vulcan and Romulan makeup (Tuvok an exception)
has a greenish hue that adds to the illusion that the characters' copper-based
blood is green. But Klingons just don't look like they have Pepto-Bismol
blood.
-
McCoy and the others behaved at the scene
as if they expected the blood to be pink.
-
The pinkness of the blood was used to
underscore the discovery of some of the evidence on the Enterprise (the
boots, for example, that allegedly belonged to Dax--no relation to our
Trill, by the way, who was Torias Dax and a test pilot on Trill at the
time).
The most plausible explanation I could
come up with is that when the Klingon ship was hit, a conduit burst and
a particular gas that's part of the ship's systems was introduced into
the cabin's ventilation. This gas is commonly known to react with Klingon
blood in an unusual way, turning the blood pink.
RELATED TOPICS:
Klingon Foreheads
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to more questions back in MikeJonas' FAQ!