The 50th anniversary of Doctor Who is right around the corner and, with mere months to go before the celebrations kick off in earnest, Digital Spy wants to know the answer to a very important question - who is your favourite Doctor?

Join us every day from August 28 to September 6 as we take a look back at a half-century of Who and - in a new daily blog - weigh up the merits of each Doctor - from William Hartnell to Matt Smith, before finally revealing DS readers' favourite Doctor of all time on Monday, September 9!

We begin, of course, back in that misty London scrapyard where two inquisitive schoolteachers learnt a shocking truth and met an irascible, enigmatic old man...

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10 incarnations later and William Hartnell's first Doctor remains perhaps the most unlikely hero of them all. The man who emerges from the London smog in 'An Unearthly Child' is a far cry from the 'Space Gandalf' figure that our lead would later become - initially at least, this Doctor is harsh, dismissive, arrogant and wiling to strike down others to ensure his own survival.

Doctor Who's companions have always served as the 'eyes of the audience' but that's never more true than with the first examples of the type - Ian (William Russell) and Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) are the show's protagonists, while Hartnell's character is a schemer, a mischievous meddler who'll endanger the lives of others simply to satisfy his own scientific curiosity.

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But of all the Doctors, Hartnell's possibly went through the most dramatic evolution from start to end point - across his time with the show, we saw a gradual softening of the character's harsher qualities and, from Ian and Barbara's departure in 1965 adventure 'The Chase' onwards, the first Doctor fully assumed his position as an out-and-out hero.

Guiding the character through this transition is Hartnell, a fine actor equally adept at playing the darker figure we glimpse in early episodes and the "cross between the Wizard of Oz and Father Christmas" that he would ultimately become.

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Much has been made over the years of Hartnell's line 'fluffs' and while it's easy - and rather enjoyable - to poke fun ("I prefer walking to any day... and I hate climbing!") the odd fumble or stumble does not detract from what is a powerful and intensely charismatic lead performance - one that launched Doctor Who on a 50-year path to greatness.

Irritable, whimsical, eccentric; a scientist, a schemer, a hero; at times cold and cruel, at times warm and endlessly compassionate - William Hartnell's first Doctor is arguably one of the most complex and interesting... but is he the best?

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