Dear Johnny Fanboy,

In the Doctor Who episode Aliens of London, the Doctor states that he is 900 years old. However, he should be far older than that by now.

The Second Doctor is 450 Earth years old in The Tomb of the Cybermen.

The Fourth Doctor says he has lived for "something like 750 years" in Pyramids of Mars. Again, he is addressing a human, so we must assume he is speaking in Earth years. (I know it's now generally understood that the intervening 300 years can be explained by the Second Doctor's solo travels following his trial in The War Games, so I shan't bother to ask.) He is 749 in The Brain of Morbius and The Seeds of Doom, and turns 750 prior to The Robots of Death. He is 759 in The Ribos Operation and turns 760 before The Power of Kroll.

The Sixth Doctor is 900 years old in Revelation of the Daleks and The Trial of a Time Lord. (The 140-year gap between The Power of Kroll and Revelation of the Daleks is presumably explained by the Fourth Doctor, Romana and K-9 travelling together for many decades, and by the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa of Traken doing the same thing. Romana herself ages more than ten years between The Ribos Operation, in which she is nearly 140, and The Leisure Hive, in which she is 150.)

The Seventh Doctor is 953 in Time and the Rani, celebrates his 1,000th birthday in the novel Set Piece and is at least 1,003 in The Room With No Doors.

The Eighth Doctor is 1,012 in Vampire Science, 1,018 in Autumn Mist and spent a century stranded on Earth between The Ancestor Cell and Escape Velocity, so the Doctor should be over 1,120 years old by now. Is he lying about his age in front of Rose?

Adam Leigh

Johnny Fanboy replies:

The Doctor has certainly been known to lie about his age. Romana catches him at it in both The Ribos Operation and The Creature from the Pit.

In Aliens of London, it's possible that the Doctor is trying to pass off the number of years he has been travelling in the TARDIS as his age. The subject comes up when he says, "900 years of time and space, and I've never been slapped by someone's mother!" It could be that he's trying to keep things simple as he explains his longevity to Rose. In fact, his age must be greater than his years of travel, since he did not start travelling the moment he was born.

In The Ribos Operation Romana states that the Doctor has been piloting the TARDIS for 523 years, which would make him 236 when he stole the ship (759 minus 523 years of travel). This would mean he is now 1,136 years old (236 plus 900 years of travel), assuming that the Doctor was temporally "in synch" with Romana's Gallifrey when she said that. Alternatively, the novel Lungbarrow implies that the Doctor left Gallifrey 673 years previously, when he would have been about 330 (1003 minus 673 years of travel). That would make him about 1,230 now (330 plus 900 years of travel), again assuming that he was "in synch" with Gallifreyan time during Lungbarrow. I favour the "Ribos" age of 1,136, because I happen to believe that the Doctor was "ahead of his time" during Lungbarrow (which explains why Romana was President even though President Flavia was in charge during the subsequent The Eight Doctors).

It's also worth noting that the Doctor hasn't always been able to keep track of how old he is. He cannot remember his age in The Dimension Riders and he admits that he has probably lost count of his years in Vampire Science. The amnesia he suffers for more than a century after The Ancestor Cell might also have affected his recollection of his age, even after his other memories have been restored.

Further to your comments about the age gap between The Tomb of the Cybermen and Pyramids of Mars, we can also take into consideration the Third Doctor's frequent solo comic strip travels in TV Action, Countdown and TV Comic. The intervening years between The Power of Kroll and Revelation of the Daleks can also be partly explained by the Fourth and Fifth Doctor's solo jaunts in the Doctor Who Magazine strip.

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