Naah. The blood that doesn't look like blood was dictated solely by ratings concerns.
It's the TV shows' fault for not complying with yet another "scifiying" measure that was achieved with the big movie budgets. While Klingon blood had been darkish-reddish in a few TOS and TNG shots before, that's little different from the older Klingons having smooth foreheads, plastic-looking sidearms or almost featureless battle cruisers... Something best forgotten and overwritten.
Now we fans are left with the (admittedly fun) task of rationalizing away a fairly cool movie moment. We could always say that Klingon blood looks like that in zero gee only, or after being hit with a specific type of phaser setting. And when, in the complete version of the movie, the dark blood of Colonel West is declared non-Klingon, this need not mean that it should have been lavendel in color: the smell and consistency might be the wrong characteristics there, not the color.
As for Romulan foreheads vs. Vulcan ones, it might well be that the ridges are "variable tissue". Only an emotionally active Vulcanoid would fill his or her ridges with blood for that impressive forehead erection. A follower of Surak would never do that, but there would always be enough Romulans or Mintakans with a forehead-erectile dysfunction so that Spock could pass himself as one of those. Conversely, a Romulan might take pills or cold showers to be a more efficient secret agent among Vulcans.
Timo Saloniemi
It's the TV shows' fault for not complying with yet another "scifiying" measure that was achieved with the big movie budgets. While Klingon blood had been darkish-reddish in a few TOS and TNG shots before, that's little different from the older Klingons having smooth foreheads, plastic-looking sidearms or almost featureless battle cruisers... Something best forgotten and overwritten.
Now we fans are left with the (admittedly fun) task of rationalizing away a fairly cool movie moment. We could always say that Klingon blood looks like that in zero gee only, or after being hit with a specific type of phaser setting. And when, in the complete version of the movie, the dark blood of Colonel West is declared non-Klingon, this need not mean that it should have been lavendel in color: the smell and consistency might be the wrong characteristics there, not the color.
As for Romulan foreheads vs. Vulcan ones, it might well be that the ridges are "variable tissue". Only an emotionally active Vulcanoid would fill his or her ridges with blood for that impressive forehead erection. A follower of Surak would never do that, but there would always be enough Romulans or Mintakans with a forehead-erectile dysfunction so that Spock could pass himself as one of those. Conversely, a Romulan might take pills or cold showers to be a more efficient secret agent among Vulcans.
Timo Saloniemi
