My Dad sat and taped the 12 episode repeat of Operation Luna in what must have been the late 80s/early 90s and I must have come close to wearing the tapes thin over the years. It’s still the only serial I’ve heard as they’re no longer commercially available. At least, not reasonably.

Both Operation Luna and The Red Planet have been released with remastered recordings in CD presentation sets but are no longer available and the third was never released because of poor sales. Now all you can get it DRMed .wma files from a handful of online retailers. You know, the kind that say “you can only download it once, if you fuck up then tough” and “these files are only compatible with a Windows Media Device” or “here, pay £2.50 an episode for a 20 episode serial and rest assured it’s a good bitrate, honest”. Fuck that.

Sure, I could buy them, work my way around the copy protection and end up with proper, unencumbered mp3 files but that goes against the grain. I’d happily pay for the expensive CD sets, the only reason I didn’t back then was a lack of disposable income. Stupidly, I should have just bit the bullet and done it. I was working at HMV with a 30% discount. Stupid, stupid rat creature.

So now I regularly trawl eBay for second hand copies. I look in torrent sites to try and find good rips. I’ve got a 12 part collection of Operation Luna but it’s not the same version as I listened to on Radio 4. I think it might be the American editions. The intro’s wrong and there are episode recaps that I have no memory of.

The bottom line for me is; well done BBC and your chosen online retailers. You’ve done yourself out of a good sale because of your distribution choice.