Doctor (Doctor Who) - Age

Age

In early production documents, the Doctor was said to be 650 years old, although this was never stated on screen. By the time the Doctor did cite his age ("Let me see, in human terms, 400, yes, 450 years" in the serial The Tomb of the Cybermen; he also kept a 500-year diary), he had already regenerated to a younger form. The intention at that time was that regeneration had turned back the Doctor's clock, making him younger both in appearance and in biological age. Since the Doctor's age had never previously been given, 450 Earth years became a starting point onto which further years would be progressively added as the series continued and the character lived out his further incarnations.

The Third Doctor implied in Doctor Who and the Silurians and in The Mind of Evil that he had a lifetime that covered "several thousand years", though in either case he may have been referring to the breadth of time he had visited (or was able to visit) rather than actually lived through, or perhaps his own life expectancy. While the Doctor's age has never been a known quantity, these numbers are the most difficult to reconcile with the rest of the series.

By the time of The Brain of Morbius, the Fourth Doctor was stated to be 749 years old ("something like 750 years" in the prior Pyramids of Mars). In The Ribos Operation, Romana said the Doctor was 759 years old and had been piloting the TARDIS for 523 years, making him 236 when he first "borrowed" it. When the Doctor encounters his old friend Drax in The Armageddon Factor, Drax says it has been 450 years since their time together at the Academy, suggesting only that Drax was 450 years younger, but implying nothing about the Doctor's age, since it could have been a different amount of time for him. Drax also implies that the Doctor got his doctorate after that. In The Robots of Death, the Fourth Doctor states he is 750 years old.

In Revelation of the Daleks the Sixth Doctor said that he was "a 900-year-old Time Lord", and in Time and the Rani, the Seventh Doctor's age was 953, the same as villainous Time Lady the Rani (in both serials, the Doctor's age is stated in dialogue). In Remembrance of the Daleks the Seventh Doctor said that he had "900 years’ experience" rewiring alien equipment. At the beginning of the 1996 television movie, the Seventh Doctor was shown to have a 900-year diary in his TARDIS.

In the spin-off prose fiction, in the Fourth Doctor comic "The Time Witch" after the Doctor and Sharon cross through the split in time which they age four years which the Doctor says "I shall still think of myself as 743 ... or was it 730, I never can remember...", the Sixth Doctor celebrated his 991st birthday in the short story "Brief Encounter: A Wee Deoch an..?", written by Colin Baker himself, in Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991: UNIT Exposed, while the Seventh Doctor celebrated his 1,000th birthday in Set Piece by Kate Orman, and the Eighth Doctor declared his age to be 1,012 in Vampire Science by Orman and Jonathan Blum. The Eighth Doctor spent nearly a century on Earth during a story arc spread over several novels, and also spent around 100 years asleep in The Sleep of Reason by Martin Day. Furthermore, in the Big Finish Productions audio play Orbis the Eighth Doctor says that he has spent 600 years living on the planet Orbis since the last play Vengeance of Morbius. In the same play he states that he lost count of his true age a long time previously and that he rounds it down and takes into account the different lengths of what is called a "year" in different locations (Although this implies that he might have been referring to 'years' based on Orbis's measurements rather than Earth's).

In the 2005 series, the Doctor's age is stated in publicity materials as 900 years, and in "Aliens of London", he says, "Nine hundred years of time and space, and I've never been slapped by someone's mother." Rose follows up by asking him if he is 900 years old, and he replies affirmatively, though it is unclear whether he is being disingenuous. He restates this as "Nine hundred years of phone box travel and it's the only thing left that surprises me", however, in "The Empty Child". In "Voyage of the Damned", the Tenth Doctor states that he is 903 years of age, the first time since Time and the Rani that an exact number has been stated in dialogue; previously, the Master also indicated the Doctor's age to be about 900 in the "The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords" story arc.

How this figure is to be reconciled with the Doctor's age in the rest of the series and spin-off media is uncertain.

At the end of "The Sound of Drums", the Master ages the Doctor by 100 years using his laser screwdriver, leading the Doctor to assume an elderly appearance. In "Last of the Time Lords", the Master states to the population of Earth that the Doctor is nine hundred years old, and informs his subjects he will show them the Doctor's true form, suspending his ability to regenerate. The Master proceeds to age the Doctor further with his laser screwdriver, reducing him to a tiny, wrinkled being, subsequently imprisoned inside a bird cage until reverted to his current form with the help of Martha Jones, 15 satellites and the entire population of Earth. However as the resolution of that story is by means of a reversal of time, there is a suggestion that the events of that year never actually took place, and yet are present in the Doctor's memory.

In The End of Time the Doctor tells Wilfred Mott he is 906 years old. At the end of Flesh and Stone, he tells Amy Pond that he is 907, whilst in "The Impossible Astronaut" he is 909, with a later Doctor also appearing who is 1103. In "The Doctor's Wife", the TARDIS while embodied as Idris says the Doctor has been travelling with her for 700 years – making him, if precise and if he had not also spent any extended periods away from the TARDIS along the way, at least 936 according to figures Romana provided in "The Ribos Operation". By the end of the series the Doctor has reached the age of 1103 at which we met him in The Impossible Astronaut. The next series ages the Doctor further, with A Town Called Mercy establishing that he is now approximately 1,200 years old.

Current producer Steven Moffat has stated that the Doctor simply does not know his own age, given the non-linear time-travelling nature of his life.