Average lifespan of a Time Lord

[BlastHardcheese]

I imagine that if Eleven lived for roughly 900 years in his incarnation, then 1000 years is probably the upper limit for each regeneration, barring accidents, illness and exposure to elements that can deteriorate the body. If Eleven's testimony is meant to be taken as accurate, then the upper age limit for a Time Lord is probably somewhere between 10,000 and 13,000 years. The Doctor started saying he was only 900 when Colin Baker was in the role. Before that, I remember the Fourth doctor saying he was 750 during "The Pyramids of Mars". What we do know is that there could be vast swaths of time - centuries even, that are unaccounted for in many of the Doctor's lives.

Three could have spent a few centuries traveling after his pardon from the Time Lords between Jo Grant's departure and Sarah Jane's arrival. Heck, he flew off alone to Metebelis 3 while Jo was still his companion. He could have been traveling for years even then and arrived with the blue crystal just after he left.

Seven could have lived for a few centuries between "Survival" and the TV movie. His visible aging would support that. The same could be said for the interval between the movie and "The Night of the Doctor" in Eight's case.

The War Doctor must have fought in the Time War for a long time to have aged so much. He could have fought for 800 years for all we know and just refused to have counted those years after regenerating into Nine as his way of pretending that incarnation never existed.

There are plenty of situations where Ten has been travelling alone, like the time between Martha's departure and him picking up Donna, and the time between "The Waters of Mars" and "The End of Time" where we know Ten was involved in "Day of The Doctor". Ten could have been travelling for centuries on adventures we haven't seen.

The Doctor could really just be 1800 now, or 5000, or close to 10,000. I think he's probably between 1800 and 5000 years old which is easily old enough to lose track.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

All good arguments.
though I don't think even as a milennia old timetraveler would he lose track of his rough age.
All he needs is a reliable personal clock he always carries with him. That could either be the TARDIS, his screwdriver or both.

 

[BlastHardcheese]

All good arguments.
though I don't think even as a milennia old timetraveler would he lose track of his rough age.
All he needs is a reliable personal clock he always carries with him. That could either be the TARDIS, his screwdriver or both.

It's also possible that the Doctor doesn't want to know his exact (or rough) age. He might actively choose not to keep track so that he can lie to himself that he isn't so old.

 

[Captain Crow]

Didn't the Doctor (Hartnell?) once say that his people could live forever, barring accidents? Of course this would be way before regeneration was even thought of but, hey, what the heck.

It was Troughton's Second Doctor, actually. But I think between the Master being so desperate for a new set of regenerations back during the Fourth Doctor era, and now the Eleventh Doctor saying he was dying of old age, I think it's safe to say that the idea that Time Lords can live forever barring accidents has now been retconned away.

The word "forever" can also mean "a very long time" so Troughton's line hasn't been contradicted.

 

[Tom]

All good arguments.
though I don't think even as a milennia old timetraveler would he lose track of his rough age.
All he needs is a reliable personal clock he always carries with him. That could either be the TARDIS, his screwdriver or both.

Well the Tardis did tell him that they have been traveling together fro 700 years int he Doctor's Wife. That just confuses the issue even more.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Well the Tardis did tell him that they have been traveling together fro 700 years int he Doctor's Wife. That just confuses the issue even more.

Not really. At that point he was 900(ish).

That would make #1 around 200 when he stole the TARDIS, and we saw Hartnell doing that in TNOTD.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Although Hartnell appeared old at that point so he could have been much older. Given how long it took Matt Smith to reach that age, I think that's a more realistic timeframe.

That being said, the TARDIS struggled with chronology and other time related issues in that episode, from what I recall, so I wouldn't say she was an entirely reliable narrator.

 

[Reverend]

All good arguments.
though I don't think even as a milennia old timetraveler would he lose track of his rough age.
All he needs is a reliable personal clock he always carries with him. That could either be the TARDIS, his screwdriver or both.

Well the Tardis did tell him that they have been traveling together fro 700 years int he Doctor's Wife. That just confuses the issue even more.

Earth years or Gallifreyan years?

For all we know Gallifrey could take a hundred times long to orbit it's sun than Earth. Add to that the planet apparently has an open doorway to the time vortex on it's surface and very suddenly, the Gallifreyan method of marking time could become very strange and subjective.

 

[Skellington]

So by the end of this, Smith's Doctor has lived for nearly 1000 years. He's lived longer than all of the other Doctors combined?! I find this insane, especially given how familiar he still is with his companions. If I was friends with Clara, and then I went 300 years without seeing her, I would have no idea who the hell she was by the time she reappeared. 300 years is a LONG TIME! Even if he recognized her at all, I doubt he would have the same familiarity with her as he did when he was "young."

It's a bit irksome when things like that happen (eg in Closing Time when the Doctor meets Craig again after 200 or so years and it might as well have been 12 months). Even if the Doctor has vastly superhuman powers of recall (a reasonable view) some kind of acknowledgement that it's been a long damn time would make more sense. It would have been nice if it had taken him a moment to recall the TARDIS sound and a little while to recall Clara. As it is, he even seems to recall the Christmas Turkey with no problem.

Im guessing the Doctor is about 1800 or so at this point.

Peter Capaldi has said that he's (like) 1995 years too young to play the Doctor, which would put the Time Lord at about 2050. Taking that statement and the stated age of 906 in The End Of Time at face value, it means that the Doctor was Matt Smith for roughly 1145 years - comfortably more than half of his entire life.

Another thing that adds confusion is the War Doctor he was young when Mcgann regenerated into him based on his reflection and is old in the DOTD, so he must have been around for 300-500 based on how long the doctor visibly ages in the new series.

Time Destructor, maybe.

Or maybe there is no pattern on how long he can live. Maybe the potential lifespan of each regeneration can vary as wildly as the physical age he regenerates into. Lifespan and appearance don't even have to correlate.

This could very well be the case. McGann was noticeably older, and Hurt could have aged at a normal human rate or faster.

All good arguments.
though I don't think even as a milennia old timetraveler would he lose track of his rough age.
All he needs is a reliable personal clock he always carries with him. That could either be the TARDIS, his screwdriver or both.

Yep, even assuming that Time Lords don't have internal chronometers themselves. At the very least, it should be no trouble to him to check the length of time the TARDIS has experienced since he nicked it and then do the math, adjusting for major discontinuities such as the ones we see in The Sound Of Drums (18 more months for the TARDIS) and The Time Of The Doctor (300 more years or so for him). They're not exactly everyday occurrences.

Earth years or Gallifreyan years?

For all we know Gallifrey could take a hundred times long to orbit it's sun than Earth. Add to that the planet apparently has an open doorway to the time vortex on it's surface and very suddenly, the Gallifreyan method of marking time could become very strange and subjective.

It may be worth mentioning that Gallifrey's star system is a binary one. So it could be that they have two concepts of a year - the time it takes Gallifrey to orbit its sun, and the time it takes one sun to orbit the other. That's even assuming that Gallifrey orbits either of them; it could arguably exist in the area of space orbited by the two stars.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

What's the best indication of how long he spent on Trenzalore? My guess was 600 years, but I can't quite tell why I'm thinking that. The only real assumption I have with the Doctor's age is that Matt Smith has been internally consistent (I really can't bother with the rest given the fact that we've twice crossed the 1000 year mark). Given than, he had at least 300 years prior to Trenzalore (900 to 1200 give or take).

My other view, but one that I don't think there's necessarily as much support for as there is for my first assumption, is that, if the Doctor gets visibly older, it means he's spent quite a long in that form. Given that, Hartnell, John Hurt, Smith, and Sylvester McCoy were his longest regenerations (although McCoy's aging, to me, isn't quite as pronounced as the others). I'd argue that Hartnell and Hurt were the longest since they seemed to regenerate just due to old age. I don't think anyone can see the prequel to Day of the Doctor and not think the intent was that he spent a considerable amount of time as Hurt's Doctor.

 

[Tom]

Since the Doctor was trying to forget the War Doctor maybe he also discounted the years he was that incarnation. So when the Doctor said he was 906 (or whatever) he was not included the War Doctors possible 500 years etc.. and was really like 1400 or something.

 

[diankra]

Three could have spent a few centuries traveling after his pardon from the Time Lords between Jo Grant's departure and Sarah Jane's arrival. Heck, he flew off alone to Metebelis 3 while Jo was still his companion. He could have been traveling for years even then and arrived with the blue crystal just after he left.

As a side note, Paul Cornell's book Revelation (I think that was the one) siuggests that the third Doctor was lost in the vortex, half-regenerated but still dying, for decades or more at the end Planet of the Spiders, before he got back to UNIT, where Cho-Je give it the final push that finished the regeneration and changed his face. Sort of fits with the way it worked in Time of the Doctor... which happens to have been written by a friend of Cornell's, who I know read Revelation back in the day...

Also...

That would make #1 around 200 when he stole the TARDIS, and we saw Hartnell doing that in TNOTD.

We know the Doctor was about 245 when he first flew the TARDIS (judging by what he and Romana say in The Pirate Planet about how long he's been flying the TARDIS, though the exact age depends on whether you believe his or her quote of his age in the previous story). It's your call as to whether that's when he stole the TARDIS and fled Gallifrey, or whether he'd used that TARDIS on authorised missions earlier than that.

 

[RoJoHen]

What's the best indication of how long he spent on Trenzalore? My guess was 600 years, but I can't quite tell why I'm thinking that.

Well, when the TARDIS returns the first time and he looked "middle aged," he yells at the her and asks, "Where have you been for the last 300 years?!"

Then he sends the TARDIS and Clara back to Earth a second time. When they return, he's now an old, dying man. Based on how he aged the first time, I think it's safe to assume that at least another 300 years had passed.

Although, I like the idea of the Doctor completely losing track of time. "Where have you been for the last 300 years?" might have actually been 30 years. I always got the impression that Smith had no idea how real time passed anymore.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah and considering that in 'The Doctor's Wife' the Tardis itself has trouble even keeping track of what order time happens in, I'd say it's totally plausible that the Doctor has no clue how old he is any more. Plus as those of us that have made it past the big 30 can attest, the older you get, the less inclined you are to think about your age.

He's probably a ten thousand year old looking in the mirror and saying to himself, "yeah, I still totally look 1200!"

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Yeah, I think, at a minimum, it's easy enough rationalize away any mention of age. The only one that's hard to get rid of are the plot-dependent ones like The Impossible Astronaut (it's certainly possible to do so there as well, but there's no headaches created by assuming that Matt Smith is internally consistent).

 

[Kemaiku]

Since the Doctor was trying to forget the War Doctor maybe he also discounted the years he was that incarnation. So when the Doctor said he was 906 (or whatever) he was not included the War Doctors possible 500 years etc.. and was really like 1400 or something.

The 7th Doctor (McCoy) celebrated his 1000th birthday, before the series ended, before the 8th Doctor was even an idea. So doubtful.

Seemingly, he's feeling a lot more self concious about his age.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Since the Doctor was trying to forget the War Doctor maybe he also discounted the years he was that incarnation. So when the Doctor said he was 906 (or whatever) he was not included the War Doctors possible 500 years etc.. and was really like 1400 or something.

The 7th Doctor (McCoy) celebrated his 1000th birthday, before the series ended, before the 8th Doctor was even an idea. So doubtful.

No, he didn't. The only reference to the 7th Doctor's age in the classic series was in Time and the Rani when he said he was 953. 7 celebrated his 1,000 birthday in the NA novels, which may be what you're thinking of.

A good summery of the Doctor's age issues: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doctor's_age

 

[theonering]

I don't remember if there was any dialogue in either dotd or totd to indicate just how many years passed for the war doctor and eleven. But keep in mind that the stresses of living through the time war and siege of trenzalore probably did a lot more to age them physically than the passage of time. In that case its possible either incarnation is actually younger than you would think just by looking.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

The closest is when Matt Smith says he's 1200 unless he's lying and John Hurt said that this was 400 years (meaning that he saw himself as 800). Certainly, 800 is broadly consistent with the new Doctors' stated ages, but it really doesn't mean anything by itself (leaving aside people who argue he wouldn't have counted the Doctor's age, Time of the Doctor suggests that a single Doctor alone could live for 800 years and only age as much as Hurt's Doctor did between Night of the Doctor and Day of the Doctor).

 

[Kemaiku]

Well then we go by the 1996 movie, in which the TARDIS shows the destination as the 'present day' on Gallifrey as 7521 Rassilon Era, which if he's been ruling the planet for that long as of the 7th Doctor, puts him closer to 8000 reigning years as of The End of Time and maybe 10,000 in age (new borns not often elected to office and all that).