In the nearly empty lab of Dr. Bracewell, the Daleks are bringing him tea. The Doctor shows up, telling him how great the Ironsides are, and Amy makes an impenetrable but I'm sure hilarious joke -- "Not bad for a Paisley boy!" -- that makes them friends for later. The Doctor asks where the idea came from, and he spins some kind of rot about "the muse of invention" and that, which is to be expected, because he's sort of a John Smith, this Dr. Bracewell. "You get a lot of these clever notions, do you?" He does. He "teems" with them, in fact. Hypersonic flight, gravity bubbles [note] that could sustain life outside the atmosphere, and the like. The Doctor asks whose ideas they are, knowing the answer in his hearts of hearts, and Bracewell assures him they're "entirely under [his] control," even as he thanks them for his tea.

I love this episode for a few reasons, even as much as I hate it, but you can watch it again with your Dalek Suit on, once you're done, and -- as usual -- be impressed with how far the Dalek are willing to go. "The perfect servant, and the perfect warrior," Bracewell says, fairly patting it on its head. (Wrong, but precisely why I love the Sontarans a bit more than I'll ever love the Dalek. Only slightly. They're like priests of violence, where the Daleks are rage and violence itself.)

The Doctor assures Bracewell that they won't honor their promises to him, tipping his hand as far as not trusting the professor, which is sort of awesome considering the CyberKing, and how easily this episode could fall into the same pattern. And why wouldn't it? The Doctor has no way of knowing just how low they're willing to go this time; how willing they are to place their hands below Bracewell's foot. To admit they'd willingly subjugate themselves says a fair amount about the Doctor himself, wouldn't it? And he can't do that. He needs Doctor/Dalek, we've seen it every time since the first time. If they can't stick to the script -- what happens when you draw the line from mercy to justice and on into the dark places -- then he can't define himself against them. Like Donna, or the Master, or 10.5: He needs somebody else to tell him who he is.

...My, my. I may have just fallen in love with this episode. Or least Story A. Their shame is no shame, because they are so single-minded they'll do what's necessary: Martha, kneeling before Saxon. The Doctor in his birdcage, too. That Good Wolf, the Aslan routine, has always been his: To let humanity lift him up when he had to. And seeing the Daleks do it, he knows must be a perversion, because it's not a real letting-go: It's something ugly, that preys upon their fear. That would see the greatest men of all the Blitz laid low, just to further their agenda. Maybe he's not so paranoid after all: Maybe shame and taint like that are timelocked too.