Forum:The Doctor's Age

Index → Reference desk archives → The Doctor's Age

Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

Ok, after thinking about this for a long time, i found that there is NO WAY the Doctor can be 903 years old. Just think how little time he spent in his 9th regenerative form, and because they regenerate if the body dies of natural causes, so if you add up all the possible time he could have spent in his original body, then for each of his regenerations, it could not possibly add up to 903? Anyone see what I'm taking about or can anyone be bothered to work it out? --LuisFernandoLopez 16:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Always remember, there's lots of "gaps" in which the Doctor could have been traveling alone or otherwise having un-chronicled adventures. We don't know how long these gaps are. For example:

Unknown is the Doctor's age when he left Gallifrey, or how long he and Susan traveled before An Unearthly Child. Some sources suggest that when the series starts, he's about 450.

How long he traveled, with or without Jamie, in "Season 6B".

The gap between The Green Death and The Time Warrior - the Doctor was clearly upset at Jo's decision; who knows how long he went away.

The gap between The Invasion of Time and The Ribos Operation, when the Doctor could have traveled with just K-9; it's also suggested that the Fourth Doctor Doctor Who Magazine comic stories with Sharon take place in this gap.

Further, as Romana and the Doctor are both Time Lords, the gaps between their adventures, especially with the Randomiser, are unknown. The Randomiser could take them to a lot of boring places.

There's a gap between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity where the Doctor and Nyssa traveled for an unknown amount of time.

Just because he only had one televised story, the Eighth Doctor had a huge amount of adventures.

It's been suggested that the Doctor's behavior in Rose (TV story) is not an indicator that he just regenerated, but simply that he's still unhappy with how his ears turned out.

The Tenth Doctor has had gaps after The Runaway Bride, after Voyage of the Damned, and on either side of each of the specials after Journey's End.

Unless you think that 903 is too low, in which case he's lying out of vanity. He's done it before. Monkey with a Gun 17:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. I was trying to work out if LuisFernandoLopez was commenting on it being too high or too low. For the Eighth Doctor it's easy as it's mentioned in Vampire Science he states he's 1,012 years old. If you go from there he spends 3 or so years on Ha'olam in Seeing I, there's also the 100 years or so during the stuck on Earth arc. So that's 1,115 years, that's not counting the time between Seeing I and The Ancestor Cell nor the time between Escape Velocity and The Gallifrey Chronicles (plus the Time War however long that lasted), there's also all the time the Doctor spends with Charley (and later C'rizz) and then Lucie.

Additionally with the Fifth Doctor there's all the travelling done with Peri and Erimiem (in addition to the travel with Nyssa). There is also all the time the Sixth Doctor spends travelling with Peri, Mel, Evelyn, Charley and the time he spends solo.

The 903 vanity is a good reason (or to not freak Rose out) or alternatively in Vampire Science the Doctor say's he's either 3 or 1,012 years old. Three is how many years since he last regenerated. (Though there's nothing to suggest that the Ninth Doctor has been in that body for 903 years, though he does refer to himself being in the time war rather than 'the other me' as he does in the some other instances). --Tangerineduel 18:12, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I understand about the un-seen events type thing (like the one with Sally Sparrow where the Doctor and Martha go off to fight two somethings and a lizard at the end). But i'm sure that the Doctor can age, body-wise, eg he can regenerate to a young body then live for another 50 years ageing like a human. This would mean his body would die of natural causes and he would have to regenerate correct. So, assuming that the first doctor we see is his original body(the one he was born in) or in his first regenerated body, then he cannot be 450 years old. Do you know where it was said that he was 450 years old? --LuisFernandoLopez 18:39, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

We know that individual bodies can live for at least 500 years (see the Leisure Hive, when he ages 500 years and just looks elderly), so it's not a big stretch to assume the First Doctor was 450 when he died. And according to the pertaining page, the Doctor claimed he was 450 in The Tomb of the Cybermen. -<Azes13 20:04, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

There's also a line by #10, I'm blanking on the episode, where he says "I don't age, I regenerate." Basically, Time Lords age, but at a dramatically slower rate than humans; barring injury or illness, each form could potentially last centuries. Monkey with a Gun 04:29, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

The Third Doctor says in Doctor Who and the Silurians that he's 'thousands' of years old. The currents series seems to want to keep track of his ge, whereas the classic series was rather blase and flippant about it. Perhaps Timelords, being masters of time, aren't particular bothered bout counting their years, or perhaps it's too confusing for some of them. I mean, if a Timelord is 903, and travels a thousand years forward over a period in relative time of 3 years, is he 906 or 1903? They do some pretty weird things. In Big Bang Two he recreated the universe. THe universe, including his own past timeline, was erased. He restored the universe's past timeline, but, relative to himself, it's the year 0 again. So you could say he's not one year old. 'Timy Wimy' stuff!Exterminateallhumans 02:08, July 17, 2010 (UTC)

Here’s my possible understanding on the Doctor’s age issue.

The Doctor was loomed as a reincarnation of the Other – who had lived for ‘thousands of years’ (see Third Doctor) – in the House of Lungbarrow. When he was born, he looked as a fully-grown bellybuttoned 8-years old child. Due to the very slow growth/aging rate of Gallifreyans, the Doctor was a teenager for 50 years – that means his aging rate in his first incarnation was about 1 Gallifreyan year every 5-6 human years. So he was looking as a 9-year old boy when he entered the Academy 8 years later.

He studied there for centuries (about two centuries). According to Romana’s statement, the Doctor was 236 when he left Gallifrey on board a ‘borrowed’ TARDIS. He hijacked Susan in the distant past, then he travelled for about 60 years with her. He was about 296 during his adventure with Ian and Barbara in 64 AD.

Though the main continuity of the televised series seem to show no visible gap, we must admit that the Doctor spent many years travelling on his own. He possibly left his friends on some planet and returned later on, but they didn’t even notice his absence at all. This is essential, since the First Doctor was alone both in The Three Doctors and in The Five Doctors. He may have got back in time to Totters Lane to leave the Hand of Omega after the events in "The Chase" or in "The Dalek Masterplan".That may account for his travels with John and Gillian, as they might have found him alone in Totters Lane soon after leaving a message for his past self to hide the Hand of Omega there. When these travels were over, he got back to hijack his former companions.

As the First Doctor regenerated, he was about 450. Or maybe older or younger, who knows. The Fourth Doctor showed an incredibly precise age estimate, backed-up and only minimally corrected by Romana. We may argue that the Doctor could know far better his age during his secret travels for the CIA, since he had a constant interaction with his own kind.

750-760 was the age of the Fourth Doctor, and we may say that the Third Doctor could be much younger. Most of his earliest adventures (Seasons 7-9) were spent on Earth, side by side with humans, as he couldn’t travel in time during the exile.

What surprises me is the record of the Fifth Doctor and the Sixth Doctor. The former claimed 813 in Cold Fusion, while he is over-900 by the Sixth Doctor. I don’t know how realistic the second estimate might be. He says he was 991 when in his sixth persona, yet accepts to claim 953 after his seventh regeneration as he knows that the Rani was so aged. The post-regenerative chaos he was living makes me believe he simply wasn’t meeting a simultaneous version of the Rani – she came from a point in her future timeline then the Doctor, who was so stressed by his amnesia that he forgot his true age and accepted the Rani’s as his own. All later computations may be based on this one.

Indeed, Lungbarrow shows all this by saying the Doctor flew away from Gallifrey about 648 years before, so the Doctor really was about 911 by that time. This is a claim from the outside, repeated many times by his Cousins. The events of the Doctor Who movie took place some time after, but not much later. In the 1996 Telemovie the newly-regenerated Eighth Doctor claims that no-one ever managed to open the Eye of Harmony on his TARDIS in 700 years – this must be a rounded figure for the 650 years he spent travelling on it, possibly including the previous existence of the TARDIS before being ‘borrowed’. This is also important, as the TARDIS herself claims that the Doctor and her travelled together for about 700 years, so that about 50 years may be allowed in the course of the Eighth Doctor’s life, setting his age to be about 938. Yet, the Eighth Doctor claims a higher age – 1,012 when he was 3 in his present incarnation. That may be due to these events taking place after the earliest Eighth Doctor’s amnesia in “The Eight Doctors”. Although the exact timing of the Eighth Doctor meeting his seventh self might be disputable, I propose that it took place right before Lungbarrow, so that maybe the gap in the memories of the Eighth Doctor didn’t fill completely – he recovered most of his memories, but in the next adventures he could claim he didn’t know if he was born or loomed, a doubt he couldn’t have if he remembered Lungbarrow in fullness.

Then, my best understanding is that the Doctor was about 912 at his seventh regeneration. The main problem is that the Ninth Doctor and his immediate successors claim an even younger age for him. The first time the Ninth Doctor addresses this matter, he claims that he have travelled 900 years in time and space in a police box, which contradicts both the age claims of the TARDIS and his own. He is counting his time travelling as the Doctor and hiding his previous years. This seems to be accepted as an ordinary thing for renegades even by the Master himself during the Year-That-Never-Was.

My solution: the Eighth Doctor didn’t travel in his Type 40 TARDIS on two occasions. The first time was when he was stuck on Earth for a hundred years, an he got his TARDIS back in 2001. The second period is the 600 years on Orbis, but since the same account shows the Doctor was adapting his computation to the Orbis timeframe, it may have been a much shorter period of time. E.g. it takes 88 days for Mercury’s revolution around the Sun, so that one Earth year is four times a Mercurian year. On this rate, 600 Orbis years may be as much as 150 years or less, in human terms. So, the Doctor lived 230 years more then the TARDIS, so that she counted 700 years with him (also, 600 years could be an approximation, too).

In conclusion: the Ninth Doctor may have been about 1138 in DW: Rose. He must have spent some years in that regeneration, since the photos and portraits shown by Clide reveal him wearing a younger face then the one in the new series. The Eighth Doctor may have lived about 226 years, of which 100+ were spent stuck on Earth and the other 100+ comprise the 600 Orbis years and the earliest adventures of the Ninth Doctor. - Gothanks84 14:20, 27 October 2011 (UTC)