Doctor Who’s Oldest and Most Glaring Plot Hole Is... the Doctor’s Age

However, there is one Doctor Who inconsistency that has practically been there from the beginning and has kept getting worse with each incarnation. The plot hole in question is the key character’s age.

There are two problems with the Doctor’s age – how he keeps count of it and the fact that it keeps changing (sometimes even backward). Let’s figure it out, shall we?

When the New Who era begins, the Ninth Doctor tells Rose that he is 900 years old. When the Tenth Doctor’s final adventure rolls around, he specifies that he is 906 years old. The Doctor is a time traveler who spends most of his life at different points in time and on a variety of planets. So how does he know that a year has passed?

If we take the example of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, their ages seem to correlate with how much time has passed in real life. The Ninth is 900 years old in 2005 when Doctor Who has just been rebooted, and the Tenth is 906 years old in 2010 – five years have passed IRL plus the year-that-never-was due to the time rewind in the season 3 finale.

That is all good and well, but can only be applied outside the show. Whovians seem to believe that it’s actually the TARDIS who tracks the Doctor’s age. This theory makes sense because the time traveler’s most trusted companion (and means of transport) is a living being and has been with the Doctor through thick and thin. Isn’t there anyone who would know him and his biological clock better?

The TARDIS may be keeping count of the Doctor’s age, but she is also doing a very bad job of translating it (if she is the one who translates it to humans and aliens, that is). The Doctor’s age is pretty consistent within the New Who era, but in the classic series, it’s a mess.

In Tomb of the Cyberman, the Second Doctor remarks that he is 450 years old according to “Earth terms.” The Third Doctor then says that he has lived for “several thousand years” in several episodes, although not that much time has passed between the respective episodes. Later on, the Seventh Doctor claims to be 953 years old, but the Ninth is 900. What on Earth?

This could all be explained, though. Fans are convinced that the Doctor’s age depends on what kind of metric he is using to determine it (the Earth standards as he does as the Second Doctor or the Gallifreyan terms as he must’ve done in his third incarnation). Either that (which doesn’t explain how he goes from 953 to 900), or the TARDIS is just really bad at Math and/or keeps messing up the translation.

However, the Eleventh Doctor has given the audience proof of another theory, which is brilliantly simple. The Doctor is so old that he just forgets his own age from time to time, and he can also feel insecure and pretend he’s younger than he really is. In the 50th-anniversary episode, the War Doctor asks the Eleventh how old he is, to which he replies that he is “1200 and something, I think, unless I’m lying. I can’t remember.”

There you have it. The Doctor’s age is just as complicated as he is.