It's just going to be damn near impossible to find wiped episodes at this point. Especially with everyone looking. Not saying there will never be another episode found because we've had a few found in the last couple years. But finding anywhere close to the 100+ that are left is pretty much a pipe dream.
Supposedly SETI is working on some advance mathematical method to separate the noise from the signal so don't give up hope yet.
There are just too many naysayers. It cost you nothing to hope for the best. I've seen some near impossible things happen (Thank you Yeezus for nuWho and Captain America/Iron Man/The Avengers, now about DS9 and Firefly). Remember, hope is what keeps us alive!!
It's not about hope. I'm an optimist at heart. But finding episodes that have been erased isn't an easy thing.
^None of which changes the fact that we can never catch up with signals that are travelling faster than light -- not without FTL technology which is probably unattainable. Unless some aliens out there intercept the signals and are kind enough to beam them back to us, or unless they hit some hitherto-undiscovered Space Mirror, we're out of luck. (I actually came across a hoax news story a while back claiming that astronomers had detected old signals being bounced back by some kind of reflective phenomenon in space, and lost Doctor Who episodes were specifically mentioned as being among them. Apparently this hoax has been floating around the Internet for several years and occasionally gets re-reported by someone gullible enough to fall for it.)
<Raises hand in shame> I read it in August, and saw it was April, but, didn't notice it was the first, the year 2009 I read as April 9, 2009 A Link to my shame http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=185972
NASA is working on a warp drive as we speak. By the 200th anniversary of Doctor Who, we will have those lost episodes. Yeezus be praised
Not a drive, just an interferometer experiment to try to obtain proof of concept. It's about as close to a warp engine as a round pebble rolling down a hill is to a Formula 1 race car.
But still, it's all simple really. We just need there to be an alien civilisation about 25 light years out, who'd developed the noise/signal sorting tech by late 1978, so they could pick up Doctor Who from the start as the BBC signals reached them. Being people... ah, aliens of taste, they would instantly realise it was so good that it should be re-broadcast on their own TV stations. Which means we can pick up their retransmissions of Marco Polo early next year, if SETI just develops the necessary noise-signal tech in time! Mind you, it'll be really irritating that, after Marco Polo, we'll only get six more missing episodes off the alien TXes until October 2015. ;-)
A post from Outpost Skaro (sorry, no link, I got this from Gallifrey Base): Take with a hefty helping of salt.
I'm going to ignore all rumours - like I've always done - until I see an official press release from the BBC saying they've found something. Be that in a day, a week, a month, a year or 20 years away. There really is no point in getting excited about RUMOURS, cos that's all they are. Wait for FACTS. (I'm currently going through this thread and a few other forums colating a timeline of events for this rumour(s) so we can all look back and see how amazing it's been (seriously, since the 13th of June - one week ago as I type this - Who fandom has gone batshit crazy). Yes it may not have a happy ending but it's woken a lot of the world up and if anything given a lot of free publicity to the plight of Doctor Who's missing episodes...)
First of all, I suspect that if any aliens did intercept our sci-fi TV broadcasts, they'd probably find them incredibly racist and refuse to have anything to do with us on principle. Secondly, the notion of aliens picking up Earth TV broadcasts and re-airing them on their own planet is part of the plot of the 8th Doctor novel "Mad Dogs & Englishmen" by Paul Magrs. Spoiler: Mad Dogs & Englishmen Essentially, an alien poodle seduces H.P. Lovecraft into convincing J.R.R. Tolkien to rewrite The Lord of the Rings so that its events closely mirror true events on the poodle planet, so that the deposed poodle princess can use it to foment a revolution against the current emperor. My favorite part of the book is how one of the workers on the poodle listening/transmission station has set up a secret business selling black market bootlegs of "offensive" & "kinky" films like 101 Dalmatians & Beethoven's 2nd. Not only that, but there's also his dubious contribution to 1980s TV theme music that I believe he's yet to apologize for. [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu7OiJpnlUs[/yt] But then, I guess I'm really just asking for the 1980s to apologize for being the 1980s.
That's not far from the truth actually. He only composed it, Peter Howell arranged it. Ian was expecting a more orchestrial treatment whereas Peter just recreated his synth demo.
Frankly, the whole thing wouldn't be quite so laughable if Lis Sladen would just smile in those shots. It's like, she can't quite commit herself to being stuck on this series now that she's there.