Globetrotting boy reporter Tintin was a revelation to me after a childhood of superhero comics and Star Wars.

No mutant powers, no alien worlds, just a curious nature and a plucky desire to travel the world and right some wrongs.

Throw in a few eccentric friends and a loyal dog and you've got a role model for the ages.

That said, why settle for the world if you could travel through all of time and space with the ultimate man of mystery?

Who is the Doctor? After travelling for centuries (or 26 years on the BBC!), this alien Renaissance man himself doesn't know. With his many talents, histories, personalities, even faces, he's no longer sure of anything but this:

"There are some corners of the universe that have bred the most terrible things -- things which act against everything we believe in. They must be fought."

Another 1960's British TV series took the opposite approach in 17 cerebral and surreal episodes:

The Prisoner, Number Six, can't travel at all. The retired British secret agent has been abducted to the Village, a lovely island resort where those in charge seek to break his will, learn his secrets and make him conform.

His response? "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, briefed, debriefed, indexed or numbered. My life is my own."
"I am not a number, I am a free man!"

In Armistead Maupin's charming Tales of the City novels, Anna Madrigal is a landlady in 1970's San Francisco whose bohemian spirit and zest for living transforms her mousy new tenant, Mary Ann Singleton.

Mrs. Madrigal has happily reinvented herself and, while the other characters wonder about her mysterious past, millions of readers have been inspired by the way she grabs hold of the present with warmth, generosity and gusto.

"Do you have any objections to pets, Mrs. Madrigal?"
"My dear, I have no objections to anything!"

He was the sterotypical wide-eyed rookie detective on Homicide: Life on the Street, until his first case -- the rape and murder of a young girl -- left him shattered.

Tim Bayliss' righteous veneer cracked under the pain of never solving that case and led to soul-searching plotlines that, in the hands of a lesser actor and writing team, would have been implausibly garish plot twists.

But his explorations always felt real, even by the final seventh season, when his squad partner dubbed him, "bisexual Zen detective Tim Bayliss."

Horatio Hornblower is C.S. Forester's seafaring hero of eleven novels, a 1951 movie with Gregory Peck and, recently, six A&E TV movies. The novels follow Hornblower's rise through the British Navy and his heroism during the Napoleonic Wars with France.

Hornblower is a character much like Sherlock Holmes -- so richly drawn that many people believe he actually existed. Sadly, no, but he was the inspiration for Star Trek's Captain Kirk and other modern heroic characters and will hopefully sail on for centuries to come.

I should have no reason to like Cable -- a big, gun-toting, comic-book soldier from the future -- but I admire his mission.

Growing up in a brutal Darwinist world of genetic have and have-nots, he's witnessed eugenic slaughter, including his friends, his wife, his son.

Desperately leaping back to our time, Cable now travels the globe's war zones and hot spots, fighting to keep prejudice in the present from becoming genocide in the future.

In a more plausible, all-too-near future, the world's citizens are manipulated by ruling corporations and media conglomerates. Crusading TV reporter Edison Carter threatens to expose their plots.

A botched attempt to kill and digitally replace him results in one angry reporter, a stuttering video clone named Max Headroom and a too-brief TV series that -- like Brazil and Blade Runner -- shaped my view of where we're headed.