Desmond Llewelyn as Q, his loud shirt as a fashion statement and Sean Connery as James Bond in Thunderball (1965)
Q and his awesome pineapple Hawaiian shirt from Thunderball (1965)
Leave it to the gadget man to make a fashion statement. The crazy pineapple shirt is fitting for a trip to Jamaica (along with his straw fedora)! I’d buy both if they were available for a good Bond themed Halloween costume…
“That’s putting it mildly, 007.”
– Desmond Llewelyn as Q in For Your Eyes Only (1981)
“The right arm goes in the right sleeve, thus, and the left arm in the left sleeve, thus. Now…note closely please – pockets, poppers and zipper. Take the lower part of the zipper, and insert it into the appropriate…”
Oh, pull the tag!
This BAM! moment from Diamonds Are Forever (1971) always reminded me of the old onomatopoeia words from fights in the live-action Batman television show from the 1960s.
It doesn’t involve a fight with Sean Connery’s Bond, but only serves to convey Bond’s quick departure from his phone call with Q when Bond realizes he has to cover his tracks with a newly escaped Peter Franks. While Bond congratulates Q on his successful fingerprint scam gadget, it’s kind of neat to check out what’s going on in the background at Q Branch. It looks like one of the few instances where we see a Q Branch Bond car – in this case some sort of an Aston Martin – getting serviced (they’re installing its stinger missiles).
And it’s funny because in the next scene, Bond *does* fistfight Peter Franks ithat could get away with using some BAMs! POWs! or THWACKs! Oh well…
In For Your Eyes Only (1981), Bond and Q look up baddie Emile Locque’s information in Q Branch’s database and get a gist of his criminal history. Alongside that, they get poor grammar, some bizarre and unnecessary abbreviations and a misspelling (“biblography” – which I guess should be “bibliography” as it is spelled at the bottom, but Locque’s profile has nothing to do with books…).
I guess it can be chalked up to the primitive nature of computers at the time (1981), but the look on Q’s face right after they read the information may indicate that Q realizes it “hasn’t been perfected yet.” 🙂
The Q Branch scene from GoldenEye (1995) is one of my favorites of the series. It has it all: physical humor, great chemistry between Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and Q (Desmond Llewelyn), funny one-liners and quips and…the only time another movie’s theme is mentioned in a previous movie? Although it’s great, it does have its flaws.
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This all=time one-liner at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) gets me every time. As Bond (Roger Moore) and Triple X (Barbara Bach) are caught in the act in an escape pod, a stunned General Gogol (Triple X’s boss), M (Bond’s boss) and Sir Frederick Gray (Bond’s boss’s boss) can’t believe their eyes.
The exchange is legendary: “Bond!” “Tri-PULL X!” “Bond! What do you think you’re doing?” make the men sound more like disappointed parental figures rather than government intelligence. A speechless Q can only watch in awe, almost jaw-dropped.
And then 007 quickly quips a legendary James Bond line of lore. It ends with a celebratory-sounding chorus line version of the movie’s theme, declaring “nobody does it better” in a hilarious double entendre. HA! So awesome!
James Bond (Roger Moore) and Q (Desmond Llewelyn) load the Identigraph 3D generated image system in For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Q Branch’s Identigraph machine from For Your Eyes Only (1981) has been updated with the latest in AI technology to perform as a chatbot. Ask it anything related to the world of James Bond!
Query: Create a poem about James Bond’s love for martinis.
Q enters your query into the Identigraph in For Your Eyes Only (1981)
A martini, shaken not stirred,
A drink that Bond, forever preferred.
A symbol of his suave and style,
A drink that always made him smile.With a twist of lemon, or a pearl of olive,
Bond’s martini, always had a certain finesse.
A sip, a taste, and a subtle nod,
Bond’s love for martinis, always in the spotlight.Whether in a casino, or in a spy chase,
Bond’s martini, always in the right place.
A drink of class, a drink of grace,
Bond’s martini, a love story without a trace.So let us raise a glass, to Bond and his martini,
A love story, that will forever be mini.
A drink that defined a spy, a legend,
A drink that will forever, be remembered.
Answers generated by ChatGPT. 🙂
