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Ten Doctors, forty four years, canceled twice and still going strong. The adventures of Britain's favourite time traveling adventurer have inspired many a child to start reading and have encouraged many an adult to go out and see the world.

Starting in 1963, in black and white the series didn't get off to an auspicious start. Airing the very same day that JFK was shot dead the BBC showed the first episode again the nest week as viewers had watched the news from Dallas instead the previous Saturday. The first serial, a four parter, called An Unearthly Child saw the irascible Doctor, played by William Hartnell, and his granddaughter, Susan, team up with her schoolteachers Ian and Barbara for a jaunt back to the Stone Age. The programme which was originally conceived by BBC Producer, Verity Lambert, to be a children's programme which was designed to educate as well as entertain saw serials like an An Unearthly Child as a platform for that ethos. There was to be no bug eyed monsters in the first four episodes, although all that would change with the next series, the Daleks and the rest, as they say, is history.

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