John Smith ( Tenth Doctor ) John Smith was a human identity the Tenth Doctor assumed while hiding from the Family of Blood . Creation . When the Family of Blood , armed with a stolen vortex manipulator , came after the Tenth Doctor , he decided that it would be best if he and his companion , Martha Jones , hid for a few months waiting for the Family to exhaust their limited lifespan . Since the Family of Blood could track by scent but never saw his face , he used the Chameleon Arch to change his biology and transform into a human , storing his Time Lord essence in a fob watch shaped biodata module . The TARDIS invented a life story for him , chose a setting and integrated him . This led to the Doctor living life as an ordinary schoolteacher named John Smith in 1913 , believing himself to be human and believing his TARDIS ' created memories to be real . Biography . According to John ' s memories , he was born circa 1880 to Sydney Smith , a watchmaker , and Verity Smith , a nurse . He was raised in the Radford Parade district of Nottingham , on Broadmarsh Street . The Smith family retained a maid , Martha Jones , who continued to serve John after his parents ' deaths . John received an excellent classical education and became a schoolteacher himself . A talented artist , he studied art in " Gallifrey " , which was presumably in Ireland . In reality , John Smith didn ' t exist until he took a job in the autumn of 1913 as a history teacher at the Farringham School for Boys , in Farringham , England . Not long after arriving , he began to have vivid dreams : that his maid Martha was in fact a medical student from 2007 and he himself was an adventurer known only as the Doctor . Fascinated by the intensity and strangeness of his dreams , John began to keep a journal he titled " A Journal of Impossible Things " . In it he recorded the adventures of the alien Doctor that he could remember from his dreams . He illustrated them with rough sketches . By November 1913 , John had begun telling others about his dreams : first his maid Martha ; then the school ' s nurse , Matron Joan Redfern with whom he found himself falling in love . Though in his mid - 30s , John had never before been in a romantic relationship . During his brief courtship of Joan they went for walks in the village , shared a few kisses and he invited her to a village dance . During this time , his true identity as the Doctor started to peek through . His memories didn ' t quite add up , and as he got to know Joan and answered her questions about his past , this became more evident . He named Gallifrey as the place where he learned to draw but wasn ' t quite sure where it was , assuming that it was in Ireland because he grew up there and so it must have been there as well . He saved a woman ' s life showing extraordinary dexterity and coordination , and tried to pass it off as luck , but the incident drew Joan ' s further attention and he wasn ' t able to convince himself or her that it was just luck and not something else . It became increasingly evident to John that , deny it though he would , he was not entirely human . His dreaming - self , the Doctor , was the true self ; he was , as he later put it , " just a story " . When the Family of Blood attacked Farringham during the annual dance taking Martha and Joan hostage in an attempt to force the Time Lord inside John Smith out of hiding , John froze leaving Martha to rescue him , Joan , and herself . Escaping to the school , John then raised the alarm in the hope that the school standing together and fighting would be enough to fend off the seemingly alive scarecrow s that the Family had raised . Joan stopped him for a moment , asking about his childhood and questioning why he sounded like an encyclopædia and seemed to lack the personal history , the secrets that every person has . Desperate to hold onto himself and his newfound love , John pleaded with her , asking her how she could possibly think that he wasn ' t real . When Daughter of Mine posing as Lucy Cartwright , killed the Headmaster , John led the evacuation of the school . The Family then brought out the Doctor ' s TARDIS which they found in the woods , but in an continued attempt to cling to the only identity he ever knew , John denied ever seeing it before . When Joan reminded him that he had dreamt of it and drew pictures of it , John ran away , unwilling to admit to himself his true identity as the Doctor . When the Family rained fireballs down on the village , John eventually accepted that he must become the Doctor again , even though it meant his death . Holding the fob watch , John envisioned a possible future in which he married Joan , had children and grandchildren , grew old and ultimately passed away in old age , secure in the knowledge that everyone he loved was safe . Crying , he opened the biodata module and became the Doctor once more . ( TV : " Human Nature " / " The Family of Blood " ) Legacy . Though the Doctor retained his memories of his time as John Smith , John was for all intents and purposes dead . The Doctor claimed that John Smith was inside him somewhere , that he was capable of " everything that John Smith is and was " and that if one looked him in the eye closely they could see him there . Joan Redfern , however , insisted that John was dead and that the Doctor simply looked like him . ( TV : " The Family of Blood " ) Decades later , Joan ' s great - granddaughter , Verity Newman published John Smith ' s " A Journal of Impossible Things " as a book and told the Doctor that Joan went on to live a happy life . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) Personality . John Smith was far more overtly emotional than the Doctor , whose actions often seemed cold or ruthless . The Doctor ' s personality had hardened from the events of the Last Great Time War . As John , he was cut off from these painful memories . He was aghast at Martha ' s revelation that the Doctor was indifferent to , or incapable of , romantic love ; terrified of Tim Latimer ' s description of the Doctor ' s alienness ; and , finally , shattered that becoming the Doctor meant that his own life would end . Joan Redfern held the Doctor in anger and contempt for choosing to come to England in 1913 , lamenting that if he had never chosen this place on a whim , " would anyone here have died ? " John was , she told the Doctor , braver than him for choosing to die to protect the people he loved , rather than hide away . John was very much a man of his time , permitting one of his students to give a physical beating to another . He was also occasionally bluntly dismissive of Martha for her skin colour and station . John was also willing to take up weapons , instructing the boys at the school in firearm training and calling the school to arms when the Family of Blood attacked . However , when he raised his gun at the scarecrow s , he was unable to actually fire it , hinting that deep down he was more like the Doctor than he appeared to be . Like the Doctor , John was terribly afraid of losing his identity and considered it a death . ( TV : " Human Nature " / " The Family of Blood " ) Skills and abilities . Though wholly human , John displayed some skills unusual for a human . He was able to see a woman and her baby in danger of being crushed by a falling piano and throw a cricket ball in order to start a massive chain reaction of events to save them . The ball hit scaffolding so that it fell and hit a plank of wood that sent a brick flying through the air and knocking down a milk churn in front of the woman ' s pram , stopping her just a moment before the rope hoisting the piano finally gave up and dropped the piano to the ground mere feet in front of the woman . This amazed both Joan and John himself , especially as he was naturally clumsy , once falling down a flight of stairs when startled . This momentary appearance of quick - thinking and quick , sure - footed movement , was implied to be his Time Lord instincts seeping through when he saw someone in imminent danger . ( TV : " Human Nature " , " The End of Time " )