"Mm, yes. It's mostly science, though." The Doctor chuckled. "You can learn a lot about a society from such studies, in fact. How advanced they are, but also how they think, hmm? What sort of advances they've made tell you something about what they find important." Still, knowing how advanced these people were didn't offer him much insight into why they'd need him. They seemed more than capable of advancing. Then again, if they'd lost most of their scientists, they could have simply been in need of replacements. An unpleasant thought, but it did more to explain his presence than any answers he'd been able to get from others.

"On the topic of knowledge and its usefulness, do you speak to many of your customers? I can only imagine that a simple barman would be able to learn much from asking the right questions."