BBC audio appear to be deleting some of their soundtracks, you can't get some of them- The Highlanders, The Savages- on play or amazon anymore. The CD of The Savages is now going for £55-£70 on ebay, although it's still available from the itunes store.

I guess the point is, if you want any of these, sooner rather than later might be a good idea.

I have discovered the soundtracks in recent months (and have posted about them a few times on here). I was surprised to find they are being deleted: it only dawned on me in the last couple of weeks!

I would love to hear The Savages, and was very disappointed to find it's going for megabucks on The Bay. I got myself Galaxy Four and Power of the Daleks from Ebay at the weekend, just as I finished listening to The Space Pirates.

It dawned on me recently that I could have a full set of DW stories if I get the soundtracks ... but it seems I will be a bit caught out and have a "Savages" shaped gap. As for The Highlanders ... summat-and-nowt. Only reason people get excited about it are (a) no-one's seen it, and (b) it's Jamie's first. The Massacre is far better. Or the Myth Makers.

You inspired me to shop round: galaxy4.co.uk has The Savages for 21.99, so I've ordered myself a copy before it runs out.

Are these soundtracks obsolete because I think some were remade as animation (only those where at least one episode intact though) and released on DVD.

Two episodes of The Invasion were animated and set to the soundtrack. No other episodes have been animated, and it cost so much to do those two that it seems unlikely more will follow.

There's some kind of "reconstruction" thingie around, whereby some techno-whizzo people have set the soundtracks to still photos, but I don't know if those exist for every missing episode. I haven't seen any of them.

A couple of stories (Ice Warriors and Tenth Planet, if memory serves) are iout on video with their missing episodes filled in with bits of soundtrack and a few photos. Doesn't give the full effect though, as the missing episodes are reduced to five or ten minutes each.

There are 110 missing episodes of DW (I think. It might be 109. Or 107). The soundtracks have been cleaned up nicely, and filled in with suitable narration for the visual bits. I am completely blown away by them. I never thought I would ever know anything about, for example, The Myth Makers or Fury From The Deep, but they are both magnificent works. Marco Polo is beyond epic. All tragically overlooked because they aren't sat on the DVD shelf and require a bit of effort to sit down and listen to.

The "odd episodes" (Faceless Ones, Crusade, etc) that still exist seem orphaned from the stiory and fairly meaningless on their own. I have used the soundtrack to fill in the blanks, and the whole story pulls together very neatly. The Moonbase really shines when you're able to experience the whole story.

I am re-evaluating everything I have ever thought about the earliest years of DW because I am now experiencing huge chunks of it for the first time. It's a real ear-opener.

All those people over in the "Classic Series Companion Survivor" thread are voting for Katarina as least favourite companion just because they know nothing about her and it's easy to get rid of her. Her death scene, and the Doctor's eulogy afterwards, and precisely fifty-seven times more moving than all those snot-and-tears melodramatic "I love you Doctor" outbursts that seem to follow David Tennant everywhere.

These soundtracks just go to show: in Doctor Who, as in the rest of TV, dumbing down is rife.

Lined up and waiting to be listened to: Power of the Daleks, Galaxy Four (I have always wanted to know more about that story! Read the Target book recently, and it just got me more intrigued!), The Macra Terror and The Enemy of the World. All of them so chock-full of mystery and unknown content that I really don't known where to start!

Go on ... treat yourself. Get The Web of Fear or Fury from the Deep. Don't wait for them to be rediscovered, or animated, or reconstructed, cos you might have a blummin long wait.

I'm sure stories like "The Ice Warriors", "The Reign of Terror" and "The Tenth Planet" where more than 50% of the story survives in video form will eventually be released on DVD, the only question is how will they cover the missing episodes. Perhaps by then the cost of animation will have come down, or instead they will do their own reconstructions with the full audio and photos.

Are the soundtracks actually being *deleted*, which seems a monumentally silly thing to do (storage these days is cheap, and there is no point in making the missing episodes problem worse) or just no longer offered for sale?

If the latter, I suppose we could hope they're being withdrawn for a reason, i.e. something better in the works. More animations would be nice (unlikely, but nice).

The soundtracks are gradually being withdrawn from sale.

I tried The Reign of Terror recently, and found it very difficult to follow on video, with (I think) 3/6 episodes missing. The gaps were filled in with very, very, very brief narration (really just two mins worth of narration over a couple of photos), and I had totally lost the thread of the story when we got back to the final video episode. I haven;t got that CD yet, but will soon invest.

I thought that at first and then thought better - they are probably being withdrawn because they have reached their full sale potential and it's no longer feasible to keep producing packaging and to justify transport costs to suppliers.

Would be useful if they were available as a Download for those who still want them.

They are. Check out iTunes or Audible.