The Doctor's age

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The Seventh Doctor inputs his age as the entry code for a door. (DW: Time and the Rani)

Contradictory information has pointed at different estimates of the Doctor's age, both in conversations and in terms of the length of various incarnations.

Statements and known information

It is unknown what the Doctor's life expectancy is, given his ability to regenerate. The Second Doctor once stated that as a Time Lord he could "live forever, barring accidents" though it's unclear whether this is accurate or an exaggeration. (DW: The War Games)

It is also evident that Time Lords age in a different way to humans. The Fourth Doctor once said to his companion that he was a teenager for 50 years. (DWM: The Time Witch) He has also gone through spans of linear time longer than average human lifespans without growing visibly older. (EDA: Escape Velocity) (BFA: Orbis) (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)

First Doctor

The Doctor was 8 when he entered the Academy, along with The Master (DW: The Sound of Drums) and 90 when he first visited the Medusa Cascade where he later described himself as having been "just a kid".(DW: The Stolen Earth)

He was what he referred to as a "teenager" for 50 years. (DWM: The Time Witch)

When the Doctor was 759, (DW: The Ribos Operation) Romana noted the Doctor had been travelling in the TARDIS for 523 years. This would have made the Doctor about 236 when he first 'borrowed' the TARDIS and left Gallifrey. (DW: The Pirate Planet)

This figure was broadly supported by the TARDIS itself. When transferred into a humanoid body, the TARDIS said that the Doctor had travelled with it for 700 years. At this point, the Doctor was around 909 years old, putting his age when he stole the TARDIS at around 200. (DW: The Doctor's Wife)

During the time Susan Foreman travelled with the Doctor, Ian Chesterton, and Barbara Wright, she knew that despite his apparent maturity, in terms of their own species the Doctor would still be considered an adolescent. (CC: Here There Be Monsters)

He stated he had been travelling in the TARDIS for 60 years when he visited 64AD, putting his age at 296. (PDA: Byzantium!)

The Doctor spent "centuries" studying at the Time Lord Academy. (DWM: Mortal Beloved) Magnus chided the First Doctor for not regenerating and holding on to this incarnation as long as he did (DWM: Flashback).

This incarnation regenerated at or about age 450. (DW: The Tomb of the Cybermen)

The first non-fictional writing about regeneration, DWA: "The Phoenix in the TARDIS", stated that the first Doctor was about 900 at the time he was replaced by the second Doctor.

Second Doctor

At some indeterminate time after his first regeneration (but not too long after given the continued presence of Jamie McCrimmon), this incarnation of the Doctor made the first known direct reference to his age. To Victoria Waterfield, he described himself as "something like" 450 years old. (DW: The Tomb of the Cybermen). The Doctor seemed to have aged visibly by the time he went on a mission for the Time Lords to Space Station Chimera (DW: The Two Doctors).

It is unclear when these events actually took place within the era of the Second Doctor. He may have been taken out of time during a point prior to The War Games. See Season 6B for a longstanding theory involving the Second Doctor's activities after the trial.

Third Doctor

This incarnation of the Doctor started to say that he had been a scientist for "several thousand" years, but stopped himself before completing the sentence. (DW: The Mind of Evil) He had made a similar age reference shortly before that incident. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians). However, he could be referring to the time span he has travelled in, rather than his actual age.

Before his regeneration, he was stranded in his TARDIS for 10 years before landing on Earth and regenerated at 748, making him 738 before he was stranded.

Fourth Doctor

It would seem that the Fourth Doctor would have been 748 at the time of his regeneration. (DW: Planet of the Spiders) This incarnation of the Doctor consistently described himself as around 750. He described himself as 749 when he travelled with Sarah Jane Smith (DW: The Brain of Morbius, The Seeds of Doom), 750 with Leela (DW: The Robots of Death) and 756 with Romana during her first incarnation just prior to finding the first segment of the Key to Time. On that occasion, however, Romana corrected him and described him as 759. (DW: The Ribos Operation) Before the conclusion of the quest for the Key to Time, he turned 760 (DW: The Power of Kroll)

On another occasion, the Doctor described himself as possibly 730 and also confessed he couldn't remember his actual age. (DWM: The Time Witch)

Fifth Doctor

The Doctor described himself as 813 when he regenerated (MA: Cold Fusion)

Sixth Doctor

The Doctor described himself as 900 years old (DW: Revelation of the Daleks) and later stated his age as "900 years, more or less". (DW: The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet)

An unspecified gap occurred between these two references, during which his human companion, Peri Brown, visibly matured; one account placed the events two years apart. (DWM: The World Shapers)

During this story Peri appears as she does at the start of the adventure on Ravolox and mentions to Frobisher that "a couple of years" had passed since she and the Doctor last encountered Jamie McCrimmon and the Second Doctor in The Two Doctors).

At some unspecified point in his past, the Doctor had blown out the candles on his 900th birthday cake. (BFA: The One Doctor)

He was 952 years old when he regenerated. (DW: Time and the Rani)

Seventh Doctor

Hours after his regeneration, the Doctor unlocked a door in the Rani's laboratory with the numerical code "953," which he stated was both his age and the Rani's. (DW: Time and the Rani)

The Doctor spent unspecified millions of years in a coma, frozen in a block of ice. (BFA: Frozen Time)

By the time of his next regeneration, he had aged visibly. (DW: Doctor Who)

By his own estimate afterward he would have been 1009 when he regenerated, though he admitted he may have lost count at some point. (EDA: Vampire Science)

Eighth Doctor

Three years after his regeneration, the Doctor calculated his total age to be 1012, making him 1009 when he regenerated. He admitted that he was unsure, however, as there was a question of whether he lost count. For this reason he preferred to simply start counting at his most recent regeneration, giving his age as "three" when asked. (EDA: Vampire Science)

The Doctor aged while trapped as an amnesiac on Earth in "real time" between the late 19th century (EDA: The Ancestor Cell) and the year 2001, making him at least 1125 by the time this crisis was over. (EDA: Escape Velocity)

At one point while traveling with Lucie Miller, the Doctor spent 600 years on the planet Orbis. He later mentioned that he rounded and adjusted his age based on different year lengths in different parts of the universe. (BFA: Orbis)

Ninth Doctor

This incarnation claimed "900 years of time and space", i.e. travel in his TARDIS, and when asked, said that this was his age. (DW: Aliens of London) He later claimed to have used the name "The Doctor" for nine centuries and to have had "900 years of phone-box travel" (DW: The Empty Child). These statements appear to contradict his earlier stated ages.

See 'The "900" Controversy' below for an out-of-universe discussion of this change.

Tenth Doctor

The Doctor described himself as 903 years old (DW: Voyage of the Damned, etc.)

While in a parallel universe, he claimed to have given away 10 years of his life to provide the TARDIS with energy. (DW: Rise of the Cybermen).

Whether this was a physical aging of the Doctor's body or a sacrifice of expected lifespan off the end of his life remains unknown.

The Doctor's claim of 903 is questionable. As at one point prior to the Titanic incident he is known to have spent at least 2¾ years searching for Martha Jones in deep space (DW: The Infinite Quest), as well as several months (at least) living in various time periods on Earth (DW: Human Nature and DW: Blink). He again claimed 903 during another adventure with Donna Noble (NSA: The Nemonite Invasion).

During a later visit to America, the Doctor claimed an age of 900 once again, suggesting he was rounding down. (DW: Dreamland)

Just prior to regenerating, he stated his age explicitly as 906, suggesting that several years passed for the Doctor after his travels with Donna Noble, a partial accounting of which he gave Ood Sigma. (DW: The End of Time)

Eleventh Doctor

While Amy Pond attempted to seduce the Doctor, he told her that he was 907. (DW: Flesh and Stone) The Doctor again claimed to be 907 when meeting the Dream Lord. (DW: Amy's Choice)

When the Doctor recruited Amy and Rory to Utah after he had separated from them, he told Amy that he was 1103, surprising her,; she said that the last time they had met he had been 908. This version of the Doctor was later killed by mysterious figure in a spacesuit. Amy, Rory and River Song later discovered that an earlier version of the Doctor was the first to receive a recruitment envelope; this earlier version of the Doctor gave his age as 909. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut)

Behind the scenes

The "900" Controversy

The decision by the writers of the 2005 revival of the series to explicitly describe the Doctor as 900 years old, despite evidence to the contrary on TV and expanded media, is one of the few notable contradictions to established canon in the revival. Although as noted above it's possible to suggest rationalisations (and fans have suggested others ranging from Time War-related trauma to speculation of an unchronicled adventure in which the Doctor was "de-aged" much as he was "aged" in DW: The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords), to date no episode, novel or comic strip has attempted to address the discrepancy. One simple explaination would be that the Doctor has, simply, taken to lying about his age (precedent for this exists in DW: The Ribos Operation in which Romana catches the Doctor shaving a few years off his age - something she, herself, apparently does after her first regeneration). Another is that his measurements of years might vary based on which planet he uses as a baseline; a year on Gallifrey is unlikely to be the same as a year on Earth. Another may be that he has come to base his age off the time he has spent travelling in the TARDIS.

"He Has No Clue"

A simpler and even more self-evident theory is that the Doctor doesn't really know how old he actually is, as constantly traveling backward and forward through time could make it very difficult to measure one's lifespan at all. This theory has been fanon, and the Doctor occasionally admitted to being unsure of his age in spinoff media. (DWM: The Time Witch, EDA: Vampire Science)

This is the theory subscribed to by Doctor Who's current executive producer and head writer Steven Moffat, as stated in an interview with SFX Magazine:

The thing I keep banging on about is that he doesn't know what age he is. He's lying. How could he know, unless he's marking it on a wall? He could be 8,000 years old, he could be a million. He has no clue. The calendar will give him no clues.Steven Moffat

Moffat reaffirmed this on his Twitter blog.

External links

• "The Doctor's Age" article in the BBC Classic Series Episode Guide