The Doctor goes through Adam's stash with him, picking up stuff one thing at a time, and being very funny: "Broken." Toss. "Broken." Toss. "Hairdryer." Adam tells the Doctor about the mindwiping ("Somewhere beginning with M") and how he always figured he could fight his way out if he had to. Um, not with a hairdryer. But also: in league with assholes! The Doctor's like, "You in a fight is humorous," and Adam gets a little shirty about it, and the Doctor goes, "What're you gonna do, throw your A-levels at 'em?" Note this for later, possibly: Adam = Knowledge. Information. Rose is the street-smart estate girl with the rack, Adam is the Nerdy Ned who'd rather catalog things. (In these kinds of stories, that means you end up an Irritating Tunai Fenta Hovalis, or a really scary Charles Wallace/Willow beastie, or some combination of the two.) The Doctor finds his weapon and says something embarrassing.

Rose and the Dalek -- because who wants to take the stairs? -- are on the elevator to van Statten's office. She watches the exterminator arm twitching, and asks it not to kill anybody, since that's been working out with her so well. It spins its eyestalk around so fast that she has to duck out of the way, very natural and funny. Texture. Dalek: "But why not? Why are you alive? My function is to kill. What am I? What am I?" Oy. They get to van Statten's office, and he's standing there in the doorway, and Rose is like, "Hold still a moment, he's having his freshman crisis," but the Dalek rolls up on Bossman like it hates Mondays: "Van Statten. You tortured me. Why?" Van Statten starts to back up and pussy out, and babbles a bit about a load of balls, and ends on the somewhat true but not very self-examining "I wanted you better! I'm sorry!" I believe him, I just think that the more expensive your car is, the more you like to see it shine, and it doesn't mean you think of your car as a person, and I'm already known as this huge Cylon sympathizer and no worries here on that account, but just because the Dalek needed to be scrap metal a half-hour ago doesn't make van Statten any less of a dick. Dalek's got van Statten against the wall, screaming and bitching out, all, "I just wanted you to talk!" and the Dalek's like, "Listen close, bitch: Exterminate! Exterminate!" Which is fairly awesome, but then Rose runs up and sticks her big meaty thumb up in their business, and the Dalek eyestalks at her, and she gives a speech: "You don't have to do this anymore. There must be something else, not just killing. What else is there? What do you want?" Everybody wants something. It looks over at van Statten, and Goddard, and the answer is not only incomprehensible but kind of annoying: "I want freedom." So it wants to kill, but it can't kill, but it can totally kill, but it wants something else, but it doesn't know what it is, but it wants to take orders, but it won't listen to anybody, but it's all alone, but it keeps looking for other ones, but it hates the Doctor, but it somehow can see that they have some commonalities, but it is terrified of its freedom, but it's terrified of its terror, and that makes it...want "freedom," now. That's the score at halftime. I think that, since it's not really a character or a personality of any kind, what it really wants is to do whatever moves the plot along and lets the Doctor talk like John Wayne. That's what it really wants.