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The 21st-century era of Doctor Who tends to put more emphasis on the personal lives of the Companions than Old/Classic Who did, so I'm limiting this question to New Who to make it more likely to be answerable.

Most of the Doctor's Companions have been young women, but how young exactly? I get the feeling that Donna is older than most of the others and Rose (at least at the start of her tenure) younger, but is this actually the case? How old are each of the following Companions?

  • Rose
  • Martha
  • Donna
  • Amy
  • Rory
  • Clara
  • Bill

I'm excluding Captain Jack because he was a different calibre of Companion even from the start, presented as being almost as well-travelled and knowledgeable as the Doctor, rather than an audience surrogate like most of the others. I'm also excluding clearly older Companions like Wilf, as well as assorted one-off Companions, focusing just on the main ones. I was tempted to exclude Rory because of the whole "two thousand years being plastic" thing, but since that version of reality ended up never happening, I guess this should still be sensibly answerable.

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  • How old are they when? At the start of their journey or at the end?
    – Valorum
    Jan 30, 2018 at 20:07
  • @Valorum Anywhen we have information. At the start, if possible, but I think most of them don't age much during their time with the Doctor.
    – Rand al'Thor
    Jan 30, 2018 at 20:09
  • I remember in The Power of Three that Amy mentions that they've been travelling with the Doctor for 10 years at that point. AMY: We think it's been ten years. Not for you or Earth, but for us. Ten years older. Ten years of you, on and off. Amy was 21 when she started travelling with the Doctor (established in The Eleventh Hour), so that would make her 31 in Power of Three.
    – Tim
    Jan 30, 2018 at 21:33
  • 1
    Rory's close enough to 2000 years old as to make no difference (at the end of his time with Doctor).
    – The Photon
    Jan 31, 2018 at 2:01
  • 1
    @Tim, Martha must have gone through med school on the "timey-wimey" graduation plan.
    – The Photon
    Jan 31, 2018 at 2:20

1 Answer 1

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tl;dr:

  • Rose - 19 to unknown.
  • Martha - 24/25 to unknown
  • Donna - unknown, but probably around 39
  • Amy - 21 to 31
  • Rory - 21 to 31
  • Clara - 27 to unknown
  • Bill - 26 approx

I'll give this my best shot. A lot of this is lifted from The Tardis Data Core, which is reliable thanks to the fan's fanaticism with keeping it accurate.

Rose

The Doctor twice states on-screen that Rose is nineteen years old (The Unquiet Dead, Dalek) It is later established she left with the Doctor on 6 March 2005. There is no information to indicate how long she travelled with him, although it is probably longer than the two years we saw.

From Dalek:

DOCTOR: Two thousand and twelve. (He looks at a display case.)

ROSE: God, that's so close. So I should be twenty six.

Martha

Martha's age or her date of birth are not mentioned on screen. A prose story suggests she was born in 1986, (The Frozen Wastes), but this is probably not canonical.

However, she is a medical student when she meets the Doctor, which would put her at around 24 or 25 at that time, assuming she had progressed normally through medical school.

In the U.K., for a hospital doctor, you have to do a 5 year degree, 2 foundation years, then perhaps another 5 years training depending on your speciality area. If we assume she started training when she was 18, and she is doing her foundation years when we meet her in the show, she'd be 24 or 25.

As with Rose, we don't know how long she actually travelled with the Doctor.

Donna

No information about Donna's age is given in any of her episodes. We can only speculate that she was the same age as the actor who portrayed her. Katherine Tate was born in 1968, and her season was the 2008 season, making her 39-40 at that time.

Amy

In The Power of Three that Amy mentions that they've been travelling with the Doctor for 10 years at that point.

AMY: We think it's been ten years. Not for you or Earth, but for us. Ten years older. Ten years of you, on and off.

Amy was 21 when she started travelling with the Doctor (established in The Eleventh Hour), so that would make her 31 in Power of Three.

Rory

Rory is a school-mate of Amy; they are in school (primary and high school) together in Let's Kill Hitler, putting his age within a few months of Amy's.

Clara

For Clara I'm not including her splinters from Asylum of the Daleks, or from the Snowmen. This is contemporary Clara, who actually travelled with the Doctor in the TARDIS.

Clara Oswald was born on 23 November 1986, as stated in Death in Heaven

CYBERMAN: Correct. You are Clara Oswald.

CLARA: Oh, seriously, this is getting old. Look, there is no Clara Oswald. I invented her. I made her up.

CYBERMAN: Born 23rd November, 1986.

The Clara who was the primary companion met the Doctor in 2013 (more or less), making her about 27 at that time. Note that she moves from job to job (always in a teaching role), so by the time she leaves, several years have passed.

Bill

According to the Doctor's sonic sunglasses, Bill was 26 years old by the time of The Pyramid at the End of the World. This, along with other biological information, was seen on-screen during that episode.

As with others, we don't know how long she travelled with the Doctor. Certainly after she got shot and became part Cyberman, she spent several years waiting for the Doctor to rescue her.

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  • Bill had been waiting for several years at the bottom of the ship, not months.
    – OrangeDog
    Feb 1, 2018 at 13:05
  • Missy says in The Doctor Falls that Bill waited for 10 years. If you trust her, then Bill was 36 (unless she had a birthday off-screen between the Monks and the Cybermen)
    – Graham Lee
    Feb 10, 2018 at 8:02
  • @GrahamLee Which raises an interesting question - what then is the moment when Bill stopped being the companion? Was it when she got shot at the top of the ship? Or was it when she saved the Doctor as a full Cyberman and then died?
    – Tim
    Feb 11, 2018 at 18:38
  • The glass Bill we saw at Christmas was the real Bill.
    – Graham Lee
    Feb 12, 2018 at 10:37
  • @GrahamLee It's arguable that it was just a memory of Bill, not really her. Either way, at that point she was working for the Testimony, and was not a companion of the Doctor.
    – Tim
    Feb 12, 2018 at 19:01

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