The Doctor's age

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 information
It was difficult to determine the Doctor's life expectancy, given his ability to regenerate. The Second Doctor once stated that as a Time Lord he could "live forever, barring accidents". (TV: The War Games) A Time Lord named Handrel claimed that a single incarnation of a Time Lord could live for around ten thousand years. (PROSE: The Time Lord's Story)

It was also evident that Time Lords aged in a way different from humans. The Fourth Doctor once told his companion that he was a teenager for fifty years. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Time Witch) He also went through spans of linear time longer than average human lifespans without growing visibly older. (PROSE: Escape Velocity, AUDIO: Orbis, TV: The Impossible Astronaut)

By the Doctor's eleventh incarnation, "he had long since abandoned trying to keep track of [his age] in any way that mattered to anybody but him." (PROSE: Nothing O'Clock)

First Doctor
The First Doctor was eight when he entered the Academy, along with the Master. (TV: The Sound of Drums) He apparently left primary school at the age of 45. (PROSE: Shroud of Sorrow) He later described himself as having been "just a kid" when he first visited the Medusa Cascade, at the age of 90. (TV: The Stolen Earth) He said he was a "teenager" for fifty years. (COMIC: The Time Witch) When the Fourth Doctor was 759, (TV: 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. (TV: The Pirate Planet)

This figure was broadly supported by the TARDIS itself. When transferred into a humanoid body, the TARDIS said the Doctor had travelled with it for 700 years. At this point, the Eleventh Doctor was around 909 years old, putting his age when he stole the TARDIS about 200. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut, 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 was considered an adolescent. (AUDIO: Here There Be Monsters) He stated he had been travelling in the TARDIS for 60 years when he visited 64, putting his age at 296. (PROSE: Byzantium!) The Doctor spent "centuries" studying at the Time Lord Academy. (COMIC: Mortal Beloved) Magnus chided the Doctor for not regenerating and for holding on to this incarnation as long as he did. (COMIC: Flashback) To the best of his memory, the Doctor recalled having met Bill Cody just before his 400th birthday. (COMIC: Gaze of the Medusa) This incarnation regenerated when he was 450-years-old. (PROSE: Iceberg)

Second Doctor
The Second Doctor told Victoria Waterfield he was "something like" 450 years old in Earth terms. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen) However, he also made claims saying he was several thousand years old, but gave no specific age. He gave his age as 500 shortly before his regeneration. (COMIC: The Brotherhood)

Third Doctor
The Third Doctor told Liz Shaw that his life covered "several thousand years". (TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians) He started to say to Professor Kettering that he had been a scientist for "several thousand" years, but stopped himself before completing the sentence. (TV: The Mind of Evil)

Fourth Doctor
The Fourth Doctor gave his age as 748 shortly after he had first regenerated, (PROSE: A Device of Death) and later on he consistently said he was "something about 750", about 757 or 749 when he travelled with Sarah Jane Smith (TV: Pyramids of Mars, The Android Invasion, The Brain of Morbius, The Seeds of Doom), a further year older; 750 when travelling with Leela (TV: The Robots of Death) and 756 with Romana during her first incarnation just before finding the first segment of the Key to Time. Romana corrected him, saying he was 759. (TV: The Ribos Operation) Before they assembled the Key to Time, he turned 760 (TV: The Power of Kroll) and he was still attributed that age while fighting Skagra. (PROSE: Shada) During one of his travels alone, Another time, after ageing four years due to the chrono-compensator while travelling with Sharon, he decided he would still think himself as "743... or was it 730, I never can remember". (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Time Witch) He claimed at various times to be anything from 400 to a shade over 1000 years old. (PROSE: Evolution) Romana told the Doctor that after the first couple hundred years, it would be hard to remember his exact age.

Fifth Doctor
The Doctor said he was 813 when he regenerated into his fifth incarnation. (PROSE: Cold Fusion) Later in his life, he stated that he was "pushing 900." (AUDIO: Omega) While travelling with Erimem and Peri Brown, the Doctor claimed to be "not even middle-aged by [Time Lord] standards." (AUDIO: No Place Like Home)

Sixth Doctor
The Sixth Doctor said he was 900 years old while travelling with Peri. (TV: Revelation of the Daleks, The Mysterious Planet), "not a day over nine hundred years old" when threatened with death by stoning. (PROSE: The Mysterious Planet) At some point in his past, he had blown out the candles on his 900th birthday cake. (AUDIO: The One Doctor) The Malamud noted that, because of the many volumes about the Doctor's life, he must be 20,000 years old. The Doctor didn't contradict them. (PROSE: The Book of My Life) At another time, he was 991 during his travels with Melanie Bush. (PROSE: A Wee Deoch an ...?) He was 953 years old when he regenerated. (TV: Time and the Rani)

Seventh Doctor
Hours after his regeneration, the Seventh Doctor unlocked a door in the Rani's laboratory with the numerical code "953", saying it was both his age and the Rani's. (TV: Time and the Rani) The Doctor had his 1,000th birthday while travelling with Ace and Bernice Summerfield. (PROSE: Set Piece)

On arriving in the Forge, the Seventh Doctor claimed that "a century or three" had passed in his personal timeline since his previous incarnation visited it. (AUDIO: Project: Lazarus)

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

Eighth Doctor
Three years after his regeneration, the Eighth Doctor calculated his total age to be 1012. He was unsure and might have lost count, and so preferred to simply begin counting at his most recent regeneration, giving his age as "three" when asked. (PROSE: Vampire Science) The Doctor later stated his age as 1018. (PROSE: Autumn Mist) The Doctor aged while trapped as an amnesiac on Earth in "real time" between the late 19th century (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) and the year 2001, making him at least 1125 by the end of this crisis. (PROSE: Escape Velocity)

While travelling with Charley Pollard, the Doctor said he was "nine hundred and fifty something years old". (AUDIO: Neverland) Not long after, while travelling in the Divergent Universe, he was noted to have had "over a thousand years worth of collected experience" by a cave creature in the form of Major Koth. (AUDIO: The Twilight Kingdom) While travelling 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, claiming that in one obscure galaxy he would be two years old. (AUDIO: Orbis)

War Doctor
The Last Great Time War, in which the War Doctor fought, lasted not less than 400 years of linear time, although 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)

Ninth Doctor
The Ninth Doctor claimed "900 years of time and space". Immediately after he made this comment, Rose asked, "When you say 900 years?—" and he responded, "That's my age." (TV: Aliens of London) Later, when Rose appeared to wander off, he mentioned to a cat that the only thing left to surprise him after "900 years of phone box travel" was whenever he met someone who got the "don't wander off thing". When Rose asked him about his name, saying "Don't you ever get tired of 'Doctor'? Doctor Who?" He responded, "Nine centuries in, I'm coping." (TV: The Empty Child)

Tenth Doctor
The Tenth Doctor said he was 903 years old while attempting to rescue the Titanic. (TV: Voyage of the Damned) Prior to the Titanic incident, he claimed to have spent at least 33 months searching for Martha Jones in deep space (TV: The Infinite Quest), and several months living in various time periods on Earth (PROSE: The Stone Rose, 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 again claimed 903 during an adventure with Donna Noble. (AUDIO: The Nemonite Invasion) In a later adventure in Nevada, he said 900 again, suggesting he was approximating. (TV: Dreamland) While confronting a rabbit in Elizabethan England he briefly believed to be a Zygon in disguise, he said he was 904 years old. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) Just prior to regenerating, he gave his age as 906, suggesting that several years had passed for the Doctor after his travels with Donna Noble. (TV: The End of Time)

However, during an adventure with Donna Noble on the planet Calibris, the Doctor shot himself with several time reaver guns. While ten minutes passed for those around him, he spent 7 centuries frozen in time. (AUDIO: Time Reaver)

Eleventh Doctor
Not long after Amy Pond first encountered the Eleventh Doctor, he told her that he was 907 (TV: Flesh and Stone), which he then restated when meeting the Dream Lord. (TV: Amy's Choice, HOMEVID: Meanwhile in the TARDIS ) During his own "interrogation," the Doctor claimed to have lived "900-odd-years." (COMIC: Pull to Open) When his future self invited him to Utah, 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 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) 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 therefore 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 he met Clara Oswald he rounded his age down to 1000. (TV: The Bells of Saint John) The Doctor 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 and had lost track, settling on "Twelve hundred and something, I think, unless I'm lying." 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) 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...) He spent 300 years defending the world of Trenzalore, making him at least 1500 years old by the time Clara saw him next. (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: The Eleventh Doctor's Last Stand)

Twelfth Doctor
Shortly after his regeneration, the Twelfth Doctor claimed to have lived for over 2000 years. (TV: Deep Breath) 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, and, although it was divided amongst countless copies of the Doctor, he retained those memories upon escaping. (TV: Heaven Sent) 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)

After this, the Doctor told a much younger incarnation of the Master that he was age 4 billion. (COMIC: Doorway to Hell) At some point afterwards, the Doctor spent a twenty-four year night on Darillium with River Song. (TV: The Husbands of River Song)

At the time he met Bill Potts he had apparently been lecturing at St Luke's University for over fifty years, although some rumours said he had been there for over seventy. (TV: The Pilot)

On their first adventure together the Doctor stated to Bill that he was 2000 years old. (TV: Smile) A few hours after this he said the same thing. (TV: Thin Ice)

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. To date no episode, novel or comic strip has addressed the discrepancy directly.

"He has no clue"
A simple and self-evident theory is that the Doctor doesn't know how old he is because he has 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."

- Steven Moffat, SFX, May 2010

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.

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.