The Klingons are Coming!
or, Watch that Tan Friend!
© 2000 Bernd Wechner

Wearing sandals for two summers consequitively (European and Australian) I had harsh bands of pale white skin and dark tanned skin running across my feet. My instinctive reaction on seeing these was how sickly the white skin looked and how proud, strong, beautiful the tanned skin. Everyone who sees the feet seems to find a similar reaction. It's not much different between my dark tanned forearms and my pale white belly! The pale white is sickly, the good tan is healthy.

Now consider the starship Enterprise. In one picture, all is calm, and everyone is going about their business, partying, happy as can be. In another picture, the Klingons are attacking the ship, Kirk is yelling to Scotty for more power on the defensive shields, sirens are screaming across the whole ship, whooo, whooo, whooo, as bolts of energy rock the ship violently.

Which Enterprise makes better TV? Which Enterprise is healthier?

For people of central or northern European descent and egentic makeup (like me), it seems to me that the healthy Enterprise resembles my white skin, and the Klingon attack, the tanned skin, defensive shields up, against the bombardment of UV!

But then a tan is, like so many Klingons, that much more entertaining ...