Well he said he was 903 in Voyage of the Damned. In The End of Time: Part II, he stated that his age was 906. We’ll have to wait and see if they continue that current time line with Matt Smith.
Of course, even that may not be accurate for the 10th Doctor, as he spent a year on board the Valiant at the end of Season 3, a bunch of time in 1969 in Blink, and who knows how much by himself between Season 4 and all the Specials.
I stand corrected. I knew it was 9-oh-something, anyway.
It would be amusing if he kept giving different ages all the time. Sometimes he’ll tell someone he’s 903, sometimes it’s 906, sometimes it’s 1042. When called out on it, he can blame it on old age.
Exactly, which is why the ‘discounting life on Gallifrey’ theory works - he stole the TARDIS as an adult - 200 and change - so having 900 years of travelling in it makes him at least 1100 years old. Contrarily, having him 900 years old gives him 700 years of travels. (Roughly. Lots of rounding, up there.)
But he claims to be 900 - the same length of time he’s claimed to have travelled in the TARDIS. Despite his previous incarnation having claimed to have been over 100 years older than that.
Give Eight a few decades of travelling, subtract the time before he swiped the TARDIS, and the stated ages work out. Roughly. As well as they possibly can when dealing with multiple writers, all of whom consider continuity a rough guide at best. And the most recent stated age already lines up with his stated travel time.
But, given the nature of time travel (as discussed a bit in “Blink”) what Rose & the web site guy were looking at isn’t necessarilly something that happened before he met Rose. The Doctor could have met Rose, and then traveled back in time (relative to that episode) to Kennedy’s assassination, etc.
Are we talking earth years, or Gallifrey years? Perhaps he adjusts his age depending on what planet he’s on at the time.
Yes, indeed. In the New series pilot episode Rose, he invites her to join him and she refuses. Thew TARDIS dematerialises, then reappears a second later. The Doctor could have had 200 years of travel between disappearing and reappearing. During this time he had the adventures listed on Clive’s website.
Good point.
To add another level of ambiguity, when he’s speaking, when he’s speaking to aliens on an alien planet or spaceship, he’s speaking their language. So when he says 700 years, he could be saying “700 glorshnaks,” or “485.23 glorshnaks,” depending on how the translation circuit functions.
Well, OK. I see what you’re trying to do. I just don’t think anybody does that. No one counts the number of years since they got their first car, or moved out of the house, or graduated from college. When asked their age, everyone gives the number of years since their birth – or they lie. Actually, to me, that’s the explanation that makes most sense. (I mean, besides the real-world explanation that writers were making it up as they were going along and didn’t think anyone else would care.) Sometimes the Doctor lies about his age, or exaggerates for effect, or simply gets confused. (It happens to me, and I’m not quite as old as he.)
Say he built and/or stole the Tardis at 40, and he was 900 when he met Rose. He’d still have “900 years of phone box travel,” rounded to the nearest 100.
A year in which he was physically aged by centuries and then completely rejuvenated, while time outside the ship was almost but not quite completely rewound, so how the hell would you count that? That’s as good an illustration as any of why “How old is the Doctor?” may be an unanswerable question. The Tardis was so traumatized in that episode even its internal chronometer could have been affected.
We’ve seen fewer than 60 episodes in the past five years, and most of those stories account for less than a day of the Doctor’s life. Yet we know it’s been about five or six years, earth time, since he and Rose met. I think I was going somewhere with that, but my head is starting to hurt.
One thing about this, several Doctors had convenient gaps that could accommodate long periods. For example, between losing Sarah Jane Smith and gaining Leela, the 4th Doctor could possibly have had 150 years of travel with 50 companions.
However, there is no such gap in either the 2nd or the 5th Doctor’s reign. They can’t have lasted very long. Doc#2 started with Ben & Polly who overlapped with Jamie, who stayed til the end. Since they are all human, and didn’t age noticeably, he can’t have survived much more than the 3 years he was on the show. Maybe 6 or 7 years at the extreme. (unless you believe in season 6b)
Likewise, the 5th Doctor had overlapping companions, half of them Human. Unless Turlough comes from a species with extended life, and lived 100 years without aging noticeably, I can’t see 5th Doctor lasting more than about 5 or 6 years.
Here’s an interesting aspect to throw into the mix.
When the Ninth Doctor takes Rose off on her first adventures, he returns her one year after he was supposed to have. From that point on, all the Earth episodes are actually set a year ahead of broadcast date.
Technically, Rose’s physical age does not match the length of time the Earth has revolved around the sun since her birth.
And the alternative dimension that Rose is now living in seems to be some time ahead of her old dimension, which is why she was able to anticipate certain events that unfolded in season 4 and specifically in Turn Left.
Imagine those kind of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey events a million-fold in the Doctor’s own length of existence. Not to mention regenerations adding a twist even on that.
Nobody’s a time travelling alien who (semi-)successfully committed pseudo-genocide against two races - including their own - by banishing them outside of time, either.
Note that by this theory he doesn’t start discounting his first 2 centuries or so until near, or soon, after the end of the Time War, and his actions therein.
The lie isn’t one borne of vanity, but of deep shame at his actions (either near the end of his Eighth regeneration, or the beginning of the Ninth), shame at what his people had become, and a general disconnection from his life Pre-Tardis, which had already taken root well before the Time War.
Stealing the TARDIS isn’t the same as getting his first car, or even graduating college - it’s making himself a criminal in the eyes of the Time Lords, and his start on the road to becoming the man who would ‘destroy’ them.
I suppose if you invoke alien exceptionalism you can justify anything, but for me one of the key characteristics of the Doctor is that despite his incredibly advanced age and intellect he behaves in a recognizably human manner, and I can’t get my head around a human acting in a comparable fashion to what you’re describing. No matter how traumatized you are at 30, you don’t backdate your birth to when you left home at 16. It seems to me you’ve introduced a bizarre psychological twist in an attempt to resolve a mathematical anomaly. I would rather have characters who act in a way that makes sense, even if it means all the numbers don’t add up, especially when, as has been mentioned previously, concepts such as “age” and “years” become very slippery when time and space travel are involved.
No, I haven’t.
For over 1000 years, he let his age go up - he may have forgotten or ignored a few years or even a decade here and there, but any two references to his age will either be the same, or the later one (by his personal timeline) will have gone up. Probably significantly, if it’s in a different Regeneration.
Nine and Ten are later in his personal timeline than Eight - time travel can’t change that.
Then, suddenly, at around the same time he committed an atrocity of cosmic proportions, he decides to roll his age back.
And, hey, look at that - the age he claims is also the length of time he claims since he stole the TARDIS, first alienating him from his people - one of the two species he destroyed.
Another factor in calculating the Doctor’s age is how old is Susan when we first see her? There is nothing to indicate her apparent age (15) is not her real age. And it seems the Doctor’s travels in the TARDIS started with Susan. I’ll let somebody with better knowledge of the Whoverse consider this.
Well, no. In “The Silurians,” the Third Doctor says “You know, I’m beginning to lose confidence for the first time in my life. And that covers several thousand years.” But the Fourth Doctor on several occasions is said to be about 750.
Which is unlike anything anyone would actually do. If a man murders his family at 30, he doesn’t suddenly start calling himself 12 because he left home at 18, unless he’s trying for an insanity defense.
In an early serial, the Doctor says a young woman appears to be “a few years older than Susan.” More recently, the Master at age 8 was depicted as looking very much like a human 8-year-old. Therefore it seems likely Susan really was a teenager.
ETA: Aaaaaand I think I’ll back away from the Doctor Who threads for a while.
However, it is just barely possible that when a Timelord regenerates he starts counting his age from zero, ie his time in his current body.
Can we at all blame John Nathan Turner for this shamozzle?