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 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 fifty 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 eight 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 fifty years. (DWM: The Time Witch) When the Doctor was seven hundred fifty-nine, (DW: The Ribos Operation) Romana noted the Doctor had been travelling in the TARDIS for five hundred twenty-three years. This would have made the Doctor abouttwo hundred thirty-six 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 seven hundred years. At this point, the Doctor was around nine hundred nine 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 sixty years when he visited 64, putting his age at two hundred ninety-six. (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 four hundred fifty. (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" four hundred fifty 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).

Fourth Doctor
It would seem that the Fourth Doctor would have been seven hundred forty-eight at the time of his regeneration. (DW: Planet of the Spiders) This incarnation of the Doctor consistently described himself as around seven hundred fifty. He described himself as seven hundred forty-nine when he travelled with Sarah Jane Smith (DW: The Brain of Morbius, The Seeds of Doom), seven hundred fifty with Leela (DW: The Robots of Death) and seven hundred fifty-six 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 seven hundred fifty-nine. (DW: The Ribos Operation) Before the conclusion of the quest for the Key to Time, he turned seven hundred sixty. (DW: The Power of Kroll) On another occasion, the Doctor described himself as possibly seven hundred thirty and also confessed he couldn't remember his actual age. (DWM: The Time Witch)

Fifth Doctor
The Doctor described himself aseight hundred thirteen when he regenerated (MA: Cold Fusion)

Sixth Doctor
The Doctor described himself as nine hundred years old (DW: Revelation of the Daleks) and later stated his age as "Nine hundred years, more or less". (DW: 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) 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 nine hundred fifty-two years old when he regenerated. (DW: Time and the Rani)


 * During The World Shapers Peri appeared as she did at the start of the adventure on Ravolox, and mentioned 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.

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; while his clothing had rotted away with the passing millennia, his body was preserved and he recovered fully. (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 a thousand nine 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 bea thousand twelve, making hima thousand nine 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 eleven hundred twenty-five by the time this crisis was over. (EDA: Escape Velocity) At one point while traveling with Lucie Miller, the Doctor spent six hundred 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 nine hundred three years old (DW: Voyage of the Damned) While in a parallel universe, he claimed to have given away ten years of his life to provide the TARDIS with energy. (DW: Rise of the Cybermen). The Doctor's claim of nine hundred three is questionable. As at one point prior to the Titanic incident he is known to have spent at least two and three quarters 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 nine hundred three during another adventure with Donna Noble. (NSA: The Nemonite Invasion). During a later visit to America, the Doctor claimed an age of nine hundred once again, suggesting he was rounding down. (DW: Dreamland) Just prior to regenerating, he stated his age explicitly as nine hundred six, 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
When Amy Pond first encountered the Doctor, he told her that he was nine hundred seven. (DW: Flesh and Stone) The Doctor again claimed to be nine hundred seven when meeting the Dream Lord. (DW: Amy's Choice) When the Doctor summoned Amy and Rory to Utah after he had separated from them, he told Amy that he was eleven hundred three, surprising her; she said that the last time they had met he had been nine hundred eight. The Doctor was later killed by a mysterious figure in a spacesuit. Amy, Rory and River Song later encountered an earlier version of the Doctor, who gave his age as nine hundred nine. (DW: The Impossible Astronaut) When he told George about being read bedtime stories around George's age, the Doctor estimated it was "about a thousand years ago". (DW: Night Terrors)

The "900" Controversy
The decision by the writers of the 2005 revival of the series to explicitly describe the Doctor as nine hundred 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.

"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: "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 Moffat reaffirmed this on his Twitter blog.@steven_moffat, 2:14 AM Aug 10th