Re: Does the Doctor think of his earlier incarnations as different peo
And how do you figure that Ten is the shortest incarnation? Surely Nine's tenure was much shorter. Unless you're counting the War Doctor as Nine and Eccleston as Ten.
No, I don't. I do take into account Warrior, Ten and Eleven's conversation in the dungeon, and its implied there that Nine will have lived for many decades, shy of a hundred probably.
You really can't take the Doctor's statements of his age too literally, though, since they're all over the place. Heck, the Doctor claimed to be 953 at the start of his seventh incarnation ("Time and the Rani"), but the Ninth Doctor claimed to be only 900 -- and we now know he lived centuries as the War Doctor in between those. Good grief, in that very same conversation you're citing, Eleven said he might just be lying about his age because he couldn't even remember how old he was.
And even if you do trust in the earlier Doctors' statements about their age, there's the fact that Nine claimed to be 900 in "Aliens of London" while Ten claimed to be 903 in "Voyage of the Damned." Nine's mirror scene in "Rose" strongly implied that he was still getting used to his new face, and episodes like "Dalek" suggested that the Time War hadn't been that long ago for him. So I just can't accept the premise that his Ninth incarnation was already a century old when he met Rose.
Well, you can't. I can.
Lets remember that he wasn't the Doctor when he was the Warrior. And when he introduces himself to Rose, he not only calls himself the Doctor, he acts as him. So there definitely has to be a period of time when the newly regenerated Nine tried to re-organize, decide if he was going to be the Doctor or not, and certainly before he faced the Nestene Consciousness in that episode. It only makes sense, given that the Doctor hadn't been the Doctor for at least 400 years.
And the Time War not being that long ago is relative. Its a Time War - it didn't happen at any specific timeline or what not. And a hundred years is not a long time for a Time Lord, is it?
Furthermore, the Tenth adhered rather stubbornly in his age as set by the Ninth, which leads me to believe that for whatever reason, the Ninth decided he was 800+ years old after the Time War, and went from there.
Also lets not forget all the adventures he had on his own without Rose, as evidence by that conspiracy theorist in
Rose. Plus, we don't know how long he was gone between the TARDIS de-materializing in the end scene of the episode.
Now, I'm not dismissing your comments on the Doctor inconsistent age. Spot on with the Seventh's 953 years old. And even the Eighth Doctor had spent 600 years on Orbis, with amnesia. So who knows how old he really is. However, I do think that RTD, and certainly Moffat to a smaller extent, did intend for the Doctor to have a steady age and accumulated on it.
Thats why the Tenth doesn't say he's 604 years old in
End of Time or
The Voyage of the Damned. He says precisely how old he felt he was at the time, because the writer intended him to be such.
And thats why I do believe the Tenth was the shortest incarnation of the Doctor. If nothing else, his anguish in his regeneration story makes sense because he enjoyed that body so much and he didn't live nearly long enough in it. Not saying that was the driving motivation for him, as we do know he had "vanity issues at the time". But its not an illogical conclusion to arrive to.
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Ninth_Doctor. Specifically:
Assuming his
predecessor's recollection of age was correct, the Ninth Doctor began his life around 800 years old (
TV:
The Day of The Doctor). Considering the fact that he had adventures on his own when Rose initially declined his offer to travel with him, and he gave his age as 900 following the point he accepted Rose as a companion (
TV:
Aliens of London,
The Empty Child), this suggests he travelled alone for about a century.
Just saying.
Its as if he planned it all along!
On the other hand, there is a degree of personality reset, with each incarnation being a fresh start to an extent, as discussed above. The First Doctor was evidently the longest-lived of the incarnations present, the only one who lived long enough to reach old age and "die" of natural causes. If we go by his own, very unreliable claims of age, he was around 450 at the start of his second incarnation, and close to 900 at the start of his sixth. That means that the First Doctor lived longer than the next four Doctors combined. So he must've been doing something right.
Not to be a contrarian, but how sure are we of this, exactly? Hasn't it always been the supposition that both the Daleks' Time Controller and the Cybermen draining the energy of Earth helped expedite the Doctor's first regeneration?
That being said, of his regenerations, I'd say the Eleventh (duh!), the Fourth and the Eighth are the longest incarnations of the Doctor, and the one that did visually age on-screen. Not sure if I'd add the Second, due to the whole issue of
The Two Doctors and Terrance Dicks' retcon of the Doctor's white hair being the result of another adventure or whatever.
Besides, numbers aren't everything. An older person can defer to a younger person if that person has a sufficient quality of leadership and gravitas. Of the four Doctors on hand, I'd say the First was the most naturally authoritative.
I'd say of the first five. And I'd add the Third came closest to him, in that regard.
Doesn't Ten have a 200-year-long 'farewell tour' between "The Waters of Mars" and "The End of Time", much like Eleven did between "Closing Time" and "Wedding" ?
Where do you get that from? He said he was 906 in "The End of Time," and Eleven said he was 907 in "Flesh and Stone."
Exactly. His farewell tour reference only came about in the series 6 arc, as mentioned. The Tenth Doctor did seemingly visit his companions but, I don't think he had the time to do in a long period of time.
