The Doctor's age
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"Listless-looking" Ninth Doctor
During his travels with Emma at a point where he hadn't been to Earth in several years, a Ninth Doctor described himself as "over 800 years old". (PROSE: Who's After Your Cash)
War Doctor
The Last Great Time War, in which the War Doctor fought, lasted no less than 400 years of linear time, but the various temporal aspects to the War meant that, in effect, the fighting had been going on for eternity. At the time of his experiences in the Tantalus Spiral, which led him to decide the war could go on "no more", this incarnation's age was a hundred years or more. (PROSE: Engines of War)
Shortly before the end of his life, the War Doctor said he was 400 years younger than the Eleventh Doctor when he gave his age as "twelve hundred or something", making him somewhere between 800 and 900 years old. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
"Big-eared" Ninth Doctor
The Ninth Doctor with big ears (TV: Rose) and a hawklike face (PROSE: The Tomorrow Windows) spent "weeks" having adventures between first encountering Rose Tyler in Henrik's, and turning up at the meal where he encountered Auton Mickey. (PROSE: Rose)
After Rose asked what he meant when he said "900 years of time and space", the Doctor told her it was "[his] age". (TV: Aliens of London)
He spent 28 years waiting on Earth to meet up with Rose in 1922, (AUDIO: The Other Side) and looked visibly older to Rose after he returned from his journey to the Causubus ship. (PROSE: Rose and the Snow Window) He later considered himself to have had "900 years of phone box travel". (TV: The Empty Child)
Tenth Doctor
The Tenth Doctor was 900 while travelling with Rose Tyler. (PROSE: The Hero Factor) During one of their adventures, he spent several months on Earth learning how to sculpt. (PROSE: The Stone Rose)
When the Doctor was imprisoned on Volag-Noc, his brain was scanned for criminal activity, revealing that some of his memories dated back over 3000 years. Around the time of this incident, the Doctor claimed to have spent at least 33 months searching for Martha Jones in deep space. (TV: The Infinite Quest) During his travels with Martha, the Doctor spent several months living in various time periods on Earth (TV: Human Nature / The Family of Blood, Blink) and inside the Valiant during the so-called Year That Never Was. (TV: Last of the Time Lords)
He said he was 903 years old while attempting to save the Titanic. (TV: Voyage of the Damned)
While travelling alone, he claimed to be 904 years old. (PROSE: Number 1, Gallows Gate Road)
He again claimed to be 903 during an adventure with Donna Noble. (AUDIO: The Nemonite Invasion) During another adventure with Donna, on the planet Calibris, the Doctor shot himself with several time reaver guns. While ten minutes passed for those around him, he experienced 7 centuries frozen in time. (AUDIO: Time Reaver)
After meeting Gabby Gonzalez, the Doctor stated that he was over 900 years old. (COMIC: The Arts in Space) In a later adventure in Nevada, he said 900 again, suggesting he was approximating. (TV: Dreamland)
In an encounter with the Fourth Doctor while traveling alone, the Tenth Doctor told his past self he was "barely half a millennium" older. (AUDIO: Out of Time)
While confronting a rabbit he briefly believed to be a Zygon in disguise in Elizabethan England, the Doctor said he was 904 (TV: The Day of the Doctor) or 900 years old. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) Just prior to regenerating, he gave his age as 906. (TV: The End of Time)
Eleventh Doctor
Not long after Amy Pond first encountered the Eleventh Doctor, he told her that he was 907. (TV: Flesh and Stone) Later in their travels, he claimed to be 908. (COMIC: The Cleverest King) Indeed, at Lake Silencio in Utah, Amy would recall that the Doctor was 908 the last time she saw him. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut)
During his travels with Alice Obiefune, the Doctor claimed to have lived "900-odd-years". (COMIC: Pull to Open)
When his future self invited him to Lake Silencio, the younger Doctor gave his age as 909. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut) The Doctor later commented that he was around George's age of eight "about a thousand years ago". (TV: Night Terrors)
When he met Amy, Rory, River and Canton at Lake Silencio, his older self told Amy that he was 1103. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut) Indeed, the Doctor at this point in his life had just finished his farewell tour, which appeared to have lasted about 200 years. (TV: The Wedding of River Song)
By the time he had left Amy and Rory, but still offered them brief trips in the TARDIS, he stated his age as 1200. (TV: A Town Called Mercy) When asked if he knew any tricks, the Doctor stated that he'd been escaping for "about a thousand years, give or take a century or so". (PROSE: Magic of the Angels)
Whilst travelling with Valarie Lockwood, the Doctor said that he had lived his life for "thousands and thousands" of years. (AUDIO: The End)
When he met Clara Oswald, he rounded his age down to 1000. (TV: The Bells of Saint John, The Rings of Akhaten) The Doctor later spent three years trapped in a vast room within the TARDIS. (COMIC: Sky Jacks) When asked by the War Doctor, he said he didn't know his age and had lost track, settling on "1200-and-something". He went on to say that he was so old he couldn't remember if he was lying about his age. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
During the Siege of Trenzalore, the Doctor told Theol that he was "nearly" 1500, but he could be a few hundred years off either way. (PROSE: An Apple a Day...) By the time Clara saw him next, he had spent 300 years defending the world of Trenzalore, making him at least 1500 years old. (TV: The Time of the Doctor) By the time the Mara began attacking the residents of Trenzalore, the Doctor had been there for 750 years, making him 1950. (PROSE: The Dreaming) In total, the Doctor spent 900 years on Trenzalore, making him roughly 2100 years old at the end of his first complete cycle of regenerations. (PROSE: Tales of Trenzalore)
Twelfth Doctor
Shortly after his regeneration, the Twelfth Doctor claimed to have lived for over 2000 years. (TV: Deep Breath) He apparently had a birthday which was celebrated by Missy, who claimed to have remembered it while reasoning that he had forgotten. (TV: Death in Heaven) He continued to identify as 2000 after temporarily parting from Clara Oswald. (PROSE: Big Bang Generation) He possessed a Two Thousand Year Diary which he used to identify the Mire. (TV: The Girl Who Died)
The Doctor hid for 139 years in a stasis chamber in order to maintain his personal timeline. (TV: Under the Lake, Before the Flood)
As a result of a Time Lord plot, the Doctor spent around 4.5 billion years (TV: Hell Bent) trapped in a confession dial, although it was divided amongst countless time-copies of the Doctor going through mostly the same events in a manner similar to a Time loop. (TV: Heaven Sent) Although he would usually ignore this when discussing his age, the Doctor did once tell a younger incarnation of the Master that he was age 4 billion. (COMIC: Doorway to Hell)
The Doctor would admit to Osgood that he had lost track of his age. (COMIC: Robo Rampage) Whilst travelling alone, Missy told the Doctor he was "getting old", having lived for centuries. (PROSE: Dr. Twelfth) He later claimed to be "only two thousand and... something". (COMIC: Invasion of the Mindmorphs)
At some point afterwards, the Doctor spent a twenty-four year night on Darillium with River Song. (TV: The Husbands of River Song)
"A long time ago", the Doctor made an oath to guard the body of Missy for 1000 years. After this he transported her to the Vault beneath St Luke's University. (TV: Extremis) In late 2016, he had apparently been lecturing at the university for over fifty years, although some rumours said he had been there for over 70. (TV: The Pilot) Nevertheless, Nardole still identified the Doctor as being 2000 years old. (PROSE: I Am the Doctor)
Before his first adventure together with Bill Potts, the Doctor told Nardole that he was over 2000 years old. (TV: Smile) A few hours after this, he echoed the same thing to Bill herself. (TV: Thin Ice) On meeting the Monks in a simulation, the Doctor gave his age as "two thousand years at the last count". (TV: Extremis)
Shortly before regenerating, the Twelfth Doctor, in an encounter with his first incarnation just prior to his own regeneration, commented that 1500 years of "rock'n'roll" had passed in the interim. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)
Thirteenth Doctor
Immediately following regeneration, the Thirteenth Doctor was at least 1500 years older than the Second Doctor, making her a minimum of 1950 years old. (PROSE: Iceberg, TV: Twice Upon a Time) The Thirteenth Doctor would later tell her companions that she was thousands of years old, so old she didn't even remember her true age anymore. (TV: Fugitive of the Judoon)
After being captured by the Judoon, (TV: The Timeless Children) the Doctor spent "a rough few decades" - with a minimum of 19 years - in a maximum security facility before being broken out by Jack Harkness. (TV: Revolution of the Daleks)
The Valeyard
The Valeyard told Bernice Summerfield that he was "thousands of years old". (AUDIO: Every Dark Thought)
Behind the scenes
The "900" discrepancy
Before the Eleventh Doctor's 200-year farewell tour between TV: The God Complex and Closing Time, the writers of the 2005 revival of the series explicitly described the Doctor as around 900 years old, despite contrary statements on TV and expanded media. It is one of the few notable contradictions of previously established material in the revival. The discrepancy was finally addressed in the short story Doctor Who and the Time War released in 2020, which explained that in the Last Great Time War the Doctor was aged and de-aged multiple times. Eventually "feeling around one thousand" by the end of the War, he rounded his age down to 900.
The Doctor "has no clue"
A simple and self-evident theory is that the Doctor doesn't know how old they are because they have lost count, constantly travelling backward and forward through time making it difficult to measure one's lifespan at all. This theory began as fanon, with the Doctor occasionally admitting to being unsure of his age in spinoff media. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Time Witch, PROSE: Vampire Science)
This is the theory subscribed to by Doctor Who executive producer and head writer Steven Moffat in an interview with SFX: "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."[1] This theory would be voiced in The Day of the Doctor, written by Steven Moffat, when the Eleventh Doctor is asked by the War Doctor how old he is now. The Thirteenth Doctor also later admitted to being unsure of her age in Fugitive of the Judoon.
The Doctor lies
Another theory was that the Doctor lied about their age. This is supported in the audio The Lost Resort, when the Fifth Doctor states that a Time Lord will always lie when asked their age.
Non-fictional sources
The first non-fictional writing about regeneration, The Phoenix in the TARDIS, stated that the First Doctor was about 900 at the time he regenerated into the Second Doctor.
Other invalid sources
The age of the incarnation of the Doctor seen in Doctor Who and Crayola is given as over 1 million years by his arch nemesis Crayola.
An incarnation of the Doctor, portrayed by Fourth Doctor actor Tom Baker, who featured in Introduction to the Night gave his age as 700 years old while referring to himself in the third person.
In The Last Dalek, a video game based on TV: Dalek, the Metaltron's memory files state the Ninth Doctor's age as "unknown".
In a brief in-universe portion of The Weakest Link: Doctor Who Special, Tenth Doctor actor David Tennant gave his age as 925 while introducing himself in-character.
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Steven Moffat, SFX, May 2010
