>>
>>>Should I be glad I don't get it?
>>
>>It's relatively trivial. The Doctor was confined to Earth for a few
>>seasons, and UNIT created the identity of "Dr. John Smith" for him.
>
>
>That's not actually what Bob was referring to - he was making a
>reference to Doctor Zachary Smith, the cowardly, sniveling
>villain of the piece in Lost in Space (whose catchphrase was
>"oh, the pain") - but it's true that "Dr. John Smith" is a
>long-standing alias of the Doctor's. (It's also the name he used when
>he was hiding out as a 20th-century human schoolteacher in the 2007
>two-parter "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood".)
>
>The middle initial used here, of course, is because "J" is the tenth
>letter of the modern Basic Latin alphabet.
>
Okay. Familiar as I was with the Doctor, I'd not made that connection, and never realised they'd given him an ID as John Smith. I'd THOUGHT maybe Bob was referring to Lost in Space, but was also sure that wasn't quite right either.

Thanx all.