Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions
Written By: David Llewellyn
RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)
Release Date: June 2021
Reviewed by: Robert Emlyn Slater for Doctor Who Online
"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..."
WARNING: The following review contains spoilers. You have been warned!
Fourteen years after Time Crash, the Tenth and Fifth Doctors reunite in Paris, as they battle Cybermen and try and close the Gates of Hell in this second volume from the Out of Time mini-series.
Out of Time 2: The Gates of Hell was arguably one of my most anticipated Big Finish releases for 2021, so I definitely went into it with high hopes. I think it’s pretty safe to say that it didn’t let me down.
David Llewellyn’s script wastes no time in getting down to business. Not as soon as the opening theme is over are we thrown into the adventure, with the Fifth Doctor encountering the Cybermen and meeting the Tenth Doctor in twentieth-century Paris.
The story doesn’t really pause for breath once the Doctors unite, and we’re taken on a timey-wimey adventure featuring Cybermen, explosions, yet another Time Agent with an American accent, and a mysterious golden orb.
I’m cutting to the chase a bit here, but it was so much fun hearing David Tennant and Peter Davison bouncing off each other once again. Ten and Five sound like they really enjoy each other’s company, and almost seem to be reluctant to part ways at the end. I know I was hoping that they’d stay together and have a couple more adventures before sailing back off into the time vortex to go their separate ways.
I’ve said before in a previous review that I find that multi-doctor stories can be a bit tedious at times, but that wasn’t the case at all in this story. There wasn’t really much of your typical multi-doctor ‘shenanigans’ and insult matches at play here, really. The Doctors just bumped into each other, teamed up, and got on with the job. Usually, multi-doctor adventures feel like big epic events, but I don’t feel like that was the case here, and that’s not a bad thing in the slightest.
Also, the references to the past were a hell of a lot of fun too, and I loved the catty comments the pair made about the Fourth Doctor and Tegan.
The guest cast in this adventure is minimal but strong. Shelley Conn plays a time agent called Tina Drake, who pretty much calls the shots and saves the day here, whilst Mark Gatiss was unrecognisable as Joseph Delon, the man who the Cybermen corrupted and turned into their slave. I had no clue Gatiss was even in this play, so I was particularly impressed to find out it had been him who’d been playing the evil Frenchman all along! It also goes without saying that Nicholas Briggs was great as the Cybermen too, as he always is, and he sounded really menacing going up against the two Doctors as they battled against them and attempted to foil their plans. Glen McCready also appears as both Marcel (Joseph’s father) and King Charles VI, and though I didn’t feel as if he had too much to do, he still gives a strong performance all the same.
If I had any criticisms of The Gates of Hell at all, it’s that a very interesting setting wasn’t explored nearly enough, which I was left a little disappointed by. Paris under Cyber-rule sounds like such an interesting, cool concept, and yet I feel like we hardly experienced any of it during this adventure. But with the audio only lasting an hour or so, things like that can’t really be helped.
The pace of the story was definitely a big plus and made for a very entertaining hour on an otherwise boring Friday evening.
Overall, this is a great little adventure that will definitely keep you entertained for an hour, and will leave you wishing you had more time with Doctors Five, Ten, and the Cybermen. David Llewellyn’s script is tightly paced, and I really enjoyed how quickly he threw us into the adventure, and really appreciated all of his little nods to days gone by. The guest cast was very strong, and it’s always a good time when the Cybermen turn up and try and take over planet Earth. I could have quite easily listened to another hour of this story, as it was such a fun time!
Out of Time has been a really entertaining mini-series so far, and long may it continue. I know we’re getting an adventure with Six, Ten, and the Weeping Angels next year, but here’s hoping that Doctor number ten get adventures with Doctors Seven, Eight, Nine, and hopefully even Five and Four again! Fingers crossed!
+ Out Of Time 2: The Gates Of Hell is OUT NOW, priced £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download).
+ ORDER this title from Big Finish!
