This is also bothering the Doctor, needless to say. It's rare, but not as rare as it should be, when the Doctor gets to himself complain about how stupid the script is. But when he tries to explain that the Dalek are both alien and hostile, Harkonnen's like, "Exactly! They will win me the War!" (Cut to awesome propaganda poster of a Dalek rampant.)

The Doctor asks a very Excellent Question -- "Why call me in if you won't listen to me?" -- and Winston gives, I must admit, a proper answer: That when he called the Doctor a month ago, he was worried because they seemed too good to be true. So it does makes sense, this little bit. I must have missed that line over all the screaming, before. The Doctor tries to describe exactly what a hundred or thousand Daleks might do to the world, and enlists Amy, but for some reason she doesn't remember the thirty times the Daleks have invaded Earth. Even the one time, not so long ago, when Adelaide was a little girl, that Amy was totally alive for.

He's worried by that, but not as much as by the central plot, such as it is. Amy heads over to knock one of them on the dome, and one of my favorite little things of this season happens: He calls her first Amy, and then Amelia. He only calls her Amelia when he's scared; I like it. "Can I be of assistance?" She ignores him, chuckling in her short little skirt, and asks the Ironside if it's a dangerous alien. "I am your soldier!" it says, in that beautiful voice. She pushes further, but it runs away to perform its duties.

The Doctor takes away Harkonnen's cigar, and their little matching bowties wobble around, and Churchill gives a speech while the Doctor climbs winsomely all over his body: "We are waging total war, Doctor! Day after day, the Luftwaffe pound this great city like an iron fist. Men, women and children slaughtered, families torn apart." Sir Christopher Wren's churches, all in flame. "I weep for my country! I weep for my empire! It is breaking my heart." And maybe there's a bit of gravitas, a bit of something in there that we can recognize. The Doctor tries to give him a pep talk about how the whole world knows Churchill is resisting, how he's a beacon of hope in the darkness of the Blitz, but he's faltering. "But for how long? Millions of innocent lives will be saved if I use these Ironsides now!"