Terror of the Zy-Gougers

Some time ago now, Big Finish Productions - purveyors of fine audio dramas, principally based on licensed 'cult' properties - decided to let the first fifty of their Doctor Who audio dramas go out of print (continuing to sell them as downloads). Obviously, despite how cheap the downloads are, a fair number of Who fans do like physical media, and this means second-hand CD copies of all 50 plays have been subjected to considerable amounts of price gouging online, but exactly how much chiefly seems to depend on the quality and content of the stories.

Nowhere is this more apparent than The Chimes of Midnight, widely hailed as one of the best Doctor Who stories in any medium, which will now set you back more than five times as much as its price when it was originally released in 2002! (All prices given are correct as time of writing...) Another highly regarded story, Spare Parts (the 'Genesis of the Cybermen' story, which went on to inspire their return in the TV series in 2006) will cost you nearly £50.

Stories which are less well thought of, or have less of a 'hook', fare a bit better - several of them, such as The Rapture, can be yours for a mere £10, slightly cheaper than it was when it was first released. You do get the occasional anomaly, though - Jubilee, a highly-acclaimed Dalek story by popular writer Robert Shearman which was loosely adapted for the TV series, is only slightly more expensive to buy now than it would have been when it was new. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how fan opinion sways these prices in the vast majority of cases.

(Wouldn't it be nice if BF combated this with some limited-edition reissues of some of the most badly affected stories? Next year is the 20th anniversary of Doctor Who at Big Finish, so it'd be the perfect opportunity! The first few stories all used the Pertwee theme rather than era-specific ones due to rights issues, so it'd be a great chance to correct that, and even do some new behind-the-scenes features given BF didn't start doing those until 2007... Go on, you know you want to, BF.)