The Doctor " The Doctor " was the main alias used by a renegade Time Lord from Gallifrey who travelled through time and space with various companion s in their obsolete and " borrowed " Type 40 TARDIS . They were the universe ' s " greatest defender " , having saved the cosmos thousands of times throughout a long life , becoming a great legend across the whole universe . Though largely a believer in non - violent conflict resolution , they were , when absolutely necessary , a great warrior . Indeed , some civilisations in the universe ( e . g . the denizens of the Gamma Forests ) translated the word " doctor " as " warrior " , ( TV : " A Good Man Goes to War " ) whilst others saw the Doctor as a compassionate benefactor , worthy of their admiration and compassion . ( TV : " Last of the Time Lords " , " The Wedding of River Song " ) Although they had saved untold numbers on their travels , the Doctor was thought to have caused the deaths of billions at the conclusion to the Last Great Time War . ( TV : " Dalek " ) Though most of the Daleks were killed in the crossfire , Gallifrey — disappearing , rather than being burned — was hidden thanks to the efforts of the first thirteen of their incarnations , the first eleven of which retained no memory of the event . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) For their actions , the Time Lords granted the Doctor a new regeneration cycle , allowing them to live on after using up all available regenerations in their first cycle . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) From the latter years of their first incarnation onward , the Doctor had a pronounced affinity for Earth and the human race . After departing Gallifrey , they voluntarily chose to spend time on the planet , ( TV : " An Unearthly Child " , AUDIO : " Summer " , " The Haunting of Thomas Brewster " ) choosing it as the place of their exile during most of their third incarnation , ( TV : " Spearhead from Space - The Three Doctors " ) and even owning property in Kent ( COMIC : " Fellow Travellers " , PROSE : " Verdigris " , " Warlock " , " Warchild " , " The Dying Days " , " Mad Dogs and Englishmen " ) and New York City . ( PROSE : " The Forgotten Army " ) They favoured Great Britain as a frequently visited location , taking most of their companions from there . ( TV : " An Unearthly Child " , " Spearhead from Space " , " The Time Monster " , " Rose " , " Smith and Jones " , " Partners in Crime " , etc . ) Even before the disappearance of Gallifrey , the Doctor spent much more time on Earth than on their homeworld . The Doctor ' s personal history was constantly changing and contradicting itself . ( PROSE : " Unnatural History " ) Name . The Doctor ' s true name remained unknown to all but a very few individuals , such as Sam Jones , ( PROSE : " Vanderdeken ' s Children " ) River Song , ( TV : " Forest of the Dead " , " The Name of the Doctor " ) and the Master . ( TV : " World Enough and Time " ) Though the Time Lord s knew the genuine name of the Doctor , ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) they did not use it , even in the formal setting of legal trials . ( TV : " The War Games " , " The Trial of a Time Lord " ) According to , he chose the name " Doctor " to reflect his constant desire to make people " better " . ( TV : " The Sound of Drums " ) claimed to know the Doctor ' s real name from their time together on Gallifrey ; she said it was " Doctor Who " , and the Doctor had chosen it to be mysterious , but dropped the " Who " when he realised it was too on - the - nose . ( TV : " World Enough and Time " ) The Eleventh Doctor told Clara Oswald that his real name was not so important , since he specifically chose in its place the title of " Doctor " , " like a promise you make " . ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) This promise was , as the Tenth and War Doctor recited together , " Never cruel or cowardly . Never give up , never give in . " ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) The Twelfth Doctor claimed that when he originally adopted the title it was " just a name , " which held no real significance until his first visit to Skaro . It was through his opposition to the Dalek s that the Doctor was able to define himself and realise who he was . ( TV : " Into the Dalek " ) The title " Doctor " was not undeserved ; they " did " hold one or more doctorates of some sort , ( TV : " The Armageddon Factor " , " The God Complex " ) formally studied medicine on at least 19th century Earth at Glasgow University , ( TV : " The Moonbase " ) and frequently displayed detailed medical knowledge . ( TV : " The Ark " , " Frontios " , " The Empty Child " , " New Earth " , " The Time of Angels " , " The Curse of the Black Spot " ) At least some versions of their sonic screwdriver performed medical scans and healed minor wounds . ( TV : " The Empty Child " , " The Vampires of Venice " , " A Good Man Goes to War " ) They showed knowledge on how to help someone thrown by an explosion recover quickly . ( TV : " Remembrance of the Daleks " ) Although their first , ( TV : " The Forest of Fear " , " Mighty Kublai Khan " ) fourth ( TV : " The Ark in Space " ) and fifth incarnations ( AUDIO : " Red Dawn " ) had claimed not to be a doctor of medicine , their third , ( TV : " Spearhead from Space " ) ninth ( COMIC : " The Cruel Sea " ) and tenth incarnations ( TV : " Utopia " ) claimed to be a doctor of practically " everything " , and by their eleventh life , the Doctor claimed to hold doctorates in at least medicine and cheesemaking . ( TV : " The God Complex " ) According to Evelina , the Doctor ' s name was written in the stars of the Medusa Cascade . ( TV : " The Fires of Pompeii " ) Members of an unidentified race of pan - dimensional beings also knew the Time Lord ' s real name , at one point . ( AUDIO : " The Last Voyage " ) In one account , he had taken the moniker after his first contact with human s . Colonists on the medical / penal colony of Iwa began calling him " Doctor " after his arrival . He failed to correct them . After they left the planet , " the Doctor " simply kept the name he had been given by the humans . ( PROSE : " Frayed " ) In another , he had already been introducing himself by that name after his first trip in the TARDIS , which gave an alternative account of meeting humans for the first time on the Moon . ( AUDIO : " The Beginning " ) He responded to the name when an echo of Clara Oswald put it to him before even departing Gallifrey . ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) River Song believed that the Doctor had influenced the etymology of the noun " doctor " , and was , in several languages , the original source of the word . ( TV : " A Good Man Goes to War " ) According to Dorium Maldovar and the Silence , the oldest and most dangerous question in the universe was " Doctor who ? " The Doctor ' s true name was apparently the answer . Dorium claimed the Doctor had been running from the question all his life . According to the Silence , " silence must fall when the question is asked , " ( TV : " The Wedding of River Song " ) because if the question was answered , it could lead to destruction on a universal scale , through several methods , each of which were located on the planet Trenzalore . The first was that the Doctor ' s name could be used to open his grave and alter his timeline , potentially undoing the countless times the Doctor had saved the universe . ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) The second was that his name could be used to confirm to the Time Lords , who were sealed in a pocket universe and had been broadcasting the question throughout the entirety of time and space , that it was safe for them to return ; which could result in another Time War . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) At some point River Song learned his name , prompting the Doctor to claim that there was only one reason he ever would or could reveal it . ( TV : " Forest of the Dead " ) Indeed , even while spending hundreds of years in a town permeated by a Truth Field and hearing the question asked multiple times , the Doctor would not or could not answer . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) However , River later stated that she " made him " tell her his true name and that it " took a while " . ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) Clara Oswald viewed the Doctor ' s name in a book on the Time War , contained in the TARDIS library . She subsequently lost the information when time was rewound . ( TV : " Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS " ) The Seventh Doctor mentioned to Trevor Sigma that his nickname at college was Theta Sigma . ( TV : " The Happiness Patrol " ) His classmate Drax called him by this nickname . ( TV : " The Armageddon Factor " ) Moments before regenerating into the Thirteenth Doctor , the Twelfth Doctor used his last words to leave his future self some advice . Amongst these last words was that the future Doctor must not tell anyone their name , but that they couldn ' t understand it even if the Doctor did tell them . The Doctor went on to state that " child ren can hear it , sometimes . If their hearts are in the right place and the stars are too . Children can hear your name . But nobody else , nobody else ever . " ( TV : " Twice Upon a Time " ) Age . The Doctor ' s age was a matter of great confusion , as they provided many inconsistent statements . The Second Doctor once gave his age in Earth terms as 450 . ( TV : " The Tomb of the Cybermen " ) On two separate occasions , the Third Doctor implied that he may have been several thousand years old . ( TV : " Doctor Who and the Silurians " , " The Mind of Evil " ) The Fourth Doctor , however , gave his age as " something like 750 years " . ( TV : " Pyramids of Mars " ) Immediately after his sixth regeneration , his seventh self claimed to be 953 . ( TV : " Time and the Rani " ) The incarnation that fought in the Time War considered himself 400 years younger than the Eleventh Doctor , who was purportedly 1 , 200 at that time . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) The Tenth Doctor claimed to be 903 . ( TV : " Voyage of the Damned " ) Also , at least prior to leaving Amy and Rory behind , ( TV : " The God Complex " ) the Eleventh Doctor maintained an age of 909 , less than his seventh incarnation . ( TV : " Flesh and Stone " , " The Impossible Astronaut " ) The Eleventh Doctor later claimed to the Ponds that he was 1 , 200 years old ( TV : " A Town Called Mercy " ) but clarified to Clara Oswald that he ' d lived so long he ' d forgotten whether or not he was lying about his age . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) The Twelfth Doctor , after spending 900 years defending Trenzalore , stated his age to be over 2 , 000 . ( TV : " Deep Breath " ) The Twelfth Doctor spent approximately four and a half billion years ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) trapped inside his confession dial in an energy loop . In each loop , the Doctor would die , providing energy to a teleporter which would " print " another copy of himself as he was when he first arrived . Although this kept his body from ageing , he claimed to remember the living through every single version of the loop . ( TV : " Heaven Sent " ) He later stated to that he was in fact four billion years old . ( COMIC : " Doorway to Hell " ) Romana I once caught the Fourth Doctor " rounding down " his age , ( TV : " The Ribos Operation " ) while the Eighth Doctor once flatly admitted that he didn ' t necessarily use the same definition of the word " year " each time he gave his age to someone , usually changing his age depending where he was in the universe . ( AUDIO : " Orbis " ) The Eleventh Doctor once told Solomon that he was probably a Sagittarius . ( TV : " Dinosaurs on a Spaceship " ) Family . Before the Time War . The Doctor ' s familial relations were unclear at best . According to one account , the Doctor was one of the forty - five cousins created by the Loom of the House of Lungbarrow on Gallifrey . ( PROSE : " Lungbarrow " ) However , the Doctor also stated several times that he was born to a human mother . ( TV : " Doctor Who " , PROSE : " Alien Bodies " , " The Infinity Doctors " , " Grimm Reality " , " Unnatural History " , " The Shadows of Avalon " ) The Tenth Doctor told Sally Sparrow that he was " rubbish at weddings , especially [ his ] own " . ( TV : " Blink " ) An earlier incarnation had also been wed , ( PROSE : " Cold Fusion " ) to Patience and they were said to have had a number of children , and grandchildren . ( PROSE : " The Infinity Doctors " ) The Doctor had , in the Tenth Doctor ' s own words , been " a dad " ( TV : " Fear Her " ) and " a father " . ( TV : " The Doctor ' s Daughter " ) These children were " sons or daughters , or both . " ( PROSE : " The Eleventh Tiger " ) The Twelfth Doctor claimed he had " [ d ] ad skills . " ( TV : " Listen " ) Clara Oswald also claimed the Doctor had " children " . ( TV : " Death in Heaven " ) According to Clara Oswald , as well as children , the Doctor also had " grandchildren " . ( TV : " Death in Heaven " ) These included Susan Foreman , ( TV : " An Unearthly Child " ) John and Gillian . ( COMIC : " The Klepton Parasites " ) Some accounts referred to Susan as " the Other ' s " granddaughter but recognised the Doctor as him . ( PROSE : " Lungbarrow " ) The Doctor had at least one brother , Irving Braxiatel , who became an associate of the Doctor ' s onetime companion , Bernice Summerfield . ( PROSE : " Tears of the Oracle " ) Braxiatel was also a cardinal on Gallifrey ( AUDIO : " Weapon of Choice " ) and was the owner of the Braxiatel Collection , ( PROSE : " Tears of the Oracle " ) which the Doctor and Romana once compared to the Louvre in Paris . ( TV : " City of Death " ) The Doctor had one niece by Irving Braxiatel , Maggie Matsumoto . ( AUDIO : " The Empire State " ) At one point , the Doctor became the adoptive father of a female Time Lord named Miranda Dawkins , whom their eighth incarnation reared until her mid - teens . ( PROSE : " Father Time " ) Miranda later gave birth to a daughter , Zezanne , and died while trying to protect the Doctor . ( PROSE : " Sometime Never . . . " ) The Man with the Rosette attended the Doctor ' s wedding to Scarlette , sitting at the table reserved for the Doctor ' s family . ( PROSE : " The Adventuress of Henrietta Street " ) The Doctor also had a great - grandson named Alex , the son of Susan and David Campbell . ( AUDIO : " An Earthly Child " ) Alex went on several adventures with the Eighth Doctor and backpacked around the Earth with Lucie Miller , before they were both killed by the Dalek s . ( AUDIO : " Lucie Miller " , " To the Death " ) Susan and David also had adopted children , Barbara , Ian and David Junior ( PROSE : " Legacy of the Daleks " ) — meaning that the Doctor was an adoptive great - grandfather as well as a biological one . Before the Last Great Time War , some of the Doctor ' s family had died or gone missing . ( TV : " The Tomb of the Cybermen " , " The Curse of Fenric " , AUDIO : " To the Death " ) After the last day of the Time War , the Tenth Doctor , while telling Donna that he ' d been a father before , explained that he " [ l ] ost all that a long time ago along with everything else . " ( TV : " The Doctor ' s Daughter " ) Even after Gallifrey and the Time Lords were revealed to have been saved from their fate at the end of the Time War and sent to a pocket dimension by all thirteen Doctors , the Twelfth Doctor still apparently believed his missing children and grandchildren to be dead , as Clara Oswald , masquerading as the Doctor , stated as such to the Cybermen . ( TV : " Death in Heaven " ) After the Time War . Genetic material from the Doctor in their tenth incarnation was used to create a daughter , Jenny . The Doctor explained to Donna Noble and Martha Jones that due to the way his DNA was processed , he was Jenny ' s " biological mother and father " . Although initially spurning her , he soon considered Jenny his daughter and invited her to travel with him in the TARDIS . Before she could join him , however , she was shot . The Doctor believed Jenny to have died , and departed . Unbeknownst to him , she survived , and set out on her own life of adventure . ( TV : " The Doctor ' s Daughter " ) When the Earth was relocated to the Medusa Cascade , a clone of the Doctor was created ; this clone later was exiled by the Doctor to an alternate universe . Technically , the clone could be considered a relative of the Doctor ' s . Also , Sarah Jane Smith referred to the Doctor ' s companions as his family , saying , " You act like such a lonely man , but you ' ve got the biggest family on Earth ! " ( TV : " Journey ' s End " ) Affairs . The First Doctor was accidentally engaged to Cameca in the 15th century . ( TV : " The Aztecs " ) After Gallifrey was destroyed in the War , the Eighth Doctor married Scarlette in order to ceremonially tie himself to the planet Earth . ( PROSE : " The Adventuress of Henrietta Street " ) The Tenth Doctor romanced and later married Elizabeth I . ( TV : " The End of Time " , " The Day of the Doctor " , PROSE : " Suspicious Minds " ) She later declared him an enemy after he failed to return as promised . ( TV : " The Shakespeare Code " ) The Tenth Doctor implied he had been married several times prior to Queen Elizabeth , as he remarked to Sally Sparrow about being " rubbish at weddings , especially [ his ] own " . ( TV : " Blink " ) In his eleventh incarnation , the Doctor accidentally became engaged to Marilyn Monroe , and married her the same night in what he later claimed was not a real chapel . ( TV : " A Christmas Carol " ) River Song often hinted that she and the Doctor had a physical relationship somewhere in her past and his future relative to the Eleventh Doctor ' s encounter with the Silence in Florida . ( TV : " Silence in the Library " / " Forest of the Dead " , " The Time of Angels " / " Flesh and Stone " , " The Pandorica Opens " / " The Big Bang " , " Day of the Moon " ) The Eleventh Doctor , operating a " Teselecta " shaped like himself , performed a " quick version " of a wedding ceremony with River because they were in the middle of a combat zone in an alternate reality . They repeatedly referred to each other as husband and wife after the ceremony . ( WC : " Asylum of the Daleks Prequel " , TV : " The Wedding of River Song " , " The Angels Take Manhattan " , " The Name of the Doctor , The Time of the Doctor " , AUDIO : " The Boundless Sea " , " Five Twenty - Nine " , " The Eye of the Storm " , PROSE : " Suspicious Minds " ) According to Clara Oswald , by the time of the Doctor ' s twelfth incarnation , the Doctor had been " married four times , all deceased " . ( TV : " Death in Heaven " ) Languages . The Ninth Doctor said he could speak five billion language s . ( TV : " The Parting of the Ways " ) The Doctor ' s native language was probably Modern Gallifreyan , but they seemed to prefer speaking English , ( TV : " The Mind Robber " ) always with an accent that was similar to accents used in the British Isles . ( TV : " An Unearthly Child " , " The Power of the Daleks " , " Spearhead from Space " , " Robot " , " Castrovalva " ) This accent changed from incarnation to incarnation . For example , both the Seventh ( TV : " Time and the Rani " ) and the Twelfth Doctor ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) spoke with an accent similar to one used in Scotland . Both Rose Tyler and Harriet Jones noted the accent of his ninth self sounded like he came from " the north " or was " a northern accent " , referring to the north of England , with the Doctor once retorting that " lots of planets have a north " . ( TV : " Rose " ) American Grace Holloway once told a San Franciscan police man that the Eighth Doctor was " British " . ( TV : " Doctor Who " ) They could read and write Old High Gallifreyan , ( TV : " The Time of Angels " ) a skill unusual even among Time Lords . ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) He spoke the language of the Judoon , ( TV : " The Stolen Earth " ) Delphon ( a language " spoken " using only eyebrow movements ) , ( TV : " Spearhead from Space " ) several Chinese language s , ( TV : " The Mind of Evil " , " The Talons of Weng - Chiang " ) Ancient North Martian , ( TV : " The Waters of Mars " ) , venusian ( TV : " The Curse of Peladon " ) and Tritovore ( TV : " Planet of the Dead " ) . They knew at least some Sycoraxic ( TV : " The Christmas Invasion " ) and a language of Tiaanamat , which sounded like canine barking to human ears . ( TV : " The Rings of Akhaten " ) He did not seem to understand French in his second incarnation , ( TV : " The War Games " ) but later became fluent in it across several periods of French history . ( TV : " The Girl in the Fireplace " ) They also claimed to have spoke " sabre - toothed tiger " ( PROSE : " Sick Building " ) , " baby " ( TV : " A Good Man Goes to War " , " Closing Time " ) , " cat " ( TV : " The Lodger " ) , " horse " ( TV : " A Town Called Mercy " ) , and " dinosaur " . ( TV : " Deep Breath " ) By their eleventh incarnation , the Doctor purportedly " spoke everything " . ( TV : " A Good Man Goes to War " , " Closing Time " ) They once understood British Sign Language ; by their twelfth incarnation , though , the Doctor had lost the skill , saying that it had been " deleted " from his languages and replaced with semaphore instead . ( TV : " Under the Lake " ) Influence . The Doctor belonged to the Prydonian Chapter , the most important chapter of Time Lord society . ( TV : " The Deadly Assassin " ) They had a profound influence on many worlds and was written into their histories ; ( TV : " Forest of the Dead " ) as a result , the Doctor was the recipient of many honours , including being made a noble of Draconia ( TV : " Frontier in Space " ) and a knight ( and enemy ) of the British Empire . ( TV : " Tooth and Claw " ) An incarnation of the Doctor once pulled Excalibur from the stone . In their twelfth incarnation , the Doctor told Clara Oswald that he became " King of England for a day " before abdicating in order to give King Arthur the throne . ( PROSE : " Silhouette " ) Having broken the Time Lords ' non - interference policy , in their second incarnation he was put on trial as a renegade . ( TV : " The War Games " ) Subsequently , for a time , he acted as an agent of the Time Lords ' Celestial Intervention Agency before the beginning of his sentence on 20th century Earth . ( PROSE : " Players " , " World Game " ) Following his defeat of Omega , which saved Gallifrey , he was granted a pardon and given his freedom . ( TV : " The Three Doctors " ) In their fourth incarnation , as part of a ploy to outwit invaders of Gallifrey , the Doctor was a candidate for the position of Lord President of the Supreme Council . ( TV : " The Invasion of Time " ) In their fifth incarnation , he was put on trial again for recklessness . ( COMIC : " The Stockbridge Horror " ) He was later given the title of Lord President by Councillor Flavia , against his wishes . He pretended to accept the office but ran away in his TARDIS . ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) Prior to the Doctor ' s trial during their sixth incarnation , he was deposed in absentia and put on trial for breaking the non - interference policy and later in the same trial , for genocide . The validity of the trial was called into question when it was discovered it had been orchestrated by an evil future manifestation of the Doctor , the Valeyard , and mooted . ( TV : " The Trial of a Time Lord " ) As the War Doctor he also fell out of favour with the Time Lords during the Last Great Time War . However , due to the Doctor ' s efforts to save Gallifrey and the Time Lords , they seemed to forgive his actions . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) During the Siege of Trenzalore , when the Eleventh Doctor was on the verge of his final death , the Time Lords responded to Clara Oswald ' s plea to help him , a plea in which she stated that after all he ' d done he ' d earned their help and if they loved him , which they should , then to help . In this instance , the Time Lords saved the Doctor by giving him a new regeneration cycle ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) rather than letting him die permanently as had happened in an alternate timeline . ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) After returning to Gallifrey by means of his confession dial , the Twelfth Doctor stood against Lord President Rassilon who tried to execute him . However , the Gallifreyan military hailed him as the man who ended the Time War and also respected him for his reputation during the Time War as someone who didn ' t need to go into battle armed to win and sided with him . Rassilion ' s own firing squad , the General and a squadron of military ships backed the Doctor against Rassilon who was overthrown and exiled from Gallifrey along with the High Council . The Doctor used his new position as Lord President of Gallifrey to save Clara Oswald ' s life before once more fleeing Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS , a fugitive once more . ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) The Doctor ' s influence on the universe was seen most notably while in River Song ' s World : desperate to save the Doctor from his impending death , River Song built a timey - wimey distress beacon telling all of time and space that the Eleventh Doctor was dying and needed their help , causing the entire universe to reply that they would help . River told the Doctor that his impact on the universe was so profound that if he ever needed its help , he just had to ask . This was also shown in how the crew of the " Teselecta " , though formerly enemies of the Doctor , were willing to aid him in any way they could and kept his secret of being alive from the rest of the universe despite their past , just because he asked them to . ( TV : " The Wedding of River Song " ) By the time the Vashta Nerada took over the Library , the Doctor was so well known he was in the Library ' s books and whatever they read there scared the Vashta Nerada ( who the Tenth Doctor didn ' t think could be stopped ) enough that they agreed to his demands . River Song also stated that she believed that " all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark " if the Doctor ever gave up on helping people . ( TV : " Forest of the Dead " ) Nardole told the Twelfth Doctor that , if he died , " everybody in the universe might just go cold " . ( TV : " Twice Upon a Time " ) When the Great Intelligence changed time so that the Doctor ' s victories were negated , Madame Vastra said that the universe was going to be a much darker place without him and entire star systems were shown disappearing as a result of his victories being negated . ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) When the Time Beetle created a parallel world around Donna Noble where the Doctor never met Donna , the Earth at least was shown to be a much darker place without the Doctor there to defend it . When the apparently unstoppable Darkness started approaching , Rose Tyler was sure the only one who could stop it was the Doctor , stating that they needed him " more than ever " to stop this reality - threatening event , although she later realised that both the Doctor and Donna together were needed . ( TV : " Turn Left " ) During the Last Great Time War , when the Eighth Doctor died during a spaceship crash , the Sisterhood of Karn resurrected him and offered to help him control his regeneration precisely because they believed only the Doctor could stop a war that threatened the existence of the entire universe . Ohila told the Doctor specifically that he was the universe ' s last hope and indicated that if he took on a more active role in the Time War , which he had avoided doing up to that point , it could be stopped without everything being destroyed . ( TV : " The Night of the Doctor " ) Perhaps the Doctor ' s greatest influence was on their companions , who were inspired by the Time Lord to fight injustice and help those in need . ( TV : " Death of the Doctor " ) Even those who hadn ' t ever met the Doctor were inspired by his exploits ( TV : " Planet of the Dead " , " The Power of Three " , " The Day of the Doctor " , etc ) even though he never considered himself to be a hero . ( TV : " The God Complex " , " Robot of Sherwood " , " Death in Heaven " ) While talking with the First Doctor , a glass avatar of Bill Potts learned that he had originally started travelling in hopes of finding an answer to how despite overwhelming odds , good always triumphs over evil in the universe . Bill suggested that it was " some bloke " , " wandering around , putting everything right when it goes wrong " . The First Doctor expressed doubt over this theory , not realising that Bill was referring to the Doctor himself . Bill understood that the Doctor could not see his own impact on the universe , on everyone who ever met him though she knew everyone else could see it . The Twelfth Doctor told his predecessor that " our lives are woven throughout time and space , " and the two of them trying to die twice in the same lifetime was enough to cause an error in the timeline . ( TV : " Twice Upon a Time " ) Biographical summary . The Doctor had a variety of different origins ; most often , they had always been a Time Lord from Gallifrey , but sometimes they had always been a human - Gallifreyan hybrid or a human from the 49th century . ( PROSE : " Unnatural History " ) Sometimes , the Doctor believed they had been woven from a loom , and sometimes they believed there had been a mother and father . ( PROSE : " The Scarlet Empress " ) While in bed inside a barn and crying over not wishing to join the army , a young First Doctor heard Clara Oswald assuring him that it was all just a dream , that it was OK to be afraid of the dark and that " if you ' re very wise and very strong , fear doesn ' t have to make you cruel or cowardly " . ( TV : " Listen " ) This was an ontological paradox from when the Doctor ' s tenth incarnation told Clara about the promise he made about the Doctor being " never cruel or cowardly " , which the Doctor had originally heard from Clara as a child . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) The Doctor left Gallifrey and became a hero who fought evil and injustice across the universe in violation of the Time Lords ' non - interference policy . ( TV : " The War Games " ) Technically , he explored only with the intention of experiencing the wonders of the universe and having fun , but frequently became embroiled in machinations and crises that ended with him defeating the foe and saving the planet he was visiting . He travelled with many companion s , beginning with his granddaughter , Susan Foreman , who also came from Gallifrey . ( TV : " An Unearthly Child " , " A Desperate Venture " , " Gridlock " ) The Twelfth Doctor once stated to a broken Dalek that it was his first encounter with the Dalek s on Skaro which truly defined his character . ( TV : " Into the Dalek " ) According to Robin Hood after learning of his history from Clara Oswald , the Doctor was a man born into wealth and privilege who couldn ' t stand the plight of the weak and oppressed and so was eventually inspired to steal a TARDIS and fly amongst the stars , protecting those who couldn ' t protect themselves . However , the Doctor refused to see himself as a hero . ( TV : " Robot of Sherwood " ) He later declared that he wasn ' t a good man , a bad man , an officer , a hero or a President as he was described by the many who had come to know him over the years , but simply an idiot , in a box , who travels around helping and learning . ( TV : " Death in Heaven " ) Eventually , he was called to account for his crimes against the Time Lords during his second incarnation , when he called them to stop the War Lord and return kidnapped humans to their own era . His punishment was a forced regeneration , exile to Earth in the 20th century , and the loss of his knowledge of how to control the TARDIS . ( TV : " The War Games " ) This knowledge was restored to him after he helped to defeat Omega . ( TV : " The Three Doctors " ) Afterwards , he resumed having adventures with many companion s in their following incarnations . Early in their fourth incarnation he was sent by the Time Lords to prevent the creation of the Daleks , but despite having the chance he refrained from committing genocide . ( TV : " Genesis of the Daleks " ) After this he kept the Black Guardian from obtaining the Key to Time , ( TV : " The Armageddon Factor " ) achieved the office of Lord President of Gallifrey , ( TV : " The Invasion of Time " , " The Five Doctors " ) and was again put on trial in his sixth incarnation for breaking the non - interference policy . He discovered that the Prosecutor , the Valeyard , was a personification of his future evil self , who was helping to cover up the crimes of the High Council of Time Lords . ( TV : " The Trial of a Time Lord " ) During the Last Great Time War between the Time Lords and the Dalek s , the Eighth Doctor refused to be a part of it . He died in a spaceship crash on Karn , but was revived by the Sisterhood of Karn , and agreed to regenerate into a warrior . ( TV : " The Night of the Doctor " ) The Doctor then fought in the War . ( TV : " Dalek " ) He ultimately ended the war , and was able to save Gallifrey with the help of his other twelve incarnations . This displacement of Gallifrey caused the near - extinction of the Daleks . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) The War was sealed in a time lock , making it impossible to time travel to it to save Gallifrey . ( TV : " The Stolen Earth " ) In an alternate timeline , the Doctor ' s grave was on Trenzalore , where he had died after a battle . The Doctor was buried in his TARDIS . Instead of a body , the TARDIS contained the Doctor ' s time stream , manifesting as a column of light . The Great Intelligence forced the Eleventh Doctor to go to Trenzalore to open the TARDIS , though it was opened by a data ghost of River Song . The Great Intelligence entered the timestream to alter the Doctor ' s history , but the Doctor was saved by Clara Oswald scattering herself through his timestream . Due to this Clara had helped the Doctor many times through his lives , even telling the First Doctor which TARDIS to steal . ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) After believing for four hundred years that he had destroyed his own people , the Doctor finally learned the truth when the Moment united his warrior , tenth and eleventh incarnations in an effort to change the Warrior ' s mind about destroying the Time Lords to save the universe . This encounter gave the Doctor a new perspective on his Warrior incarnation , stating both that the Warrior was the Doctor more than anybody and that the Warrior was the Doctor " on the day it was impossible to get it right " . However , both the Warrior and the Tenth Doctor retained no memory of this encounter and both continued to believe that they had destroyed Gallifrey and the Time Lords when in reality all of the Doctor ' s incarnations had come together to save it . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) Eventually the time came for the Doctor to go to Trenzalore where he was fated to die in battle . The Doctor spent centuries protecting the town of Christmas from various enemies including the Daleks , Cybermen , Sontaran s and the Weeping Angel s as the Time Lords were trying to return to the universe through a crack in time there . Growing extremely old and frail , the Doctor came to the end of his life as he no longer possessed the ability to regenerate . By that point , the Doctor had given up completely , having long before forsaken any chance to flee the planet and save his own life and believing he was unable to change his own future due to the Time Lords being gone . His companion , Clara , refused to give up and pleaded with the Time Lords through the crack to help the Doctor , stating that after all he ' d done for the universe , he deserved their help . As the Daleks prepared to kill the Doctor , who was dying of old age by that point anyway , the Time Lords intervened to save him : they granted him a new cycle of regeneration s through the crack . This allowed him to destroy the Dalek force attacking the planet and change the future . He later regenerated into the Twelfth Doctor but lost the chance to bring back the Time Lords as even though the enemies assaulting Trenzalore were defeated , the Time Lords closed the crack after helping him . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) The Doctor ' s incarnations . By regenerating , the Doctor ' s personality and outer form changed greatly over time , though all of their incarnation s were essentially the same person , retaining the memories , curiosity , eccentricity , and wisdom of the ones before . The Doctor was known to have regenerated on at least fourteen occasions . The Doctor ' s first thirteen incarnations were male ; ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) their thirteenth self broke this mold . ( TV : " Twice Upon a Time " ) A number of other incarnations have been chronicled ; however , where they fall within the Doctor ' s lifetime is unclear : An interesting aspect of the Doctor ' s personality was that they occasionally expressed a personal liking or disliking for particular incarnations , though this opinion depended on the incarnation making the assessment . The Doctor ' s tenth incarnation expressed a deep fondness for his fifth incarnation , and slight disdain for his ninth , considering him unnecessarily violent . ( TV : " Time Crash " , " Journey ' s End " ) The Twelfth Doctor was obviously flattered when he believed , incorrectly , that his companion was romantically involved with a fellow teacher he considered to bear a resemblance to his eleventh incarnation . ( TV : " The Caretaker " ) The Fifth Doctor was disliked by his immediate successor . ( TV : " The Twin Dilemma " ) In another instance , the Fourth Doctor made reference to the Third Doctor , saying , " Some people liked it , but I prefer this one . " ( TV : " The Brain of Morbius " ) The Twelfth Doctor told his first incarnation that " there [ were ] a few false starts [ before becoming him ] , but you get there in the end " . ( TV : " Twice Upon a Time " ) The Seventh Doctor was also annoyed when he had to work with the Fifth Doctor , seeing him as " not even one of the good ones " . The Fifth Doctor was equally disgusted by what he would become . ( PROSE : " Cold Fusion " ) The Fifth Doctor also stated after meeting his past selves that he was not the man he had been - and " thank goodness for that ! " . ( TV : " The Five Doctors " ) Immediately before his regeneration , the Tenth Doctor stated , " I don ' t want to go " , showing he had become attached to his current self . Immediately after his twelfth regeneration , the Eleventh Doctor remarked upon his new nose , stating that , " I ' ve had worse " — possibly a reference to multiple incarnations , including his third , who was once described as a " long - shanked fellow with a mighty nose " . ( TV : " The End of Time , The Time Warrior " ) The Eleventh Doctor also at one point expressed loathing for his first incarnation ' s initial personality , considering himself at that time a foolish and arrogant liar and a selfish coward . ( COMIC : " Hunters of the Burning Stone " ) Before learning the true outcome of the Time War , the Eleventh Doctor expressed an even greater hate for the " War Doctor " whose actions were so shameful that he went against " the name of the Doctor " and not counting him among his incarnations . ( TV : " The Name of the Doctor " ) Both the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors however forgave their war incarnation and honoured him as being the Doctor more than any of his incarnations once they learnt the real result of the Time War . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) Adventures by unknown incarnations of the Doctor . Due to the Doctor ' s many adventures it was sometimes unclear as to which incarnation of the Doctor experienced them . Some of these adventures include : Impacting future incarnations . The Doctor on occasion performed acts that are expected to have an impact on future incarnations . Once , in order to recharge the TARDIS , the Tenth Doctor transferred some of his life energy , an act he acknowledged shortened his life - span ( and , by extension , the life of his ultimate final incarnation ) by ten years . ( TV : " Rise of the Cybermen " ) Later , the Twelfth Doctor gave up some of his regeneration energy to revive Davros ( TV : " The Witch ' s Familiar " ) ; when River Song did something similar to save the Eleventh Doctor ' s life , it was stated that doing so cost her ability to regenerate ( TV : " Let ' s Kill Hitler " ) , so the long - term impact of the Twelfth Doctor ' s sacrifice remains to be seen . The Twelfth Doctor , after being rendered blind , once created a device capable of borrowing eyesight from a future version of his current incarnation , but at the possible cost of being permanently blinded or future regenerations disabled ; however , as this is took place in a computer - generated simulation , it is unclear whether it ' s possible for the Doctor to create such a device in the real world . ( TV : " Extremis " ) Regeneration . Due to the unique structure of Time Lord biology , the Doctor had the ability to regenerate , to " cheat death " . ( TV : " The Parting of the Ways " ) A Time Lord was usually limited to twelve regenerations . ( TV : " The Deadly Assassin " , " Mawdryn Undead " , " Doctor Who " , " The Time of the Doctor " ) The High Council of the Time Lords could influence regenerations , treating them as punishment ( TV : " The War Games " ) and reward . ( TV : " The Five Doctors " , " Utopia " , " The Time of the Doctor " ) At times , enemies coveted the Doctor ' s future regenerations and tried to take them for their own . ( TV : " Mawdryn Undead " , " Doctor Who " , " Human Nature " / " The Family of Blood " , " The Witch ' s Familiar " ) The effect of regeneration on the Doctor in the time immediately following the event varied from incarnation to incarnation . In some cases the Doctor regained their faculties quickly , erratic behaviour notwithstanding . ( TV : " The Power of the Daleks " , " The Twin Dilemma " , " The Eleventh Hour " ) On one occasion when the regenerative process was postponed for a long time , he was rendered amnesiac . ( TV : " Doctor Who " ) In most cases the Doctor was incapacitated for a period of time before ultimately recovering . ( TV : " Spearhead from Space " , " Robot " , " Castrovalva " , " Time and the Rani " , " The Christmas Invasion " ) There were also rare cases where the Doctor was able to delay regeneration from setting in for an extended period of time . The Tenth Doctor once did such to visit all of his past companions - though , after the long delay , the resulting energy release was catastrophic for the TARDIS . ( TV : " The End of Time " , " Death of the Doctor " ) After gaining a new regenerative cycle , the Twelfth Doctor did something similar while trying to decide whether or not to regenerate . The Twelfth Doctor would call this period " a state of grace " where he is briefly restored to health before weakening , and must either regenerate or die . Like the Tenth Doctor , the Twelfth Doctor ' s regeneration was highly explosive as a result . ( TV : " Twice Upon a Time " ) In contrast , the First Doctor ' s regeneration into the Second Doctor , despite having delayed his regeneration like the Tenth and Twelfth Doctors , was not explosive at all . ( TV : " The Tenth Planet " ) However , the Twelfth Doctor did delay the change further after the First Doctor left , ( TV : " Twice Upon a Time " ) and the Tenth Doctor delayed it longer than the Twelfth , having managed to visit every single one of his previous companions before changing . ( TV : " Death of the Doctor " ) Due to the regeneration into the War Doctor and the Tenth Doctor ' s aborted regeneration , the Eleventh Doctor was actually the Doctor ' s last incarnation until the Time Lords gifted him with a new regenerative cycle at the end of that life . ( TV : " The Time of the Doctor " ) It was unclear exactly how many regenerations he was given , the Twelfth Doctor stated that he himself was not sure and didn ' t rule out the possibility that his new cycle could be infinite as he stated he could now possibly regenerate forever . ( TV : " Kill the Moon " ) Indeed , Rassilon , while threatening the Twelfth Doctor with his gauntlet , remarked to him " how many regenerations did we grant you ? I ' ve got all night . " ( TV : " Hell Bent " ) Behind the scenes . " Doctor Who " . The use of the name " Doctor Who " when referring to the Doctor is commonplace in the British media , the end credits of many episodes , and most prose and comic stories of the 1960s and 1970s . The ending credits for the series gave his name as " Doctor Who " or " Dr . Who " , from 1963 until " Logopolis " part four , when incoming Doctor Peter Davison insisted upon a change in the credits of " Castrovalva " to " the Doctor " , which remained in place until the end of the original series in 1989 ; executive producer Russell T Davies used " Doctor Who " when the series returned in 2005 , but Tenth Doctor actor David Tennant asked to change it back to " the Doctor " beginning with " The Christmas Invasion " . Despite these insistences , both Davison and Tennant called the character " Dr . Who " in several different interviews , as is common for media and cast members . Especially in the 1960s and early 1970s , many stories referred to the Doctor as " Doctor Who " . The " Doctor Who " annuals and Target Books novelisations frequently called him " Doctor Who " in titles and narration , though dialogue between characters usually used " the Doctor " . In " The War Machines " , WOTAN directly referred to the Doctor as " Doctor Who " , but most other usages of the name throughout the series ' history were non - serious , such as the Second Doctor ' s pseudonyms and K9 ' s jokes . In " World Enough and Time " , told Bill Potts that the Doctor originally called himself " Doctor Who " ; the Twelfth Doctor told Bill that Missy was trying to wind her up , but never denied the claim . Casting . , every actor to portray the Doctor on an ongoing basis has been Caucasian , and born in the United Kingdom . Every actor until Jodie Whittaker had been male . Despite the fact that the Doctor is not a native of Britain , or of Earth for that matter , every actor to play him so far has had a British accent , much in the way most aliens in the " Star Trek " franchise tend to speak with an American accent . The type of British accent has varied from one incarnation to the next . The earliest incarnations used RP , whereas some of the more recent incarnations have had Estuary accents . The Ninth Doctor had a Northern accent , causing Rose to ask why an alien would have a Northern accent , to which he replied , " Lots of planets have a north . " ( TV : " Rose " ) Both Sylvester McCoy and Peter Capaldi used their natural Scottish accents while playing the role , with the fact the Doctor sounds Scottish being used in dialogue plot points in ( to date ) TV : " Deep Breath " and " Robot of Sherwood " . The Thirteenth Doctor has a Yorkshire accent . ( TV : " Twice Upon a Time " ) To date the oldest actor to be cast as the Doctor has been John Hurt , who was 73 ; the youngest has been Matt Smith , who was 26 when cast . The oldest to be cast on an " ongoing basis " was Peter Capaldi , who was 55 when he was cast and began filming , and turned 56 during production of Series 8 . In 2014 , Tom Baker turned 80 and continued to record new performances as the Doctor for Big Finish Productions ' Fourth Doctor Adventures audio dramas , making him the oldest actor to play the part in an officially licensed capacity . Peter Davison , Colin Baker , Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann , all in their fifties , sixties or seventies , also continue to portray the Doctor in licensed audio dramas produced by Big Finish , with McGann also appearing in audio dramas produced by Big Finish and BBC Radio for broadcast on BBC7 radio . In the 2000s and 2010s , Tom Baker also portrayed the Doctor in AudioGO ' s " Hornets ' Nest " , " Demon Quest " and " Serpent Crest " audio dramas . In the " Sarah Jane Adventures " episode " Death of the Doctor " Part 1 , Daniel Anthony , who plays Clyde Langer , became the first non - Caucasian actor to play the Doctor , when Clyde ' s body is briefly taken over by the Eleventh Doctor ' s consciousness . Anthony delivered a line of dialogue as the Doctor while impersonating Matt Smith ' s voice . Owing to the brevity of the performance , and the fact he is playing an established incarnation , the fact Anthony was the first to break the barrier of skin colour is generally not recognised . Aged 22 at the time the episode was filmed , Anthony is also technically the youngest to play the part . Although the character is portrayed as white , there have been black actors who were considered for the role . Among them comedian Eddie Murphy back in 1996 , David Harewood , Charles Venn , Paterson Joseph and Robbie Gee . Colin Salmon was a strong contender to play the Eleventh Doctor . Longest - serving Doctor . There are several different methods for calculating who was the " longest serving Doctor " . The most commonsensical definition is simply that of the actor who played the role on television for the longest continuous period . This mantle goes to Tom Baker , who was the Fourth Doctor from June 1974 to March 1981 , or 6 years , 9 months . Baker is also the longest - serving Doctor in terms of number of individual episodes , total story count and amount of screen time . Thus he is " generally " considered to be the " longest - serving Doctor " . But there are other methods of measurement — all of which exclude " Dimensions in Time " . The issue of the longest - serving Doctor was a source of controversy on British game show , which asked the question with the choices of McCoy , McGann , Eccleston , and Tennant ; the team split their £650 , 000 between McCoy and McGann , only to find out that the " correct " answer was Tennant . Once the error was discovered ( partly since the question was fundamentally flawed due to the absence of Tom Baker ) , the team was brought back to continue where they left off with £325 , 000 and ended up winning £25 , 000 . Analogous characters . There have been several characters outside the confines of the DWU which have been broadly modelled on general aspects of the Doctor . Such " pastiches " are examined in greater detail elsewhere . The Doctor ' s wives . Steven Moffat , in his production notes column in DWM 482 , speculated that the Doctor ' s first spouse out of the four mentioned in the television story " Death in Heaven " was a woman who was married to the First Doctor for a long time on Gallifrey and bore the Doctor ' s children . He claimed " Mrs Who No 1 " was never mentioned by the Doctor nor has he ever discussed her .