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In The Time of The Doctor, the Doctor curses the TARDIS for being missing for 300 years when he was on Trenzalore protecting the people of Christmas. So now is the Doctor 1500 years old?

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1,500 is a conservative estimate.

If we assume that Eleven's count is accurate (see below), then yes: 1,500 years seems like a good rough estimate of his minimum current age.

However, it's hard to tell how long Clara was absent the second time she got sent away; it was probably at least a generation, but could possibly have been only a few minutes. So let's say he's most likely 1,500+ years old, with a lot of wiggle room either way for "I can't remember if I'm lying about my age."

The show is being deliberately hard to pin down about this.

The Doctor's age fluctuates wildly.

The Second Doctor claimed his age was everywhere from 450 to "several thousand" years; the Fourth Doctor got called out for lying about his age; Seven he admitted he'd possibly lost count; Nine evaded the issue by talking about how many years he'd been flying the TARDIS (which doesn't match anyone else's numbers anyway); Ten said he was younger than Seven had; and Eleven can't remember if he's lying about it or not (which neatly circumvents Christmas's truth field)!

Moffat (Eleven's producer and head script writer) has gone on record saying he's operating on the notion that any number the Doctor gives is at best an educated guess:

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.

So... sure, let's say 1,500, with a nod and wink.

But how useful is that number, anyway?

The truth is, we don't even knew if the Doctor is using Earth years, Gallifreyan years, or just making up numbers because he thought it would make people happy. It's not "screen canon," but the Eighth Doctor once said he just sort of rounded and adjusted based on different year lengths in different parts of the universe. This means that even if we had a solid number we could be sure of, it has no context to give it useful meaning.

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  • but he can't lie.. he's in the truth field.
    – user13639
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 4:40
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    @Adeetya You can't be forced to tell a truth you don't know. If the Doctor's forgotten, or if he's been unable to keep accurate track of the years in Christmas, or if he's using Trenzalore years instead of Earth or Gallifreyan years... he could easily not lie but still not give us complete and useful information. We saw him omit and modify the truth many times while he was in Christmas.
    – BESW
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 4:42
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    That's pretty much as accurate as it gets. He is definitely the kind of person who wouldn't divulge his exact age. For all we know he might be telling his age in Gallifrey years and those might be smaller than earth years, or even larger. So yes, even if we have an exact figure, it could be useless.
    – Stark07
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 11:50
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    @AshishKulkarni My pet theory is that he measures each unit of time by the local system of wherever he is, so his time on Gallifrey is measured differently than his time on Earth or Trenzalore. (Gallifreyans are inherently time-sensitive, and Time Lords more so, to the point that I have a hard time swallowing Moffat's idea that the Doctor has no clue about his age.)
    – BESW
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 12:11
  • yeah that sounds about right. The Doctor must have an idea about his age. He just might be really private about it just like he is about his name. He doesn't share much about him. If he doesn't share his real name, why would he share his age !
    – Stark07
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 12:14
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We don't know.

If he was 1200 years old at the start, he must have been 1500 years old halfway through the movie, when he looked middle aged. That's when he said he'd been there 300 years.

However, at the end, after another journey in the Tardis for Clara, he looked much older again, so that must have been a considerable time later. And unless I missed it, it wasn't said how long.

My guess is probably another 300 years, because that's how Moffat's mind works. (It was clearly a reference to The Curse Of Fatal Death, where every time he meets The Master, The Master is another 300 years older.) So that would make him 1800 years old.

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first time here. I have roughly estimated 1700 years old. he was sulking for one hundred years after Amy and Rory died in Angels Take Manhattan, pre-The Snowmen. then he was 1000 years-old when he met Clara - "I'm an alien from outer space, I'm a thousand years old, I've got two hearts and I can't fly a plane!". I don't remember how long he stayed at the Monastery before The Bells of St. John, but based on that quote it must not have been long, because the monks knew him as a normal person, not someone with a long age length, maybe just the time to grow a beard. then 300 years post sending Clara back in The Time of The Doctor = 1400, then more than 300 years to get to that extent of ageing - after all he did not age that much in 300 years - I did not like the transition makeup. but then again he aged pretty much nothing in 100 years, so it could have been much more after those first 300.

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  • When an answer has already been accepted, ou should restrict your response to a comment, rather than an answer. Otherwise, good first post.
    – James Sheridan
    Commented Feb 16, 2014 at 13:05
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    @JamesSheridan I disagree. Maybe you have a better answer. Maybe the asker will change yours to the accepted answer. In any case, you shouldn't answer in comments. If this was a comment, it'd be too "answer-y".
    – Adeptus
    Commented Apr 26, 2016 at 2:27
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In the trailer for the new season, the latest incarnation of The Doctor claims to have

"lived for over 2000 years"

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Millions or even billions of years old.

In the recent episode The Timeless Children, we learned that

The Doctor is older than the Time Lord civilization because Time Lords were created from him/her.

The Doctor didn't know this because his/her memories had been wiped countless times.

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No one's completely sure, but the Doctor is probably around 2000 or 2100 years old now as he apparently stayed on Trenzalore for 900 years.

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I actually calculated a rough estimate of his age just after the latest episode aired based on the fact that at one point, the eighth doctor calculated his age at 1012 and must have been a bit older at the time of his regeneration given his physical appearance in the night of the doctor.
Anyhow, I calculated through to Matt Smith's exit and he is no younger than 2000 years old (I dont want to recalculate it all but it is around 2,400. But I could be wrong, so that's why I say no younger than 2000)

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Matt Smith admits that he is 900 (something-ish) during the episode where River actually kills him. The OTHER Doctor that Smith plays at the beginning is 1100 years old - HOWEVER, if I recall right, by the time all is said and done, we get Smith's doctor back at around 900-ish years old, making the new Doctor just under 1,000 by the time he takes over with Clara Oswald. So, HOW can he be "..over 2,000 years old." I"m so confused LOL

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  • It's good you're confused, because a) the Sixth Doctor also said he was 900 years old, b) River doesn't actually kill him, c) he meets Clara after the point (in his timeline) where he says he's 1100, and d) we know that Gallifreyans age a lot slower than humans and he looked a lot older at the end of TotD than at the beginning, implying that he is a LOT of years older. Confused yet? Oh, and e) the Doctor doesn't know how old he is; we don't know for sure if he's talking Earth years; Moffat lies etc.
    – Mr Lister
    Commented Nov 12, 2014 at 19:02
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The Doctor is roughly between the ages of 1800 and 2500. My guess is that he is 2409 years of age.

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    What evidence do you have for your guess?
    – Joe L.
    Commented Apr 14, 2015 at 14:21
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If the eighth Doctor was 1012, then the Time War lasted for 400 years, he would have been at least 1412 by his "ninth" incarnation. We don't know how long the "tenth" Doctor was around, as there were off-screen adventures, but the "eleventh" Doctor had at least two hundred years of adventures before spending 900 years on Trenzalore. That would make him at least 2512 by the time Doctor number twelve came around. And that is still assuming he was being honest about his age at all times.

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All of yalls logic is flawed. In Matt smith debut season he stated his age as being 900 AND 2000. He said 2000 at the end of The Big Bang. He travelled with Amy the entire time and there was no time passage in the void after the Big Bang. How did he age 1100 years in one season and how is he not 3000 by the end of trenzalore?

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  • Could you clarify this to make it more of an answer? Are you saying that the Doctor is 3000 by the end of “The Time of the Doctor”?
    – Adamant
    Commented Oct 10, 2016 at 6:32

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