"Well I wouldn't be inviting him out for a drink, now would I?" He doesn't have to be a people-person if small talk isn't the goal. Still. Put him at the bottom of the list for now, a last resort. Higher up on the list: the Doctor, and Captain Harkness.

"This Doctor sounds like my kind of fellow. You have to give it to lab rats, really. Without them, there's so much we still wouldn't understand."

And if he was still alive and kicking, maybe there was something to that live wire that no one had noticed quite yet. Always a possibility.