Other Doctor Lives: Twenty Twelve: Series 1, Episode 3 – “Roman Remains” (2011)

Not as entertaining for me as episode 2, but still fun. The committee encounters a very realistic conundrum and deals with it in an amusing way, and I like seeing some different characters getting put together.

The builders have begun laying the foundation for the Olympic aquatic center, but work has stopped due to the discovery of what might be Roman-era human remains. While Ian tries to figure out how to get around the archeological site, Siobhan has a hell of a time getting Kay to record her vlog for the Olympics website. Meanwhile, everyone’s struggling to get into the office because changing security protocols are messing with their swipe cards.

Our character of the week is Kay Hope, head of sustainability for the commission. She’s played by Amelia Bullmore—I’ve seen her in all kinds of British stuff, but State of Play is always the first thing I think of when I see her. She’s all about running the Olympics as greenly as possible, and she’s heavy into the importance of her work. However, public speaking is not her strong suit, and let’s just say her attempt to record her vlog isn’t exactly a slam dunk. The more Siobhan urges her to be friendly, personable, and cool, the stiffer and more nervous she gets.

Again, finding ancient remains on building sites is definitely a thing that happens in Britain, so it’s a very reasonable plotline for the major complication of the episode. But the way the commission deals with it is pretty fun. When an archeologist is brought in to examine the bones, Ian deadpans in a talking head, “Well, let’s hope this guy’s wrong. Let’s hope it’s just a murder or something.” And there’s an amusing scene of a few characters looking at the model for the aquatic center, rearranging the different parts of the building to try and figure out how to avoid the remains.

The narration doesn’t stand out as much for me this time around. It feels a little more functional today, rather than humorous in its own right. Although, one line I did really like was, “For Ian, the aquatic center has suddenly gone from being the week’s good-news story to being a mass grave, which isn’t what he wanted.” Nicely worded, with delightfully matter-of-fact delivery from David Tennant!

Bugonia (2025, R)

This is a wild movie. Which, given that it’s coming from Yorgos Lanthimos, is hardly surprising. I had mixed feelings about this one (also not surprising, honestly)—for the most part, it’s brutal but very good, but I feel like the ending kind of goes off the rails.

Teddy is many things: an amateur beekeeper, a warehouse worker for a giant pharmaceutical corporation, and a conspiracy theorist. He’s gone far down a rabbit hole researching the Andromedans, an alien race bent on destroying humanity. He’s convinced that the Andromedans have embedded themselves into society by posing as humans, and now, he’s put his cousin Don through a training regimen so they can kidnap one such Andromedan. As it happens, she’s the CEO of his company: Michelle Fuller. Teddy interrogates Michelle in the hopes of 1) getting her to admit her alien nature and 2) arranging a meeting on her mother ship, so he can negotiate the survival of the human race.

Bugonia is up for four Oscars. Besides Best Picture, it’s nominated for Best Leading Actress for Emma Stone, Best Adapted Screenplay (it’s based on a 2003 South Korean film called Save the Green Planet!), and Best Score. Again, I have issues with the ending, but other than that, the script is pretty great, the score does a lot to create atmosphere, and Stone is terrific!

Obviously, good swathes of this story are ridiculous. Michelle gives both Teddy and Don a pretty good beating when they come for her. Once they’ve taken her, Teddy slathers Michelle in antihistamine cream to “dampen her powers,” and he’s chemically castrated himself to prevent her from seducing him. There’s also some nice corporate satire, like Michelle singing the praises of the company’s new “you can totally go home at 5:30!” policy while emphasizing that employees can stay late if they choose and they should still definitely get all their work done before they leave.

But at the same time, there are genuinely disturbing elements here, as well as some painful ones. Teddy doesn’t just chemically castrate himself—he convinces Don, who is autistic and relies on Teddy for some support needs, to do the same. While Teddy’s taken a nosedive into wild conspiracies, he’s also experienced some horrific injustices in his life and hasn’t really dealt with grief/anger from that. And yes, it’s goofy that Teddy thinks Michelle is an alien, but he does violently kidnap a woman, hold her in his basement, and torture her for information. The film is funny and unsettling in almost equal measure.

The final stretch of the film, though, doesn’t really work for me. To be fair, since it’s an adaptation, I’m guessing the ending was already baked in. But I don’t like it. It feels like it undermines everything the film was trying to say and leaves me somewhat cold in the last sequence. It’s disappointing, because up until that point, I thought it was pretty excellent, albeit hard to watch at points.

Stone is fantastic in her nominated performance as Michelle. Regardless of whether she’s an alien, she is an objectively terrible person, but that doesn’t warrant Teddy’s actions toward her. It all adds to the complexity of the film, and it’s really interesting to watch Michelle navigate this situation, trying to manipulate the guys and get away. Jesse Plemons does a really great job as Teddy. He’s comically unhinged, intensely focused, and deeply hurting—Plemons balances the different parts of the character, making them all work in a sort of unbalanced harmony. And Aidan Delbis is quite good in his film debut as Don. Delbis is autistic himself, and Don is an active participant in the story with his own point-of-view—you love to see it.

Warnings

Strong violence (including torture,) strong thematic elements (including suicide,) language, drinking/drug references, and sexual references.

Doctor Who: Series 5, Episode 6 – “The Vampires of Venice” (2010)

*Spoilers for “Flesh and Stone”*

This episode is a mixed bag for me. I always enjoy when Who puts a sci-fi spin on classic horror characters, and the late Helen McCrory’s guest appearance is worth the price of admission on its own, but anytime Moffat toys with the idea of a Doctor-Amy-Rory love triangle, it tends to get awkward, and this episode is no exception.

After her terrifying near-death experience with the Weeping Angels in the previous episode, Amy decided to seize the day by doing her darndest to jump the Eleventh Doctor’s bones. He was not on board with that, for all kinds of reasons, including the fact that Amy had just admitted to him that she’s getting married in the morning. The Doctor decides the best way to deal with this is to pick up Rory and take him and Amy both on a “wedding present” trip, so they can share in the adventure together. The TARDIS brings them to 16th century Venice, where a mysterious aristocrat named Rosanna runs a school for a select group of girls. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory are enlisted to help a man who worries for his daughter’s safety after she was accepted to the school.

The episode’s take on vampires is a lot of fun. I enjoy the alien explanations it gives for the various bits of vampire mythology: the fangs, the aversion to sunlight, not appearing in mirrors. Also, I adore the Doctor and Amy’s giddy excitement to be facing off against vampires, while Rory is standing here going, “Okay, but dangerous, though?!?” And Rosanna is simply a splendid baddie—intelligent, otherworldly, and elegant. Helen McCrory gives excellent vampire in the role, and I love the scene where she and the Doctor get a measure of one another. My first time watching series 5, I remember being struck by how Matt Smith really made you feel the weight of the Doctor’s years in their interactions.

There’s all kinds of other good stuff here too. I get a kick out of the Doctor crashing Rory’s stag night—in the most Doctor way possible—to take Rory away in the TARDIS. I’m tickled by the Doctor accidentally flashing his library card (with One’s picture on it!) to the vampires. And Rory has a terrific speech where he lays out why he thinks the Doctor is so dangerous. “It's not that you make people take risks, it's that you make them want to impress you,” he says. “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”

However, the climax is pretty goofy, and while the show is capable of doing the Doctor-Amy-Rory stuff well, they can also belabor it way too much. This is from the end of “Flesh and Stone,” but it’s never clear why a near-death experience makes Amy so determined to cheat on her fiancee the night before her wedding. The Doctor is firmly of the opinion that he doesn’t want anything to do with any love triangle business—when Amy inevitably suggests she infiltrates Rosanna’s school, the Doctor suggests he come along and pose as her father, with Amy reminding him, “You look about nine.” But unfortunately, Rory just can’t seem to get that part. To be fair, it’s the night before his wedding and he found out his fiancee was kissing her childhood “imaginary friend,” but by and large, he’s the one making it into a competition with the Doctor, who’s not trying to do any of that. Rory gets squirrelly at the thought of Amy and the Doctor fighting alien vampires together, and there’s a dick-measuring metaphor using flashlights. And personally, I don’t like having dick-measuring metaphors in Doctor Who. 

So boo for that. Still, it’s a pretty enjoyable episode overall, and while the aggravating elements bring it down for me, they’re not enough to spoil it.