The Doctor is the only survivor of the Time War that wiped out his kind. He's quoted saying;
-Fear me, I've killed all of them.
Plus, Obi-Wan died, the Doctor is immortal.
It gets very subjective. Time lords are human like and posses what appears to be human like emotional responses but the show and their very existence make clear there are cognitive and other differences between time lords and humans. Obi-wan is as near as we have context, like most “humans” in Star Wars- human just like us.
Beyond this however, ignoring species differences and speculations as to the effects of immortality on one’s self- that it is often treated as a “curse” of sorts but we actually don’t really know what it would be like or how emotions and memories and traumas might work over scales of thousands of years or more- we can’t even compare to the small scope of life of elderly humans because while that does give us some idea on how up to maybe 3/4 a century or so might impact long term suffering, elderly humans undergo cognitive and biological changes that by themselves can influence perception and mood and outlook but coupled with changes to ability and thus lifestyle..
A human living to even 120 years old would have a very different experience than a time lord who went through identical circumstances because the human will have vastly differently capabilities at 60 than 20, 120 than 40 and so on. So how they approach things and process them will be different than a time lord of that same age even if time lords had identical cognition to humans because their immortality doesn’t give the the changes and deterioration of humans. At 120 a time lord could be approached by a thug and possibly fight back but a 120 year old human will be in eminent danger. Reaction speed etc. so options and perceptions are different. Mortality does also mean humans at times or near our end have to face our mortality to a point which can change the way we reconcile previous events. There’s a lot of variables but arguably immortality could even make suffering less. It also depends on quantification-
One could say that suffering for a century over lost love is worse than suffering a decade, but think about this- a hamster might live a year and a human lives on average 70. If a human suffers for one year that sucks but we have 69 others. If a hamster suffers for one year it has suffered its entirely life. For an immortal being- truly immortal, any suffering is effectively 0% of their total lifespan unless they get killed, but generally it will work out to a small percentage. So let’s ignore that stuff and speak on intensity.
If we assume two beings have similar cognition and emotions and life spans, “worse” suffering comes down to intensity, but we tend to project in this way. We will generally assume suffering is “worse” if we relate to it such as what we have experienced or similar to what we have experienced, or if it is to our values.
In other words, if your brother is the most important person in your life then someone losing their brother is going to seem like bad suffering to you where as for someone who truly despises or cares nothing for their brother probably won’t feel as strongly when someone else loses a brother- and of course when bad things happen to us we don’t all suffer the same amount from the same things either- in the hypothetical above, losing a brother will probably impact someone who cares about their brother than someone who despises their brother. Let’s say a person was adopted and they discover their birth parents identities after the birth parents are dead- for some they may feel great suffering- loss of their birth parents or a suffering they never got to meet them while others would feel no more suffering than the death of any other stranger. If two people take the same punch and one is left standing and stoic but one is crumpled on the floor in tears- did the standing one suffer less…
.. or did they suffer the same or even more and simply are tougher or better at dealing with suffering? Is an inability to deal with pain itself a form of suffering so that one can feel the same pain as another but suffer more because they cannot deal with it? And, it is certainly true that to some degree if not entirely we are responsible for our own suffering often, especially emotionally. In the sense that we “punish” or “dwell” or “beat ourselves up” or otherwise for some feelings of guilt or obligation or otherwise we wallow in suffering as opposed to actively making an effort to move past it or process it; or we insist that wallowing in that suffering is an aspect of processing it. So I am reluctant to agree that the doctor has suffered more than anyone else. It isn’t as simple as numbers, and depending on how we quantify it immortals may lose on the scale of suffering or win. Depth of suffering isn’t quantifiable and there are too many variables in cognition between species.
-Fear me, I've killed all of them.
Plus, Obi-Wan died, the Doctor is immortal.
Beyond this however, ignoring species differences and speculations as to the effects of immortality on one’s self- that it is often treated as a “curse” of sorts but we actually don’t really know what it would be like or how emotions and memories and traumas might work over scales of thousands of years or more- we can’t even compare to the small scope of life of elderly humans because while that does give us some idea on how up to maybe 3/4 a century or so might impact long term suffering, elderly humans undergo cognitive and biological changes that by themselves can influence perception and mood and outlook but coupled with changes to ability and thus lifestyle..
If we assume two beings have similar cognition and emotions and life spans, “worse” suffering comes down to intensity, but we tend to project in this way. We will generally assume suffering is “worse” if we relate to it such as what we have experienced or similar to what we have experienced, or if it is to our values.