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Two thousand years! That's how old The Doctor is now, as stated by the Twelfth in the latest trailer and as implied in his predecessor's swan song, "The Time of the Doctor." That's a pretty huge leap from roughly 900 years old at the start of Steven Moffat's showrunnership. Is it a fair leap when you consider the assumed ages of his predecessors? Or is "fairness" even a fair issue?
My concern with running up the Doctor's age is that Matt Smith's Doctor was apparently spending almost all his time without companions. At one point Amy chides him for running about on his own – he comes a bit unstuck from his "humanity" without companions (as an extravert I relate). Surely we would have seen a greater shift in his personality by the time of the Impossible Astronaut?
By the end, of course, it can be argued that the entire population of Christmas would have kept the Doctor "sane" during his stay there, so the 12th Doctor gets a clean start – but again, if he's aged another 500-1000 years since regenerating, who has been his companion all that time?
Perhaps the many avatars of Clara — she seems to have at least as many lives as the Doctor has regenerations, even if she just ends up getting killed every time she saves the Doctor…maybe she should have been named Felicia?
That was a cute little meander through fussiness to arrive at a place of comfort–that we have no idea how old he is, he has no idea how old he is, and he lies anyway.
I like it when the story has gaps for lots of unwritten adventures, so I don't mind much when the aging allows for gaps. I do get a little fussy at the thought that Eleven spent as much time in that body as he did in the ten previous bodies combined. Then I wander back to "It's an irrelevant number with no connection to fact" and try to leave it there.
I think you make a fair point, although my suspicion of Moffat's motives in inflating the Doctor's age (if indeed he is doing so) is that "2000 years" has a messianic ring to it (at least it does to a sci-fi Christian such as myself). I guess time will tell.