It looks like a Larkin to me. Have there been rumours of missing Larkins turning up on Twitter?

If Levine says it's a hoax, it's a hoax.

End of thread.

Rubbish.

Ian bless him is prone to heights of great excitement and energy and lows of deep negativity - usually when things are not progressing as quickly as he wishes. It's at this point he sees the very worst in a situation and imagines conspiracies, and pointedly; insincerity in others.

The history of WHO fandom is littered with these colourful Ian moments.

Maybe, but the whole thing is ludicrous in the first place.

If someone was saying, one or two single episodes might turn up, that is within the realms of what is plausible, methinks.

To say an entire serial, or possibly more than one serial, has turned up after 45 plus years is a complete fantasy in my 'umble opinion.

Uusually I'd agree but this is a special set of circumstances producing an unusual scenario.

I agree a fair degree of hyperbole has been added to the. Pudding batter: Tenth Planet and the Dalek stories?????.

Also I suspect the quality of any returns is of concern. Imagine a confirmed leak - then news that material is not salvageable - is it better to say nothing and quietly gamble on high risk measures to retrieve something?.

Once anything does come back surely the BBC and restoration team members want a considered low key process to establish a feasible delivery strategy - before all hell breaks loose.

As pointed out on the thread about this on GB, the BBC aren't going to say anything about this, unless they actually have episodes. Even strongly denying it would likely be met with disbelief, more questions, and people searching for hidden meaning in the response even if there was none. It's like telling the David Icke forum the giant lizards, (sorry I mean the "Reptilian Agenda"), aren't real, to be frank.

The negative thing about that of course, is this thread will likely go on and on. And on.

I'll happily remain cynical about it; I won't be disappointed and hey, I might get a nice surprise, but at the moment I don't believe it.

Well think of it this way.

These were done back in the days when "broadcast" actually meant just that. It was broadcast.

So somewhere out in space, if someone mounted an array of radio telescopes the size of a galaxy or something (because the signals scatter), maybe in a few thousand years little tiny bits of lost Doctor Who could be recovered!!!

Exactly. The Story is pure rubbish. It will only leave fans disappointed in November if nothing is announced. Adding to what so far has already been a disappointing 50th anniversary year. Nothing has been found.

I disagree with a lot of Ian Levine's outbursts. His tantrums about there only being two new episodes in the anniversary year are disingenuous and possibly damaging to the show. However, I'm 100% behind him on the issue of rumoured episode finds.

This garbage about a large cache of episodes has been circulating for a couple of years with the country and the number of episodes varying in each retelling. It seems certain fans abandon critical thinking when they hear a rumour about a rumour (from a solid gold credible source) that 56 missing episodes have been found in the late Colonel Gaddafi's private collection.

No they are not disingenuous, especially after what we'd been promised (more Who than ever before). And it is absolutely ridiculous to claim that they could be damaging to the show.

Of course it's disingenuous. We have already seen eight new episodes and we're getting at least two specials later in the year. 2012 was the year when we only saw five episodes and one special.

Of course it isn't. 10 episodes is less than 14 and over 2012-3 we've had a lot less than normal in a two year period.

I hope they find the missing episodes, but if they don't, I agree that animated versions would be an investment into the series. I've watched S1 (the original) and part way through season 2, and the episodes that are missing have - so far - been reconned by LooseCannon, with introductions and outros featuring the major support actor (Richard the Lionheart or Marco Polo) or main cast (the actress that played Susan). Given these episodes have coincedentally all been historical episodes, they have added an extra dimension personally for me by discussing the history of they person they played/the episode theme. Granted I've only seen about 14 of these serials, and ~4 serials have at least one missing episode, I didn't think they had these recon ones, and I'm aware that they probably won't continue to be these. Given that I've had some of these on in the background when doing uni work or whatever it hasn't spoiled my enjoyment of the overall course of the episodes and the series in hand. Obviously if the missing episodes were found it would be great, but seeing as these historical ones are the ones with the most lavish costumes/sets, I think animated ones would be really good to actually see. Saying all that though, part of me was a bit cynical at first when I saw the trend that it was the serials with extra pomp that had missing episodes and I thought that maybe they couldn't fund/film these due to the lavishness, but I swiftly changed my mind. I didn't realise these missing episodes so far had audio to be reconned, but it really hasn't changed my enjoyment of these. Has anyone done a rewatch? It's gonna take me forever!

just been reading his twitter.he is saying that all thats been found is two episodes of the sky at night.

I hope there are episodes that have been found. It would be great to see them again.

What the fans need is for Doctor Who to go back to being a 10 story series, with two, two parters making 13 episodes in total, plus the Christmas one.

Because Series 7 was split in two, the second half felt more like a seperate series and not part of the current one.

Steven Moffat should realise that by splitting up a series, there may not be as many people watching the second half. A lot of people may not be interested in watching the second half because of the mid season break.

I, for one, wasn't as excited about seing the second half of Series 7 because of the break in-between. We had to wait almost six months before the BBC showed new episodes of Doctor Who again. Not counting The Snowmen, that is.

By the end of the second half, I felt underwhelmed with the finale. The only episode in the second half that I felt came close to being excellent was Journey to the Centre of the Tardis, followed by the Jessica Raine ghost one set in the 1970s.

As for the Crimson Horror with Diana Rigg and Rachel Stirling. Ugh! It was crap! I was dissapointed with how bad the episode actually was. I know other people have mentioned on DS about how bad the episode was.

I partially agree. I disagree with your appraise of the episodes (I liked Crimson Horror and Name of the Doctor) but I do agree that the spit affected the flow and the momentum of the series. I hope this is not repeated.

As for missing episodes - I now refuse to get excited until there's an official announcement. This has been going around in circles for too long now.

Here is what hopefully will put an end to all these rumours once and for all.

It does start off positive, but then completely back tracks and states It was all a hoax.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/06/...sodes-or-less/

It doesn't end anything (I don't think the rumour is true) but isn't that article essentially written from Ian Levine's tweets. Also how does eccentricity make the BBC believe the whole thing is true? I am an eccentric person but I don't go about claiming to the BBC that I have found missing episodes. I am not convinced by that article. Also how has it taken this amount of time to only just establish that it is a hoax?

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At the end of the day it's up to the people claiming 85% of the Missing Episodes have been found to offer some proof to back it up, not the other way round.

No, if people are saying it is not true then they must back up their claims as well. The answer is for most people they don't know.

Argumentum ad ignorantiam. The weak "You can't prove it's not true!" argument can be applied to Bigfoot, Santa Claus and fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The onus is entirely upon those making the claims of huge finds of missing episodes to actually back them up with something credible.

But if you claim something is not true it is the same. You have no evidence that no missing episodes have been discovered. If in 2011 someone said episode 3 of Galaxy 4 turned up with no proof whatsoever at a time when it was discovered but before the announcement people would then claim it is not true which is the wrong conclusion. There is difference between not knowing if it is true and saying something is not true.

It is prudent to say that an unlikely claim probably is not true until it can be proven. Probability matters.

The Galaxy 4 discovery was proven while the rumours of a huge cache have been doing the rounds for a couple of years with changes to the number and the location. Yet the evidence remains elusive.