The Gates of Hell - 6.5/10

The 5th Doctor, the 10th Doctor and the Cybermen. What's not to enjoy?

The second story from the Out of Time set delivers quite a different story from the first. Well I say different it is still all about messing with time but the Cybermen feel a lot more involved in this one I feel than the Daleks did in the previous, maybe its just because I prefer the Cybermen as monsters in general. Although I will say their stealth abilities are shown off nicely in this story which is always good to see.

The chemistry between 5 and 10 is wonderful to experience on audio, and reminded me of course of the minisode Time Crash from 2007. I really enjoyed how they bounced off each other each other in this story.

The setting of having different time zones is a familiar one for this set and here there's the use of France in the 18 and 19 hundreds. An interesting addition to this story though was a time agent who played a decently big role here and worked well with the plot. The actual plot itself suffices for the run time but it was just a little underwhelming for in the sense it didn't give me any wow factor like other stories have.

Overall The Gates of Hell gets a 6.5/10 because while it was definitely good it just didn't reach any spectacular heights through its run time for me personally, but 5 and 10 are still a delightful pairing.

Peter and David have a natural chemistry (which makes sense given their relationship) though its not quite as "sparky" as other multi-doctor relationships, the interactions feel richer and more genuine. If I was to pick any doctor duo to have multiple adventures together it would be these two - which is what it seems like they have planned.

The second story in the Out Of Time set

Like father, like son-in-law.

This is another audio in which I’ve given a second chance to as I didn’t take it in first time.

My first thought was that this featured Peri as the character Tina, as she sounds a lot like her. Tina herself being some kind of time agent.

Doctors five and ten both find themselves off course and  in the same place. Time has changed and the Cybermen have taken over Earth.

There are nods to the past meeting of the Doctors - Time Crash. To be honest they get on a little too well.

I found I had similar problems as to the I first tried this, in that it was all too easy to suddenly be confused as to what was happening. Suddenly they’re in a library researching information, and I’m trying to recall why, needing to go back and relisten.

This has all the right ideas, the two Doctors, a time agent, Cybermen, an alternative timeline but it just didn’t grip me. I think that the Cybermen just aren’t that interesting as antagonists. The historical setting for this does’t help either (for me at least). By the end I didn’t really care what the outcome was, well we know all will be put right again.

The weakest of the three

This one has a more mysterious tone in comparison to the first Out Of Time CD, with the Fifth and Tenth Doctors teaming up to investigate the Cybermen's invasion of French history. There's not as much bickering as between the Fourth and Tenth Doctors but I don't mind that so much, because we got plenty of that with Time Crash.

What Gates of Hell offers is something new and different from Time Crash, with the Doctors operating more as sort of time investigators rather than bantering about forgetting to put the TARDIS shields on.

It does a good job with the Cybermen, using their stealth abilities remarkably well, and showing the way that they manipulate a human host to achieve their means (as they have done before with Tobias Vaughn and John Lumic).