so Presuming the Doctor is 900 years old (roughly, I'll round it up/down to that)....

So, in the past almost 50 years since the series began, he's regenerated 10 times....

SO - Does this mean he was in the incarnation of William Hartnell for around 850 years before he first ever regenerated!?!??!

He didn't seem to live very long in the bodies of either 9 or 10, but there's nothing concrete to suggest the length of time in his other incarnations. Consider the 8th Doctor, for example, who we have no idea of how long he "lived".

Yup. Spot on.

Timelords are incredibly long-lived. As the Doctor once said " We can live almost forever, barring accidents.."
If the Doctor had stayed on Gallifrey he would probably still only be on the Troughton regeneration.

We also don't know how long the Ninth/ Tenth Doctors lived either really. There was alot of time when the Tenth Doctor was off screen. Can never really take their spoken age as gospel; the Sixth Doctor once claimed to be 953.

If you're interested, I posted a massive post on the doctor's age in this thread...

See Post 22 and 33

No-the sixth Doctor only ever gave his age as 900, the seventh stated he was 953 (the same age as the Rani) in Time & the Rani; it was a significant plot point. The first time the Doctor ever mentioned his age on screen was in The Tomb of the Cybermen, when he calculated that he was around 450, meaning that over 450 years passed for him between 1967 and 1987 as far as we're concerned. Quite obviously, a lot of time passes between stories-we're only seeing the more interesting parts of his life. As for why he now seems to be claiming to be younger than before: no idea. Maybe 900 is the Gallifreyan equivalent of 29, and he's unwilling to admit to being older.

Something just occurred to me. The doctor says he's 906 in The End Of Time and 907 in Flesh And Stone. The End Of Time runs consecutively into Eleventh Hour, Beast Below and Votd. Which means the doctor must have celebrated his birthday between Episode 3 and 4 of this series! Happy Birthday Doctor!

I can see that years could pass for the Doctor between adventures, but surely the problem with this is the companions. Human companions would age significantly if decades passed between adventures.

There have been plenty of times when that wouldn't be a problem. The fourth Doctor travelled alone for an undetermined amount of time between stories and then travelled for several series' with Romana, who would age at the same rate as him. The sixth Doctor was left alone after Peri left. The seventh Doctor spent time travelling solo with aliens, including Nyssa whose people were already established as being incredibly long lived. And we have no evidence that time even passes at a normal rate in the TARDIS: in THe Hand of Fear, the Doctor states 'we don't really exist when we're in here, we're in a state of temporal grace'.

Indeed as the Doctor himself said last night when he asked Amy to trust him because if he told the truth all of the time you wouldn't have to trust him.

Or the Doctor could just be a little sensitive about turning the big-1-000, so shaving a hundred years off his Time Lord age would be like people saying they are "39"?

I had considered the times when the Doctor was travelling alone. I specified 'human' companions, because I had forgotten the line in The Hand of Fear. As for The Seventh Doctor and Nyssa and aliens, I had no knowledge of that as I am only familiar with Doctor Who on TV, not other media. So from my perspective only the TV series is canon, where I appreciate novels extra are canon to other fans.

er, Nyssa was a TV companion, as were the equally alien Adric and Turlough (both of whom the Doctor travelled with, at times, either solo or with Romana, who was a Time Lady). Pretty much any amount of time could have passed for the Doctor when he was with those individuals without any human companions.

Something else you all have to consider is that The Doctor could very well be having several adventures with different companions at the same time...

It's been mentioned how much time could pass between screen adventures, but by the same token, because he has a time machine, he could quite possibly have a 25 year holiday on the planet Barcelona at any time during a screen adventure and then come back to the adventure 12 seconds after he left it..
So long as he didn't regenerate during that period, no one involved in the screen adventure would know..

The TARDIS.......I want one.....

D

Yep-and also, while you would certainly notice a difference in the human companions if several decades passed between adventures, you wouldn't even notice if several months had passed between adventures or between series', because even humans don't age that fast. For us, Sarah Jane Smith travelled with him for about three years (December 1973-October 1976), but for Sarah it could have been five or six and we wouldn't really know as she'd barely have changed, particularly if the TARDIS' 'state of temporal grace' slows or suspends aging. With about 30 human companions over the years, it doesn't take much to see where the years could add up.

Er... I know Nyssa was a TV companion who travelled with the Fifth Doctor. But you said (quote) "The seventh Doctor spent time travelling solo with aliens, including Nyssa". So I assumed you were talking about in books and other media outside the TV series. But I guess it was just a mistake and you meant to type 'fifth'.

Sorry, I typed seventh, meant fifth. Though I do consider the books canon. For the record, times when the Doctor travelled alone or with only other aliens include: between The Deadly Assassin and The Face of Evil; between The Invasion of Time and The Ribos Operation (both solo); between The Ribos Operation and The Keeper of Traken (with Riomana or Romana and Adric or just Adric); between Time Flight and Arc of Infinity (Nyssa); between Resurrection of the Daleks and Planet of Fire (Turlough); between The Trial of a Time Lord parts 14 and 9 (it's complicated) and for an unspecified time before the 1996 TV Movie, as well as at various points after it.

As mentioned, Doc 4 travelled with Romana. Doc 6 picked up Mel when she apparently already knew him. It appears he dropped her off and picked her up again at the earlier time some point before the regeneration. That means he had some time alone - this is where his audio adventures with Evelyn Smythe fit in. In the TVM, Ace was gone and Doc 7 was companionless. Therefore that's another spot where he could've lived for longer than real time. Doc 8 of course same story, as the TVM also ends with him travelling alone. Doc 9 hadn't looked in a mirror since regenerating (he apparently didn't know what he looked like) but that doesn't mean he didn't have adventures - Clive's pictures in the Rose episode seem to confirm this. During The Infinite Quest, Doc 10 mentioned that he'd left Martha for a year, when to her it had only been hours. He also travelled alone during the specials, and between the ends of series 2 and 3 and the starts of series 3 and 4. Plenty of room for aging. As for his mentioned age, he lost count, and started counting from 900 again when he regenerated into his ninth body. He's going by Earth time, so it could be more than a year to him - and in fact is, as Infinite Quest proves.

He had a pretty bad bout of amnesia during the BBC novels; if he forgot his age, he probably wouldn't have had any way to check what it was.

I reckon the Eighth Doctor had a bit of work done before the Time War, y'know a sort of Gallifreyan nip/tuck which explains the 50 years he has somehow lost!

The doc could leave his companion for 5 minutes and return after a 100-year long trip for a break from her!

The Doctor’s age depends whom he’s talking to.

He will give his age in earth years when talking to humans; but people from other planets have different length years, so his age will be different if he tells them.

For example, if a year on Gallifrey lasted 10 earth days, then the Doctor could have been 10,000 years old when he first left Gallifrey — but when he arrived on Earth, he would be just 274 years old.

Another thing to consider is that if the Doctor travels in the TARDIS at a very fast speed (approaching the speed of light), what is for him a brief journey could actually take centuries. So he could count this either as living for 1 minute or for 1 century.

And of course, it’s highly unlikely the Doctor really does keep track of his age. To do this, he’d have to have a chronometer going constantly inside the TARDIS, and we’ve never heard about this before.

The Doctor’s age is all arbitrary and meaningless, really (or so Steven Moffat believes anyway, according to interview).

Taking this a step further, a 10-Earth-day year on Gallifrey would but him at a very lean 24 in our terms. Bit extreme though and having twin Suns could make Gallifrey gave figure-of-eight years or something.

The First Doctor spent a lot of his time hiding and keeping out of harms way, it seems, until Susans teachers found him. Then he effectively died of old age, so forgetting any ages stated in the show, I find it believable that 80% of his lifespan was lived in his first body.

The Seventh Doctor celebrated his 1,000th birthday in Transit.


Besides, when he's taking about years, whats to say hes talking about human years?

More like about 300 years, according to Transit, Orbis, the EDAs 'Earth' arc...