Arts Diary: Back to Black

Arts Diary: Back to Black:  Everyman

Arts Diary: Doubt

Arts Diary: Doubt:  Alma Tavern

Doctor Who Season 16: The Pirate Planet (2)

[Patreon Supporters have already read all five parts of this essay, and are currently reading my deep dive into Stones of Blood. Why not join them?]

Douglas Adams is a big name. A really big name. It's hard to overestimate just how vastly, hugely, mind bogglingly big his name is. I mean, you may think that "the Philippine army's retreat from Rejivic" is a terrific line, but that's just peanuts to Douglas Adams. Listen.... 

[This has been done before. Ed.]

The Pirate Planet catches Adams on the cusp of his success. It was transmitted between 30 September and 21 October 1978: the novelisation of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy was published on October 12th. When Episode One started, Adams was the up-and-coming writer of a "cult" radio show. By the time Episode Four came to an end, he was a best selling author.

The writing of the two works are rather hopelessly intertwined. The Pirate Planet was green lit just after the pilot episode of Hitch Hiker was recorded: Adams would have been working on the final Doctor Who scripts while the radio show was being made. Watching the Pirate Planet today, it's hard to avoid the sense that Adams is referencing his more famous work. The Hitch-Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy is so vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big [Stop it. Ed.] that innocuous expressions, two digit numbers and bathroom accoutrements, have taken on disproportionate significance in relation to it. In Episode Two of Pirate Planet, the Captain threatens Kimus with torture, and the Doctor tells Kimus not to panic. A reference to the words printed in large friendly letters on the cover of the most wholly remarkable [I won't tell you again -- Ed] or merely the Doctor engaging in some typically flippant understatement?

"Standing around all day looking tough must be very wearing on the nerves" says the Doctor to two of the Captain's guards as they escort him along the low-inertia corridor. "Long hours, violence, no intellectual stimulation." This obviously recalls Ford Prefect's speech to the Vogon Security Guard in the Hitchhiker pilot, although it is not (as is sometimes said) a direct quote. (What Ford says is "Do you really enjoy this sort of thing? Does it give you a full satisfying life? Stomping around, shouting, pushing other people out of spaceships?") And the two contexts are very different. Ford is genuinely trying to persuade the Vogon to question his life-choices and let them go; the Doctor is just making disdainful conversation with a couple of goons.  Tom Baker delivers the lines in such an off-hand way you could easily miss them.

Certainly, Adams wasn't above planting in-jokes in his works. In Destiny of the Daleks (1979) he will show the Doctor reading a book by one Oolon Celuphid (a frequently referenced off-stage character in the Guide.) And he named the lead singer of Disaster Area after a Camden Town estate agent. But in this case I don't think he is hiding easter eggs. He isn't even recycling jokes. He's just being Douglas Adams, writing in Douglas Adams' idiom. There are bound to be verbal echoes:

Captain: The whole infrastructure of quantum physics was in retreat!

Marvin: Pausing only to reconstruct the whole infrastructure of integral mathematics in his head...

Doctor: Lying in the street exactly where I wasn't expecting to find it.

Narrator: They hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't.

Doctor: I'll never be cruel to a particle in an accelerator again.

Arthur: I'll never be cruel to a gin and tonic again.

The shouty Captain is not so very far removed from Prostenic Vogon Jeltz ("I appear to have just wiped out half my crew") and, indeed, to the security officer on the B Ark; and the idea of the planet Earth being wiped out, in passing, because the Captain needs a supply of Quartz makes one think of hyperspatial bypasses and games of four dimensional bar-billiards.

But more nebulously, the whole thing has a very Douglassy feel to it. When the Doctor needs to get into the Captain's base he uses, not the sonic screwdriver, but a safety pin, explaining that the more sophisticated a defence system is, the more vulnerable it is to a simple form of attack. I don't know if that's actually true: does Fort Knox really suffer from burglars with masks and crowbars? But this was the era of farm boys, torpedos and exhaust ports. The Captain is finally brought down by someone literally putting a spanner in the works. (The Mentiads use telekinesis to smash the power generator with a wrench.) This could almost stand as a motif for Douglas Adams philosophy: a techno-prophet who maintained a healthy cynicism about technology. 

I would baulk a little at describing the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy as "comedy". The BBC initially regarded it as a "drama" because comedy is by definition filmed in front of a live audience with laugh tracks. It is certainly very funny indeed: but rewatching the much-maligned TV version recently, what struck me was not the jokes (which I had heard before) or the special effects (which are not very good) but the sheer breadth of vision; the number of over-the-top idea that are lightly tossed out in each thirty minute segment. It's a story which starts with the destruction of the earth and ends up in the stone age, managing to take in artificial planets, the fall of the galactic empire, and the secret of the universe en route. But you have to already like science fiction to find it funny: mundanes were on the whole baffled by it.

After the destruction of the Earth, poor Arthur Dent winds up on a planet which constructs other planets: indeed, in one of the series' central ironies, it turns out that the Magratheans originally created the Earth. A planet which makes planets is a great SF idea: but Magrathea is itself essentially mundane. It's an expensive business providing luxury items to clients who want new planets for the most trivial of reasons. In the same way that he satirised the Internet before the Internet quite existed: so he preempted Thatcher's "loadsamoney" economy by almost a decade.

It's a kind of conceptual illusion. Look once, and you see something big and cosmic out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. (In some versions, Marvin plays Thus Sprach Zarathustra for Arthur's benefit.) Look again, and you see a shady 1980s property company. The destruction of the earth is essentially trivial: it was "demolished" rather than "destroyed", like a pretty cottage in the way of a road-widening scheme. But the earth turns out to be more significant than we realised: it was created as part of a project to discover the meaning of life. Except that the meaning of life (not to mention the universe, and for that matter, everything) turns out to be pretty silly; and the extra-dimensional beings mainly want to know the Answer so they can make witty jokes about it on chat shows. And they present themselves as white mice. Everything is simultaneously bigger and smaller than you thought: life on earth has a point, but it's a pointless point; life the universe and everything have a meaning, but its a meaningless meaning.

But it isn't quite a parody or a skit. Deep Though is definitely funnier than the Eternals, or the Monolith, or Cthulhu, or the Fendahl, or any of the other beings who have turned out to be "behind" human history all along. But Deep Thought does the space-god thing better -- more imaginatively, more evocatively -- than all the entities who have done it seriously. Nowadays, when we see Captain Kirk encountering a computer that thinks it's God, which he does about one week in three, we don't say "That's the serious thing of which the Hitch-Hiker's Guide was a parody". We say "Douglas Adams did that better."

The Pirate Planet doesn't have the same breadth of imagination as Hitch Hiker. But it inhabits the same conceptual space. One could perfectly well imagine Arthur Dent on Zanak or the Doctor on Magrathea. The Captain is absurd: but he's terrifying because he's absurd. There is something pleasing and frightening about the idea that the Earth might be wiped out in passing by a silly man cos-playing Captain Hook. And there's an underlying Dawkinsianism at play. (This was before Doug and Dick became besties.) We think we're jolly important on our planet, but from the universe's point of view, we barely register.

Hitchhiker and Pirate Planet -- and the whole aborted masterpiece of Season Seventeen -- speak to a world where the 1970s are passing, and the 1980s are struggling to be born: the moment before the internet and the home computer boom; before we put phones in our pockets and mainstreamed geekery.

Douglas Adams was big. Really big. When he appeared on Desert Island Discs, Sue Lawley couldn't help noticing his BMW and his Rolex watch. Neil Gaiman knew both Terry Pratchett and Alan Moore: but he said that Douglas Adams was the only bona fide genius he ever met. 

And he started out writing for the daft little TV show we love so much.

Serious face.

I currently have 62 Patreon followers, paying me very roughly £80 dollars per article.

Every single follow is a huge vote of confidence and massively appreciated; as, indeed, is every comment and every reader. (I am reminded of aline by favourite singer/songwriter: “It still blows my mind each time they let me play to anyone.”)

However, it remains true that I lost about five followers during March, on top of the ones I have lost since the beginning of the year, and any further drop in followers would be A Little Alarming.

I reduced the amount of hours I work on my day-job in 2022 specifically to spend more time writing; and Patreon remains my primary income stream.

I am only semi-serious when I say that I think my political writing drives people away. Certainly people have walked away (and in some cases stopped talking to me altogether) because of my shockingly right wing / shockingly left wing views. But I am sure it’s mostly because Times Are Hard and setting up monthly payments is a certain amount of hassle.

I also have to consider that I have over the last twenty years said absolutely everything I have to say on absolutely every subject, and that it is time to start looking for another hobby. I turn out to be quite good at singing sea shanties, for certain values of "singing". And obviously the Trolls said a long time ago that I had simply lost my marbles.

It’s definitely the case that if I find my Patreon followers go UP this month when I start writing about Doctor Who again, I am more likely to write about Doctor Who (or start some other Great Big Geek project). I set up a little Readers Poll for Patreon Supporters, which seems to show that the engaged followers are basically fine with me going off on one about Woke from time to time.

Coming this month:

I am writing my way around the 1978 Doctor Who story Stones of Blood, including a wild digression about Ley-lines, stone-circles and evangelicalism. I am hoping to do another Video Diary before too long. 

If this is even slightly interesting, do please consider clicking on the little button and pushing my follower back up to a healthy 70 or so. 

Pledge $1 an article to support this blog.

Pledge $2 an article to support this blog

Pledge $5 an article to support this blog.

Doctor Who Season 16: The Pirate Planet (1)

Patreon supporters have already read all five parts of this essay. Why not join them?

We got as far as Billy Shears and then said "Oh, sod it, let's just do tracks."

Ringo Starr

The Pirate Planet is utterly joyous.

Flawed, of course, but joyous.

The Graham Williams era (1977-80) does not have a good reputation with fans. For many years, "Season Seventeen" was a swear-word, as foul in the '80s as "Chibnall Era" is today. And sure, Baker's later years -- Seasons 15, 16 and 17 -- can seem silly and cheap and pantomimic. They are not serious grown up children's drama, like the best of the black and white years; but nor are they as scary and edgy and beautiful as much of the Hinchcliff era.

But I don't care. The Pirate Planet contains the core DNA of Doctor Who. Bundle it together with Star Wars and the Micronauts. Make a mental note that Howard the Duck and Cerebus the Aardvark were going completely over my head at roughly the same time. There was a rising vibe. The Universe is big and absurd and exciting and terrifying and small and cosy and funny all at the same time.

This is what Doctor Who is all about. This is who I am.

Yes, it has flaws. They are the flaws of the era, so we can mostly forgive them: even look on them with a kind of warm affection.

There is a certain stylistic inconsistency. The first shot is a model of an alien city. A perfectly good model; a rather primitive city, maybe an oasis in a desert; with even a slight Tatooine vibe. But there's a big Tracy Island structure lodged in the mountains which overlook the city. [NOTE 1] We don't particularly care that it's "only a model": that's what we expect planetary exteriors to look like.

When Romana and the Doctor arrive in the city, we aren't particularly surprised to discover that they are on a stage set. A perfectly good stage set. There are arches and Greek columns and a floor which is a little too obviously a studio. Groups of extras enter stage left and exit stage right and the Doctor tries to talk to them. We expect Doctor Who to follow stage-logic. If the BBC had been able to afford a hustling bustling crowded market place, the gag about everyone ignoring the Doctor but talking to Romana ("she is prettier than you") would have been harder to pull off.

When we move to the interior of the futuristic structure on the mountain-- the evil Captain's "bridge" -- we leave behind the world of am-dram and move into the world of low-budget movies. Into, in fact, the world of "BBC Sci-Fi" which is practically a genre in its own right. There are some glitches: the most advanced ship in the universe apparently uses old-fashioned rotary telephones, and Mr Fibuli, the Captain's snivelling henchman, seems to be wearing twentieth century glasses -- but it's big and futuristic and the set-designers are thinking in three dimensions. There are pyramid shaped banks of controls. There are characters in grey uniforms who hand each other important looking files; there are black-clad stormtroopers who stand stock still. A bad guy in red, who at first we only see from behind, presides over it all. [NOTE 2] There are only seven actors on the set, but it manages to look crowded. This is how spaceship interiors have always looked; this is how spaceship interiors are meant to look; this is how we expect spaceship interiors to look. We're only a couple of rels from the Liberator.

But then a group of telepathic zombie cultists -- the "Mentiads" -- leave their secret cave and advance towards the city. We see them en route, shambling through what is quite clearly a British National Park: Coity Mountain in Wales, in point of fact. A grassy hill looks like a grassy hill: but the use of a real, recognisable location creates not verisimilitude but artificiality. [NOTE 3.] When the cultists, in saffron robes, are attacked by stormtroopers, in black leather armour, we feel that what we are watching is a live action roleplaying game. A perfectly well costumed and well choreographed roleplaying game. Later, we go to the spot where the Captain is strip mining the planet for its precious minerals. The mine is meant to be automated. It is so advanced that it can suck everything out of a planet in a matter of minutes; and then shrink the planet down to the size of a conker. But what we see is clearly a late 1970s coal mine, shortly before Maggie-Maggie-Maggie closed them all down. It's Blaenavon pit, in fact, now a museum: a convenient twenty minute drive from Coity Mountain.

And yes, we can use our Imaginations. We can say that the Big Pit is standing in for the automated mine, and that Berkley Power Station is standing in for the Captain's terrifyingly advanced hyperspace engines. After all, a little band of gold-coloured cardboard can perfectly well stand in for the crown of Henry V. When we do speak of hyperspace engines, think that you do see them, and all that that entails. It's the differences in style -- the clashes -- which pull us out of the action. It's hard to parse a model, a stage set, a park and an industrial site as part of a single artistic creation -- let alone a piece of coherent world-building. I found it particularly hard to convince myself that the filmed-on-location hyperspace engines were on the other side of the filmed-in-a-studio sliding doors (which K-9 spends Episode Four entirely failing to open.) I honestly think that a painted backdrop and a sign saying "To the mine" would have done the job better.

The actual "special effects" -- miniatures and costumes and animation and what not -- are good-by-the-standards-of-the-time. The air cars, which ferry characters to and from the bridge, are full sized props. They look, in keeping with the pirate theme, like small boats. Not unlike Jon Pertwee's infamous Whomobile, in fact. Colour separation overlay (green screen) was still in its infancy and the BBC tended to overestimate what could be done with it. But the props move not displeasingly in front of photographic backgrounds; while Mary Tamm and Tom Baker mime movement and a special effects technician blows their hair with an off-stage fan.

The pirate Captain has a robot parrot. Of course he does. And as we know, the Doctor has a robot dog. The Doctor has always had a robot dog. K-9 isn't merely a companion, he's an extension of the Doctor's being, as much a fixture as the Sonic Screwdriver and the TARDIS. In the penultimate episode, K-9 kills the parrot. Of course he does. Two robots; two friends; two pets: naturally, they fight. It's no ILM effects sequence: but a bit of whizzing across blue-screen backgrounds and some optically added laser beams convey the idea of a fight. K-9's ray gun and the parrot's bombs look like something out of a video game. But a Star Wars quality dog fight (or indeed, dog-and-parrot fight) wouldn't necessarily have improved the joke. It might even have spoiled it. The suggestion of K-9 versus Polyphase Avatron is more fun than any possible implementation of it. [NOTE 4]

When the parrot executes the Captain's minions, it uses a gun sticking out of its front end; its "beak". When fighting K-9, it appears to drop bombs from its stern. Silly people have said it looks as if the bird is shitting on the dog. I think we are supposed to think that it is laying eggs. Which is not a great deal more sensible.

The BBC head of serials thought that Pirate Planet was far too silly. He wanted to cancel the story altogether, because it was dragging Doctor Who too far in the direction of comedy. Since BBC high command had issued instructions, post-Deadly Assassin, that the show should become less violent and less horrific, it is hard to see what other direction Graham Williams could have dragged it in.

But it is silly. Mary Tamm and Tom Baker's dialogue sometimes sounds a little too much like a music-hall cross-talk act. When K-9 dumps some expository pseudo-science, the Doctor breaks the fourth wall, looks to the audience, and says "That's what I thought." (A silly moment: but it puts the Doctor conspiratorially in league with the viewer and reminds us that despite his all knowing robot companion and his better qualified assistant, it's still his show.) There's a stupid joke about a "linear induction" corridor which "works by neutralising inertia" -- meaning that when it's switched on, no-one can move along it, and when it's switched off, everyone is shot down it at great speed. The Doctor's temporary companion, the wet rebel Kimus, demonstrates this by running on the spot, which looks merely stupid.

But there are good jokes as well. I enjoy the moment when there seems to be an anachronistic ring at Kimus's family's doorbell: and we cut to the Doctor holding a tiny Chinese handbell that he presumably found in his pocket. I like the Doctor's smart Alec dialogue: "Well, I just put one point seven nine five three seven two and two point two oh four six two eight together." And I still like the conscious eccentricity. When the Doctor needs to lure a guard away from his air-car, he lays a false trail of liquorice allsorts [NOTE 5]

But the story as a whole can't be read as comedy. The hollow teleporting planet, the cyborg space pirate with a robot parrot, the ancient queen projecting herself into her own hologram; the trophy room of shrunken planets -- these ideas may be absurd, but we don't laugh at them.

I don't even think it can be described as camp. (I'm not quite sure anything apart from the 1966-68 Batman TV show can be described as camp, which increases my respect for Batman quite considerably.) To be camp is to laugh at your own seriousness, to be so dead-pan it's funny. Tom Baker's reaction when he discovers the true nature of the Captain's schemes is deadly serious; but I don't think we are supposed to be amused by him not being amused. If anything, we are watching dead-serious actors being confronted by absurd situations and not seeing the joke. We certainly enjoy the incongruity: the whole idea of a TV show where a crazy man with a fake parrot is engaged in "one of the most heinous crime ever committed in this galaxy". But we mainly enjoy the big huge over-the-top science fictional concepts as big huge over-the-top science fiction concepts. Hollow teleporting planets. Telepaths who absorb the life force of dead populations. An ancient matriarch frozen in the last seconds of life, transferring her essence into a hard-light hologram. A collection of dwarf planets arranged in a perfect gravitational pattern. 

Pirate Planet is bringing a post-Star-Wars epic sensibility to Doctor Who: bigger than the biggest space-opera, with a tongue positioned a few millimetres north of its cheek -- but with an inconsistent, homemade feel which stops us from fully believing in it. And maybe if we did fully believe in it it would stop being so joyous. 

Silly? Comedy? Camp? Whimsical?

The word we are actually groping for had not quite been coined in 1978. Pirate Planet is Adamsian. Pertaining to the works of Douglas Adams.

Adamic is already taken, and means something entirely different.

NOTE 1

James Goss has novelised the Pirate Planet twice: once fairly faithful Target style write-up of the TV show, and another much more expansive version based on Douglas Adams original scripts. In his longer novelisation, he says that the structure in the mountains -- the Captain's 'bridge"-- is meant to look as if a spaceship has crashed into the mountain, but that doesn't come across in the miniature.

NOTE 2

James Goss thinks this is important; in both the long and the short novelisations he pointedly describes the Captain's chair and states that he isn't allowed to tell you what the Captain looks like yet.

NOTES 3

Goss implies that the Mentiads have to cross a desert to reach the city.

NOTE 4

James Goss describes the robot thus: "its eyes were bloody diamonds, its sharp plumage a spread of precious metals, its claws and beak titanium." The TV version looks like a bird-shaped copper cylinder. If it wasn't sitting rather clumsily on the Captain's shoulder you might not realise it was meant to be a parrot. 

NOTE 5 

Not jelly babies. Earlier in the episode Romana took a bag of jelly babies from the Doctor's pocket, so we may be intended to think that he has run out. Or maybe the little round coconut rolls have more visual appeal. In the novel, James Goss curiously suggests that one of the Doctor's favourite things is "Dolly Mixture" which are kind of like all-sorts only without the liquorice. Ten years later, the seventh Doctor would confront a psychotic robot made of allsorts. 

Serious face.

I currently have 62 Patreon followers, paying me very roughly £80 dollars per article.
Every single follow is a huge vote of confidence and massively appreciated; as, indeed, is every comment and every reader. (I am reminded of aline by favourite singer/songwriter: “It still blows my mind each time they let me play to anyone.”)
However, it remains true that I lost about five followers during March, on top of the ones I have lost since the beginning of the year, and any further drop in followers would be A Little Alarming.
I reduced the amount of hours I work on my day-job in 2022 specifically to spend more time writing; and Patreon remains my primary income stream.
I am only semi-serious when I say that I think my political writing drives people away. Certainly people have walked away (and in some cases stopped talking to me altogether) because of my shockingly right wing / shockingly left wing views. But I am sure it’s mostly because Times Are Hard and setting up monthly payments is a certain amount of hassle.

I also have to consider that I have over the last twenty years said absolutely everything I have to say on absolutely every subject, and that it is time to start looking for another hobby. I turn out to be quite good at singing sea shanties, for certain values of "singing". And obviously the Trolls said a long time ago that I had simply lost my marbles.

It’s definitely the case that if I find my Patreon followers go UP this month when I start writing about Doctor Who again, I am more likely to write about Doctor Who (or start some other Great Big Geek project). I set up a little Readers Poll for Patreon Supporters, which seems to show that the engaged followers are basically fine with me going off on one about Woke from time to time.
Coming this month:
I am writing my way around the 1978 Doctor Who story Stones of Blood, including a wild digression about Ley-lines, stone-circles and evangelicalism. I am hoping to do another Video Diary before too long. 

If this is even slightly interesting, do please consider clicking on the little button and pushing my follower back up to a healthy 70 or so. 

Pledge $1 an article to support this blog.

Pledge $2 an article to support this blog

Pledge $5 an article to support this blog.

An Important Message From Your Host.

Serious face.

I currently have 62 Patreon followers, paying me very roughly £80 dollars per article.

Every single follow is a huge vote of confidence and massively appreciated; as, indeed, is every comment and every reader. (I am reminded of aline by favourite singer/songwriter: “It still blows my mind each time they let me play to anyone.”)

However, it remains true that I lost about five followers during March, on top of the ones I have lost since the beginning of the year, and any further drop in followers would be A Little Alarming.

I reduced the amount of hours I work on my day-job in 2022 specifically to spend more time writing; and Patreon remains my primary income stream.

I am only semi-serious when I say that I think my political writing drives people away. Certainly people have walked away (and in some cases stopped talking to me altogether) because of my shockingly right wing / shockingly left wing views. But I am sure it’s mostly because Times Are Hard and setting up monthly payments is a certain amount of hassle.

I also have to consider that I have over the last twenty years said absolutely everything I have to say on absolutely every subject, and that it is time to start looking for another hobby. I turn out to be quite good at singing sea shanties, for certain values of "singing". And obviously the Trolls said a long time ago that I had simply lost my marbles.

It’s definitely the case that if I find my Patreon followers go UP this month when I start writing about Doctor Who again, I am more likely to write about Doctor Who (or start some other Great Big Geek project). I set up a little Readers Poll for Patreon Supporters, which seems to show that the engaged followers are basically fine with me going off on one about Woke from time to time.

Coming this month:

I am writing my way around the 1978 Doctor Who story Stones of Blood, including a wild digression about Ley-lines, stone-circles and evangelicalism. I am hoping to do another Video Diary before too long. 

If this is even slightly interesting, do please consider clicking on the little button and pushing my follower back up to a healthy 70 or so. 

Pledge $1 an article to support this blog.

Pledge $2 an article to support this blog

Pledge $5 an article to support this blog.

A little bit extra

 

Support Andrew on Patreon -- £1 per article. 

Why Andrew Is Still Writing About Why Andrew Is Still Not Writing About Politics

"Don't be mean with the beans, Mum. Beanz meanz Heinz."

1: Oh, adult human female who has procreated or adopted! Be more generous when distributing the edible seeds of climbing plants! Unrelatedly, "Edible seed of climbing plant" is synonymous with a German name meaning "Ruler of the House"!

2: Mother: Give us generous portions of cooked haricot beans in tomato sauce, because the words "cooked haricot beans in tomato sauce" mean the same as the words "Heinz canning company."

3: Although many varieties of canned baked bean are available, if you mention canned baked beans, people automatically assume you mean the variety manufactured by Heinz, because the quality is so high. So if you have children, you ought to give them large portions.

4: If you buy Heinz baked beans rather than any other kind, your children will be pleased.

5: The kinds of people who like Heinz baked beans are the kinds of people who would notice that the name of the product and the name of the manufacturer assonate. That's because they are a fun, informal product to be enjoyed on fun, informal occasions

6: Buy our product.

What does woke mean?

What, indeed, does anything mean? Even the most innocent expressions are fraught with ambiguity. We learned this last year when trying to translate some of the more gnomic Thoughts of Chairman Musk. 

For some time now, my working hypothesis has been that the word woke is synonymous with ethnic (and minority representation): it is used primarily by people who believe that ethnic representation is an unreservedly bad thing or (to translate that into plain English) racists. 

"Doctor Who is woke" (on this theory) translates as "Black characters appear in Doctor Who, and this is bad", or alternatively "Only white characters ought to appear in Doctor Who."

I decided to unscientifically test this hypothesis.

This afternoon, I looked up the twenty most recent pejorative usages of the W-word on the right wing hate site formerly known as Twitter. I ignored non-English messages, messages from people who include "Woke" in their user names but not in the tweet and messages which only contained links.

I don't think the results were especially surprising. Obviously one would need a larger sample to prove the hypothesis. But I think they are worth recording.

The Experiment

About fourteen of the posts related primarily or secondarily to race, religion or immigration. The tweets that I saw did not contain hateful tropes or slurs about black people or Jewish people: but they did complain obsessively (in both England and the UK) about "immigration" and (less frequently) "Islam".

Five or six of the posts used "woke" generically to refer to liberal or left wing viewpoints; 5% used the slogan "go woke, go broke". Racial, religious and political definitions were frequently conflated. Two or three used "woke" unintelligibly to refer to "bad thing" or "thing I dislike". Two or three used the word primarily to mean "Islamic" or "pro-Islamic". I saw only a couple of specific references to gender. 

I spotted no positive or neutral uses of the word -- no posts where black people or liberals exhorted each other to be more "woke". There were some ironic usages ("I suppose people will say that such-and-such is too woke...") and some critical usages ("Someone silly has implausibly claimed that such-and-such a thing is woke.") One hopeful sign is that "anti-woke" may be passing into the lingo as a synonym for "silly right wing person."

In the 80s and 90s, when the "PC gone mad" panic was at its height, "political correctness" was still occasionally used in a neutral or descriptive way. ("The Spastics Society is now called Scope because this is felt to be more politically correct"). No equivalent usage of the w-word shows up on my radar.

I didn't see much sign of a consistent conspiracy theory; but the posts seemed to take for granted the existence of a malevolent third party pulling the strings. The US Army is run by "brainwashed socialists"; and the UK immigration system is "overseen by the woke". 

There is a strong implication of weakness, hypocrisy and insincerity in accusations of wokeness. 

On the basis of this very small sample, it seems clear that "woke" does not refer to any one group or belief-system; nor does it precisely scapegoat any particular minority, although it is overwhelmingly hostile to what it calls "immigrants". But it pretty consistently speaks to an inchoate ambience:

1: Everything is terrible

2: Someone is to blame for everything being terrible.

3: The people who are to blame for everything being terrible are a malevolent third party who insincerely advance the interests of black people, immigrants, trans people and Muslims for unspecified nefarious purposes.

4: In so far as this group has any specific characteristics, it can be said to be weak and hypocritical.

Summary

Who is woke?

Show Your Working

Text of Tweet

Proposed Definition of Woke

Blogger Commentary

We granted citizenship to 202,000 people in 2023. The success rate for citizenship applications for the UK is 99%. One of the highest rates in the world. Our citizenship tests are weak and overseen by the woke. Then need to be fixed by @reformparty_uk

Woke: [1] Insufficiently Hostile to Immigrants

The Citizenship test has always been a formality in which people who have already been given the right to remain answer questions about where they would find Big Ben and which poems William Wordsworth wrote: you would expect the pass rate to be close to 100%. But the poster imagines it to be a system for preventing undesirable foreigners remaining in the UK, which is not being applied with sufficient rigour. 

Cuban says winning arguments with young adults on Instagram and TikTok is so much easier than X. Mark Cuban was handed his head by @TheRabbitHole84 and @elonmusk repeatedly when he said stupid woke S$#% while virtue signalling.

Woke: [1] Liberal views, insincere 

[2]Insufficiently right wing. 

[3] Insufficiently supportive of Elon Musk.

Obscure: so far as I can tell this refers to Mark Cuban, generally thought to be an objectivist/libertarian. "Virtue signalling" almost always refers to insincerely held liberal values, so I take it that he is being blamed for being insufficiently right wing. (One of my former Labour friends regards the Green Party as virtue signallers by definition.)

It’s the woke white folk who feel they have to stand up for the appressed [sic] and be the voice to make them feel like they are the true humanitarian.. Horse Stuff! [Poo Emoji]

Woke: [1] Insufficiently hostile to racial minorities 

[2] Disapproval of derogatory imagery, insincere. 

This Tweet refers to campaigns to remove stereotypical imagery of Native Americans from football logos. The specific issue may be nuanced, if as one contributor says, the logos were often originally created by or in consultation with native Americans. "It's only white people complaining, the black people don't really mind" is a common trope used to close down any criticism of racial content whatsoever. 

The only thing you're sorry about is that you have been exposed by the Angiolini Inquiry

Sarah and many others would be alive today if you people had done your jobs

Suella Braverman was right

The Met surrendered to woke and Sarah Everard died because of it

Woke: [1] Bad Thing 

[2] ??Insufficiently racist 

Very Obscure. The tweet refers to a report into the shocking murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer who haad a history of committing sexual offences. 

The Metropolitan police have often been accused of systemic racism and misogyny; it is alleged that in this case they ignored "red flags" about the officer because they didn't take sexism seriously enough. The implication that they didn't identify the murderer in their ranks because they were too liberal or left wing is rather hard to make sense of; but it is very hard to suppose that the Tweeter understands "surrendering to the woke" to mean "being sexist and misogynic."

When I first wrote about Political Correctness, I noticed that some of the main vectors of the conspiracy theory used the McPherson Report as their primary example of political-correctness-gone-mad. So the thought here may be:

• MrPherson told the police to be less racist
• Being less racist is woke
• Twenty seven years after being told to be less racist (=more woke) a police officer commits a terrible murder
• Therefore, the murder was caused by wokeness

Ahh you got your words mixed up: damn sure it should say woke cun.... !

Woke:  [1] Disapproval of bad taste jokes, insincere
[2] Insufficiently hostile to Palestinians
[3] Insufficiently hostile to Muslims
[3] Bad Thing 

The context here is that one Tweeter had made an offensively bad-taste joke about the protestor who set fire to himself outside the Israeli embassy, and implied that the people who attended his vigil had bad or insincere motives. There followed the kind of witty, Socratic debate for which Twitter is justly famous. Well, hardly anyone would come if they held a vigil for you / At least they would be sane rather than indoctrinated into a vile religion or woke cult / Better a woke cult than a bigoted cunt/Damn sure it should say woke cunt.

"It was a prostitute on the altar the first time around; today it’s a funeral for a male prostitute, laid out just feet from the Tabernacle and hailed as the “Mother of All Whores”. ~Michael J. Matt, "Woke Catholicism and the New Reign of Terror"

Woke: [1] Insufficiently hostile to transexual people

[2] Dogmatism 

[3] Bad thing 

A barking mad hyper-catholic who doesn't accept the papacy of Pope Francis maintains that because the funeral of a trans man took place in a Catholic cathedral, the Church is now in thrall to a new French Revolutionary Terror, a new Whore of Babylon, and a new Abomination of Desolation. Note, again, that the ostensible target is not trans people themselves, but a conspiratorial "woke catholicism" which supports them and forces other people to support them. 

Sign the petition to stop the censorship so you are not charged for “ having feelings” that don’t align with woke ideology! New federal bill attempts to censor your feelings! What the hell.

Woke: [1] Insufficiently hostile to minorities 

[2] Not a free speech absolutist

This refers to Canadian legislation that might give financial compensation to victims of hate speech. 

I think it is quite unlikely that the feelings themselves (as opposed to the public expression or publication of such feelings)  are to be criminalised, but I am neither a Canadian nor a lawyer. The feelings in question are presumably feelings of hatred towards Muslims, black people or gay people. Note that although the specific complaint is about the state limiting free speech,  "woke ideology" appears to refer to the belief that racist and homophobic ideas are bad in themselves.

…and it will be half full.

When it is , without fanfare, this will be dropped. Not because of any outcry but because it doesn’t make money.

Go woke, go broke.

Woke: [1] Insufficiently hostile to black people. 

[2] Belief in white privilege, insincere. 

[3] Belief in affirmative action, insincere. 

This is slightly nuanced. 

A new London play about slaves, imaginatively called Slave Play, has advertised "black only" evenings -- for the benefit of people of colour who would not feel comfortable watching a racially charged play alongside white people. I reserve judgement on whether or not this is a good idea, and whether it would even be legal in the UK. If your reaction is but-what-would-you-say-about-a-WHITE-only-performance then you haven't understood the question. 

The strong implication of the Tweet is that no-one will attend the production (people of colour don't really want this) and that the theatre's motivation is insincere (they don't really care about the racial issue and will drop it if it fails to make them money).

No more irresponsible than you stirring up the idea any criticism of Islam is phobic you woke grifting low life

Woke [1] Insufficiently hostile to Islam 

[2] Contemptible person, bad thing.

Unable to rebut a previous poster's allegation (that claims about the Mayor of London being operated by a shadowy cabal of Islamists is inflammatory) the Tweet resorts to the rhetorical technique known as  whataboutery. 

It may be true that some people unfairly claim that any criticism of the Muslim faith is Islamophobic (and, similarly, that any criticism of the modern Israeli state is anti-semitic). On the other hand "not all legitimate criticism of Islam is necessarily Islamophobic" very often means "all Islamophobic remarks are to be regarded as legitimate criticism of Islam." 

Perhaps this writer is making a legitimate distinction between nuanced religious and cultural criticism and racist abuse; and limits the term "woke grifting lowlife" to those who mistake the former for the latter. Or perhaps he isn't. 

 

The #USA is fn screwed!!

I'm afraid the military is to woke, undisciplined (CLEARLY), brainwashed socialists, n fn drag queens! Ha!

Woke: [1] Bad thing 

[2] Liberal 

[3] Insufficiently hostile to trans (or gender non-conforming) people. 

Obscure. 

The reference point is a film of service-men engaging in what appears to be an activity part way between a raucous play-fight and a riot. Which I would have thought would be exactly the sort of thing that you would expect "single men in uniform" to engage in.

Is the speaker seriously arguing that "a belief in higher taxation and improved public services" (=socialism) and "a taste for gender-non-conforming clothes" (=drag) necessarily causes macho horse-play to get out of hand? And does he seriously think that most US soldiers, or their officers, hold left-wing political views and wear frocks? It is pretty clear that "socialist" and "drag queen" (like "woke') are here simply synonyms for "naughty".

Go woke go broke … fuck em

Woke: [1] Ethical consumption 

[2] Liberal

The Body Shop cosmetic chain is going into receivership. The writer hates the chain because they believe in ethical consumerism and the humane treatment of animals. He believes they only acquired those characteristics recently; and as a result have got into financial difficulties. The fact that the Body Shop failed after only forty seven years proves that running a business on liberal or ethical principles will invariably lead to commercial failure.

Okay, and I am surprisingly tired of this kind of criticism. Which is not to say there is a bunch of a**holes that will label anything that breathes as woke, but it's pretty obvious when "inclusion" is written as a selling point rather than a tridimensional character.

Woke: [1] Inclusivity 

[2] Insufficiently hostile to minorities. 

Another nuanced Tweet: the writer even admits that the term "woke" is overused. 

However she puts scare quotes around the word "inclusion", so she apparently thinks that at least some "inclusivity" is "woke". This really only makes sense if you think that non-white (or non straight, or female, or minority religion) characters are deviations from the norm and that the existence of black people has to be justified as a special case.

It would be interesting to hear which black characters she regards as "three dimensional" and which as "selling points". My guess would be "none" and "all" but I would be perfectly happy to be proven wrong.

Keep in mind this girl was extremely woke, and went to a woke university. Her professors are literally defending the killer and saying it’s racist to blame her death on illegal immigration. Low sympathy for people like Lwken. She’s just another Molly Tibbs.

Woke: [1] Insufficiently hostile to immigrants. 

"Molly Tibbs" refers to Mollie Tibbets, a twenty year old student who was murdered in 2018. "Lwken" refers to Laken Riley, a twenty-two year old student murdered earlier this month. In both cases the apparent murderer was a person of foreign origin, in the USA illegally. The argument has been made, in both cases, that their deaths were therefore caused by lax immigration policies. This Tweet engages in particularly despicable victim-blaming: the young woman (to some extent) deserved to be murdered by an immigrant, because she had been supportive of immigrants in the past; and because her college was supportive of immigrants. 
 

"This person was murdered by an immigrant; therefore, we ought not to allow immigration" and "This murderer was an immigrant, therefore, all immigrants are murderers" are both unambiguously racist statements. 

Really? That’s not what they say about guns. When it comes to guns it’s not “that person isn’t dead bc of a gun but because that person ran into a violent person” woke people are seriously dangerous.

Woke: [1] Insufficiently hostile to immigrants 

[2]Insufficiently supportive of gun ownership 

[3]Liberal

Another nasty tweet about the same tragic case. The twisted argument here is that it is hypocritical to blame a gun-murder on the availability of guns while not blaming a murder committed by an immigrant on the presence of immigrants. Note the othering of "woke people", incidentally. 

So between democrats, woke local governments and sheriffs, victims of the heinous crimes by these illegals - they simply don’t care?!

Seriously, when is someone going be held accountable?

Woke: [1]Insufficiently Hostile to Immigrants 

[2] Liberal

Yet another racist tweet about the Laken Riley case. As I understand it, US immigration authorities can ask (but not require) police forces to detain suspected illegal immigrants for up to 48 hours; and the current sheriff of the county where the murder happened had stated in his election campaign that he would not necessarily cooperate with such requests. This is a rather arcane point of American law. I would only note that "If we had locked all the illegal immigrants up, we would have locked up this illegal immigrant; therefore the policy of not locking up illegal immigrants is the direct cause of this murder; therefore we should lock up all illegal immigrants" is, at best, logically flawed, and at worst, an argument for internment and collective punishment. 

For our purposes, the interesting point is that the writer believes in an indistinct group "woke local governments" who are deliberately or callously allowing bad things to happen. 

If Mason Greenwood returns the media and woke brigade will destroy him. He’s better off abroad

Woke [1] ??Judgemental, self-righteous  

[2] ??Insufficiently tolerant of sexual violence. 

Very obscure. Mason Greenwood is a footballer who was accused, prosecuted, and acquitted of serious sexual offences. The implication is that "the woke brigade" will continue to believe that someone is guilty of a crime even though they have been found innocent in a court of law. 

This seems to be using "woke" to refer to an actual phenomenon: the possibility that someone will be treated as guilty in the court of public opinion despite having been found innocent in a court of law. It is unclear if this is a particularly recent phenomenon; although the internet and social media undoubtedly increase exponentially the speed with which rumours and false accusations can be spread. 

It is interesting that the "media" and the "woke" are here conflated, as if, say, the Daily Mail was well known for its bleeding heart liberalism. (Are the "woke" who tolerated the police officer with the criminal record the same as the "woke" who are going to hound the man who was falsely accused?) 

I wonder if, lying behind this tweet, is a buried assumption that liberals will not accept that someone has been exonerated because they take sexual offences too seriously?

Our military is weak.Anyone who would have entered the past 5 yrs hasn't because of the woke bullshit being pushed into it. They're all at home. Where they need to be. Because shits gonna hit the fan with the illegal immigrants and crazies this summer. Hope not. But seems like it

Woke [1] ?Liberal  

[2] Insufficiently hostile to immigrants 

[3] Bad thing.

Very confused indeed. 

a: No-one has joined the US army since 2019. (Untrue, although there has been a shortfall of recruits.)

b: This is because no-one between the ages 19 and 25 (the famously conservative Generation Z) will join up.

c: This is in turn because, since 2019, the army has acquired an unspecified quality called Woke Bullshit.

d: This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it means that the quarter million people who did not sign up (assuming a target of 50,000 new recruits each year) are available and prepared to participate in a civil war against immigrants in the run-up to the November election. 

This seems 

a: Very unlikely to be true and 

b: Very scary indeed

Homeowners clash with ‘woke’ city that refuses to remove street squatters causing 'disgusting' hazard

Woke: [1] Insufficiently hostile to poor people 

[2] Liberal 

Fairly self-explanatory. Note use of "street squatter" for "homeless person."

London…what a cesspit of nutters. Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, Free Palestine….left wing, woke, Islamic capital of the World.

Woke [1] Insufficiently hostile to Muslims. 

[2] Liberal 

[3] Bad things

The speaker disapproves of the tactics of environmental protestors. He regards Extinction Rebellion and Free Palestine as essentially the same thing, and conflates "left wing" and "muslim" into a single thing he calls "woke". 

I forgot you can’t just tweet anymore. Everything is so woke omg

Woke: Everything.

No comment necessary.

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