Baker Street Irregulars [AUDIO/2021.3.10]

★★★★☆

  It's quite surprising, really, that out of the four Stranded 2 installments, Baker Street Irregulars would be the one to get on the bad side of some Dr. Who fans. Is it something to do with how the Doctor wears a Nazi uniform... to infiltrate a Nazi base? It's not as if the Nazis would've allowed a complete leather-clad stranger roaming about their base in France, now, is it? 

  Maybe I'm oversimplifying issues those people may have with this installment, but I can't help it. Those issues are such nonissues to me that I can't bring myself to be genuinely bothered by those. Eight wearing a Nazi uniform is not at all the morally corrupt action that some might take it as, and the big reveal of Aisha's true identity as the mother of Zakia doesn't feel too out of left field, at least not for me. Now, several of my acquaintances have fallen off from Stranded because of this utterly harmless revelation, and I can only assume that's due to how sudden it feels. Indeed, for a narrative that's so neatly tied up, it ever so slightly feels like an afterthought to change the Zakia-Aisha dynamic completely before retiring them until four installments later (they were featured fewer times than some other prominent Stranded regulars). There were mentions here and there, little clues as to the notion that not everything has been revealed with the "sisters", but I'd understand some people being miffed by the execution of the thing. Me personally, the two actors playing the mother-daughter duo (especially Avita Jay, who has been the biggest revelations of Stranded) gave the tender moment the exact amount of gravitas and dramatic punch it needed.

  Oh, you think this scene, this tender scene where a daughter realises that her sister was actually her mother, is the only thing to talk about in Baker Street Irregulars? Think again; from top to bottom, this is such a fun trap back in time. Nazi-occupied France and wartorn Britain, statis fields and frozen cats, Zakia and Aisha preserving their own existence by making sure their grandmother remains alive and escapes from Nazi imprisonment and falls in love with her coworker/their grandfather... it's Stranded's own Back to the Future, and everyone's having fun. Baker Street Irregulars packs its own hefty amount of drama under the delicious coat of historical thriller and espionage, with some more drama for Liv and Tania as they attempt to defuse the time-stasis bomb that jumpstarted the entire adventure in the first place. It's right up my alley, and I enjoyed it tremendously.