Debuting in 1963, Doctor Who was an afternoon serial originally launched by the BBC as an educational program for children. By the fifth episode, it had pretty much abandoned that pretense and settled into a science-fiction show centered on an eccentric alien scientist who travels through time and space in an old blue box that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Canceled in 1989 due to a combination of low ratings and new network management that considered it (essentially rightfully) as a hokey embarrassment, an abortive …