The Gates of Hell

"This is the empire of the dead."

Writer: David Llewellyn 

Format: Audio

Released: June 2021

Series: Out of Time 02

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Fifth Doctor

Synopsis

Paris, 1809. The Fifth Doctor takes a tour of the Catacombs and meets a sassy Time Agent doing the same...

Paris, 1944. The Tenth Doctor misses his target and lands in occupied France. He hides from the Nazis – in the Catacombs.

A collision of two Doctors' timelines triggers a temporal catastrophe, granting the Cybermen dominion over the Earth.

The Doctors must travel back in time to find the source of the Cyber-invasion and close the Gates of Hell...

Verdict

The Gates of Hell was an excellent story to continue the Out of Time collection of multi-Doctor adventures! Has it really been a year since the Fourth and Tenth Doctors teamed up? Crikey things really do fly by! I think the idea behind it is delightful and on paper the concept of the Tenth Doctor being reunited with the Fifth Doctor once again is fantastic, so throwing in the Cybermen is an added bonus. I really like that the Tenth Doctor interacts with a Classic design of his old enemy too. Thing starting with the Fifth Doctor was good and I enjoyed his relationship with time agent Tina Drake. There was a paradox centring on 1809 in Paris which was fun, and the Tenth Doctor was also in the French capital but in 1944. He'd been aiming for 1922 though so something was clearly off! The Cybermen having expected the Doctor to arrive all along shifted the dynamic a little which works well and their placing the fifth incarnation into a stasis field was excellent! They weren't messing around. Tina escaping her death from within that through the vortex manipulator was good and the glee around its portability was amusing. It turning out that it was actually the Doctor who was the source of the paradox was great and the reaction when the Tenth Doctor opened the stasis field in 1944 to free his former self was magnificent. I'd have loved some visuals there! Their recollection of Time Crash was a lovely nod to the past and the dangers that came from the fact the Cybermen had taken over Paris in 1944 were brilliant. The stasis field had actually held the paradox stable and there hadn't been a Second World War with the Cybermen having ruled since the nineteenth century. That was a very fun alternate timeline. The patter of Cyber involvement centring around transits of Venus was intriguing and I really liked how it was the Fifth Doctor that deduced that. The Tenth Doctor getting to go into the Fifth's TARDIS was a wonderful moment and his joy at the roundels was such a good moment. Their co-piloting back to 1769 was also a real treat, and there they found Tina who had a good knack of showing up. The mythos behind Mad King Charles with the silver demon and the golden orb was intriguing and Joseph Delon's tale of what exactly happened with the monarch and a Cyberman was fantastic! The orb was buried at the behest of the Cybermen and was the cause of the time gates which also gave Joseph powers beyond human ability. He thought of himself as a god! This information providing the Doctors with the knowledge of how to restore the timelines was great thigh and I loved that they saw Joseph pawning off the orb in his younger days. If only he knew the power in his possession there! I really liked that the Fifth Doctor was rusty when it came to using a sonic screwdriver so that was really fun for him to use the trusty device here once again. It must have been some time since the events of The Visitation! The tense conclusion worked really well and I liked the simplicity of changing the destination of the time gate and sending the Cybermen back to the Ice Age. The Doctors getting to enjoy the liberation of Paris after overshooting their return to the normal timeline was a nice touch to finish on and it was just terrific for another multi-Doctor collision! Overall, a brilliant audio adventure.

Rating: 9/10