Johann Schmidt

Johann Schmidt was the eighth incarnation of the Doctor from an alternative timeline where the Nazis won World War II. In this timeline, the Seventh Doctor fled Colditz Castle after his companion Ace was killed by Feldwebel Kurtz in October 1944. Immediately afterwards in his personal timeline, he returned to Germany in 1955. The TARDIS materialised near a border checkpoint in the West. As he appeared to be carrying a weapon, the Nazi soldiers on duty shot him immediately. After examining his body, they realised that it was in actuality an old umbrella. Although the TARDIS was captured, the Doctor's body seemingly disappeared. Absconding after his regeneration, he adopted the alias "Johann Schmidt" and later told Elizabeth Klein that he was a collector of sorts who had stolen the Doctor's body and gained possession of the TARDIS key. Klein described him to the Seventh Doctor as "handsome, in a Gothic sort of way."

For the next ten years, he helped political prisoners escape the clutches of the Nazis and disrupted the Third Reich's "ethnic cleansing programmes." Consequently, he attracted the attention of the Nazi authorities but nevertheless maintained his liberty.

In 1965, he was able to manipulate Klein into setting history on its true course by programming the TARDIS to send her back to October 1944, where she met his past self and Ace in Colditz Castle. He was unable to correct the timeline himself as doing so would have involved crossing his own time track. Klein's lover Jonas Faber eventually saw through Schmidt’s trickery and shot him in the stomach while he and Klein were working on the TARDIS in her laboratory in Berlin. It is unclear if his injuries were sufficient to trigger a regeneration. However, Faber was too late as Klein had already decided to disobey his orders and make the trip into the past. Once the proper timeline was restored, this version of the Doctor ceased to exist as did all of the inhabitants of the alternative timeline except for Klein herself. (AUDIO: Klein's Story)

Not long after meeting Klein, the Seventh Doctor determined the true identity of Johann Schmidt based on the fact that Klein claimed to have returned the TARDIS to 1944 by reference to its flight log. As the Doctor told Ace, the TARDIS does not have a flight log. (AUDIO: Colditz) Klein herself did not become aware of the fact that Schmidt was a future version of the Doctor for another nine years when she was reunited with the Seventh Doctor. (AUDIO: Klein's Story)

Notably, "Johann Schmidt" was a German variation of the Doctor's more common alias "John Smith". The Seventh Doctor had previously referred to himself as "Johann Schmidt" while impersonating a Nazi Reichsinspektor in May 1951 in another alternative timeline (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) while, in the proper timeline, the Eighth Doctor used the name while posing as a German spy aboard the British airship R101 on 5 October 1930 (AUDIO: Storm Warning).

In the alternative timeline, the Seventh Doctor regenerated for the same reason as his counterpart in the proper timeline, who was caught in the crossfire of a shoot-out between two Chinese-American youth gangs in San Francisco on 30 December 1999. (TV: Doctor Who)