"What do you think, animal, vegetable or mineral?" she asked the Doctor, dubiously eyeing the dinner-plate-sized blob at her feet.

He scratched his short hair. "Dunno. One way to find out, though." He turned and began rummaging in the large pile of odds and ends behind him.

"Oh, no. What're you going to do?" she asked.

The Doctor turned towards the blob, an umbrella in his hand. "Perform a stimulus-response test."

"You don't mean you're going to poke it with an umbrella?"

He looked at the blob, then at the umbrella, then went back to digging in the miscellaneous pile. "Of course not!" he proclaimed, once more turning to face the blob, "Umbrella's too short. I'm going to poke it with a cane."

"Does the length really matter?" she said, rolling her eyes.

"Only if it decides it doesn't like being poked, then the extra distance becomes very important." The Doctor limbered up and prepared to accost the blob with the cane. He grinned eagerly. "That's part of what makes meeting new lifeforms so exciting, dontcha think?"

She took a step back and shook her head. "I think you should just clean out the TARDIS fridge a little more often, Doctor."