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Midichlorian's are chemical compounds found within every living cell that forms the basis between the connection life and the Force. Without midichlorians, life would be impossible. The amount of midichlorians in a life form represents its ability to understand, comprehend, and manipulate the Force.

My name is Darth Incognitus, and I have decided to absorb more of these cells into my own body to make my force sensitive abilities stronger. To accomplish this, I have kidnapped numerous force sensitive users who match my blood type. When their midichlorian count has been measured, I will perform a blood transfusion from them to myself in order to absorb these cells. After I have attained enough of these cells, I will become the most powerful force user in the world and create my Sith empire. Then, I will use this method to strengthen my apprentices and students.

However, after a number of tries, I have noticed that my powers have not increased. No matter how many Jedi I murder and drain of blood, my abilities remain average. Why would this be the case?

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    $\begingroup$ +1. Someone @me when there's a frame challenge answer that recognizes this as a trolling rant complaining about how this broke Star Wars. $\endgroup$
    – Mazura
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 7:11
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    $\begingroup$ Because you haven't drunk enough <s>for it to make sense</s> to damage your liver enough to stop it filtering them out. $\endgroup$
    – Separatrix
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 10:25
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    $\begingroup$ Just out of curiosity, have you read Darths & Droids? $\endgroup$
    – Mason Wheeler
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 16:00
  • $\begingroup$ @Mason Wheeler never heard of that. $\endgroup$
    – Incognito
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 16:39
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    $\begingroup$ @Incognito You ought to look it up. It's a screencap webcomic that re-imagines Star Wars as a tabletop RPG campaign that went severely off the rails literally from the first scene. Without getting too deep into spoiler territory, a midi-chlorian blood transfusion to turn someone into a Jedi is a thing that happens at one point, and it's kind of significant to the overall plot. (Which, I'm sure you can already tell by that description, doesn't follow the movies' plotlines too closely, despite being based entirely on movie screencaps.) $\endgroup$
    – Mason Wheeler
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 16:46

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Because they are genetically foreign.

They immediately start to reject the body, and the body rejects them. Welcome to a force fight at the cellular level.

Immuno-suppressants allow the transfusion to succeed without ripping your body apart, but the downside is that they significantly hamper even your own ability to interact with the force, injecting extra barely raises you back to functioning.

Cloning ;)

Okay, genetically identical. Except that the Midichlorian's are already at saturation in your body, adding more of the same simply causes them to die off.

You might, through an ingenuous system of continuous transfusions keep yourself in a state of over-saturation. This would amp up the basic capacity for force manipulation (you will still need practice as with any fine motor control), but there are (semi-)permanent side-effects. The Midichlorian's learn that massive spikes occur, and reduce their overall numbers so as to survive long-term. You might recover to normal levels, it might be a permanent reduction.

Divergence

As the force wielder learns, the Midichlorians alter themselves physically. Even if they were cloned and successfully duplicated, reintroduction back into the body causes the equivalent of a theological argument between religious sects. At best nothing changes, at worst valuable skills (learning) are lost as the two sides duke it out, or the host dies.

In short you are extremely lucky to be alive.

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Because the blood level midichlorian equilibrium point is determined by your body's biochemistry. You can't alter this by adding more midichlorians. All that does is cause a temporary imbalance (way too short for your body to make use of it) that your body quickly fixes. Excess midichlorian gets filtered out by the kidneys and ends up down the drain. Literally.

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    $\begingroup$ Holy crap (so to speak) didn't I have enough to worry about - now I'm worried about the Cess-pit getting force powers. (Shudder) $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 0:22
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    $\begingroup$ Simply put; the bucket is full. You can add all the water you want, it wont get fuller. $\endgroup$
    – Martijn
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 9:05
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    $\begingroup$ Right, this is also why you can't treat High Blood Pressure by bloodletting. Well, I suppose you can, but the pressure just goes right back up in a few hours as the body naturally replaces the lost blood, so it's not a long or even a medium-term solution. The real problem is the body's regulation, and its idea of what ought to be normal not matching what doctors say it should be for optimum performance. $\endgroup$
    – Robert Columbia
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 13:10
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    $\begingroup$ So.. can I strap an unconscious Yoda to my back like a backpack and set up a blood shunt on tap, to be used just as I need to fire force powers, like a living force battery? $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 12:19
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    $\begingroup$ @FaySuggers So apparently it's officially cannon that the monster living in the garbage compressor that Luke/Han/leia escaped to in Episode 4 was force sensitive and attacked Luke in some attempt to awaken his force powers. I think we now know how it became force sensitive! $\endgroup$
    – dsollen
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 17:08
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Midichlorians are not what gives you the force, they are a by-product of being strong in the force. Excess psychic energy goes into making the midichlrians. All that blood is wasted because the midichlorians come from the force, not the force from midichlorians.

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    $\begingroup$ I love this answer. I'm not sure if it fits with what Qui Gon told Anakin about midichlorians, though. (And I'm not about to re-watch that scene to find out.) $\endgroup$
    – Wildcard
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 18:42
  • $\begingroup$ @Wildcard: What Qui Gon told Anakin was ambiguous as to if Midichlorians made one force sensitive or if they were merely appeared in people who were force sensitive. $\endgroup$
    – Mooing Duck
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 21:35
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    $\begingroup$ I would have said they are an immune system response to something (wave hand) that the force brings to a biological body. Obviously if your body can't feel the force at all, then there won't be a response. An outflow of this is that aliens that don't share human ancestry would probably have a different physiology, so a MidC test would be pointless for them, and thus in the interest of interspecies sensitivity we should drop this whole subject and never speak of it again. $\endgroup$
    – T.E.D.
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 16:23
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    $\begingroup$ @Wildcard who's to say that Qui Gon had everything right? $\endgroup$
    – Sdarb
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 17:06
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Homeostasis. Your body maintains an equilibrium, like blood or temperature

A normal human has around 5 litres of blood in their body. If you transfer a litter of to your body (and not die), would now you have 6 litres? Well... maybe, but not for much longer.

Or temperature, you are at 36℃, if you increase/decreases your body heat from your surrounding, will it stay in that forever? Of your not. Your body maintains a level of temperature, by warming up or cooling down at certain thresholds.

Your blood amount is also determined by your body, not your blood transfusions, if you have a lack of blood, your body will produce more to compensate it, and if you have too much, your body will dispatch the blood's water from kidneys, and red cells' will be recycled into bilirubin (yellow) in the spleen and that dispatched from duodenum as stercobilin (brown). Interesting transformation of colours, right?

Midichlorians are like blood, and a lot more things in our body, like hair, adipose tissue, temperature, etc. A transfusion may only increase the Midichlorians during a very short time (if the body is able in the first place to take advantage of them and don't die/get sick due an increased level), then the additional amount will be quickly destroyed/dispatch/recycled by your own body...

...Or maybe not, they aren't destroyed, but anyways they have a certain lifespan, so if you transfuse them to your body, they will work in you until they "get old" and die, like red cells (120 days). Then you should transfer more from the original source... or steal their Midichlorians's stem cells. That is up to you.

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  • $\begingroup$ Maybe compare to real-world blood doping for red blood cells? How long does that take to wear off? (Though as I recall, real-world blood doping is often done through hormone supplements rather than through blood transfusions. And maybe there are dangers to midichlorian doping, just as red blood cell doping thickens the blood and increases the risk of fatal blood clots.) $\endgroup$
    – Daniel Schepler
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 22:51
  • $\begingroup$ @DanielSchepler Autologous blood doping is a thing apparently (athlete has blood or red blood cells taken in the off season and stored until competition time) $\endgroup$
    – Chris H
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 15:41
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Pure math.

If you mix two liquids together, whatever makes them special doesn't get stronger. You get the average strength of both.

Say you mix a strong and a weak beer together, the strength will be in between the strength of the two.

You do need a bigger container though.

After all those transfusions, his midichlorian level is the average of all the people he transfused from. His body will contain a bit more blood though.

This also dictates that he can never get stronger then the strongest Jedi he kidnaps. So unless he finds out a way to extract the midichlorians from the blood, he's out of luck.

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Putting more fuel in your tank is not going to make your car drive any faster.

Midichlorians are a resource, but it's unclear how this resource is being activated. If, for example, the brain uses midichlorians in order to send out a psionic signal which connects to the Force; then there's a natural cap at your brainpower.

For example, let's say your villain's body actually generates less midichlorians than their brain can use. At this point, adding more midichlorians to their blood will in fact increase their brain's psionic output as it is no longer running at suboptimal efficiency due to lack of midichlorians.

Analogy: Your car will run better on a tank of gas than it will on fumes.

However, if the villain already generates enough midichlorians to saturate their brainpower at full capacity; then adding more midichlorians to their blood is not going to help, the bottleneck is their brain capacity.

Analogy: Putting even more fuel in your tank is not going to make your car drive any faster.

This creates the option for you to have the villain initially see some improvement, but then very quickly plateau.

Note

I suggested that midichlorians are consumed by the brain and regenerated by the body; but the same would work if midichlorians were considered a catalyst which does not get consumed (nor regenerated). The brain can only use so many midichlorians at one time.

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The fundamental answer is that any attempt to do such a thing would violate the unspoken worldwide agreement to act as if the whole midichlorian thing from Ep 1 isn't really canon, and in fact never happened. This has been going great so far, particularly considering its a conspiracy that approximately 7.7 billion people are in on.

Any attempt to poke the nest by asking for an explanation might make future writers feel like they need to address it. That threatens to make it more canon, not less, so Shhhhh!

(waves hand).

This is not the question you are looking for.

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A blood transfusion wouldn't change the number of midichlorians in your other cells and there's no reason to think that your red blood cells are particularly important to your sensitivity to the force...especially when compared to, say, your brain cells and your nerve cells which seem much more likely to mediate between your mind and the Force.

That being said it's actually pretty likely that such a villain would experience a boost in their ability to use the force. Combine the placebo effect with the Force and you could get some real action.

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    $\begingroup$ More importantly: Red blood cells lack a cell nucleus, and most organelles, to maximise the amount of oxygen they can carry, as do Platelets. This probably means that they also don't contain any midiclorians either! White blood cells might, but only make up 0.7% of your blood. $\endgroup$
    – Chronocidal
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 16:17
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Obviously blood can only contain a certain density of midichlorians or it would clog up and ultimately become solid. Your body will naturally break down any excess of midichlorians and convert them into fat. This is what happened to Jabba the Hutt.

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  • $\begingroup$ This would be a fun theory but it wouldn't make much sense lore wise. An average person has midiclorians levels of 2,500 but the highest every recorded was Anakin at 20,000, with some Sith proposing that anything over 15,000 would be a being made of pure force.... I don't even think the Hutts are force sensitive, just immune to Jedi mind tricks. $\endgroup$
    – Shadowzee
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 0:03
  • $\begingroup$ @Shadowzee: Who says coagulated midichlorians don't lose their psionic (for lack of a better word) ability yet still provide an innate defense against psionic interference? $\endgroup$
    – Flater
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 11:08
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Midichlorians act as a mediator between the Force, the mind, and the body, all three acting in concert. Because of this, midichlorians aren't just sensitive to the force, but to the unique pecularities of each person's body chemistry and bioelectric field. These things change over time, of course, but it happens slowly enough that the organs which produce midichlorians can adapt as a person grows.

The shock of being suddenly removed from one body and transplanted into another is too quick for the midichlorians to adapt. Given enough time, they would indeed "learn" how to work with another person's body and mind, as theory might state. The problem is preventing the body from rejecting and excreting them before that happens: it just plain takes too long. This is not something your sith has mastered.

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When in trouble, in sci-fy, put a machine to do it for you

What that mean is basically a reminder than Darth Vader was a reality, and Star Wars have A TON of technology designed to replace organs and/or keep alive people.

With that in mind, you, oh so great Darth Incognitus need a machine than allow you control the response of your body against it's midiclorians.

If the force or your body stand in the way of you being more powerfull, You need to control them!

If you need an automatic control of your natural filtering organs, they can be replaced by synthetic versions of them specialy modified to make your midiclorian administration as you want.

What happend? your blood cells are not designed to resist the influx of new Midichlorian? doesn't matter, replace the medula of your bones (which if i remember correctly, replace the blood lossed) for a machine than do replace blood BUT make it just in the way you need it for achieve your "Darth intentions" (pun intended).

Is your brain affecting the process? doesn't matter, put an artificial part of your brain than do exactly what your brain used to do OR put a machine than counterweight the efect of that part of your brain just in the right way to make the effect you want.

In time you'll become more and more of a machine Darth Incognitus!, but we all know than Power only respond to Inmortality! and all we know than Machines are inmortal!

PS: if you like my answer and are making something related to starwars, make a character kinda like a teck-priest and put the name 'Kradathon' in some way connected to it, you decide what the name means, it would be a cool way to say "thanks". :D

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Pseudo Rh incompatibility.

Going to the dark side produces changes in your Force field, and this in turn alters your personal midichlorian ecosystem so that it becomes hostile to non-Dark midichlorians. Transfused blood is simply destroyed within your body.

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    $\begingroup$ Soooo.... the answer is to start your own dark-side school and drain them right before they hit the cusp of destroying you themselves? $\endgroup$
    – Geobits
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 20:39
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Midichlorian's are not the bottleneck in this equation. Your body and brain have developed "Force pathways" to make use of the amount of Midichlorian's you naturally have in your blood. They finished developing at the age of 16. You can add all the chemicals you want to your blood now, but your body and brain simply can't use them for anything--they can't handle that much Force.

Now if you'd started these transfusions before you turned 16 and your body finished developing it's Force pathways though... Have you thought about creating a test experiment heir to your power?

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If you try it, your midichlorians might fight each other to the death.

What if what modern science calls midichlorians are actually the immortal beings of ancient legend, the Whills? These microscopic sentient creatures are the true masters of the Force, and they are at war. To them, Jedi and Sith are just fleshy Death Stars that they use to attack each other.

"[The next three Star Wars films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. But there's this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force." - George Lucas

(This nearly became canon... but then he sold the franchise to Disney, who seem to be taking it in a different direction)

If you mix light and dark midichlorians, they'll go to war inside your body and destroy each other, and possibly you.

A Jedi will obviously never try this trick on other Jedi. A Sith might consume other Sith, but as we all know Sith are very cranky and do not play well with others. The dark Whills who drive them may have a similar temperament, so mixing rival factions of dark Whills in one body could also mess you up.

But ultimately, the Whills are in charge, not you. This plan could work, but only if the midichlorians in your body and your victim's body want it to work.

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