OK Barbara, it’s the start of another working week and I am sure you have SMART objectives and Key Performance Indicators and challenging outcomes to avoid just like the rest of us, so I won’t take up too much of your probably valuable but surely costly time today.
“It’s all one story!”, you say. “This is what we mean by GOING BACK TO FLEMING - that was all one story too!” you holler. OK then, nailing you to that fate, which provides the opportunity to bring back characters, today’s choice is from Minor hostiles of the 1980s. Once you’ve made your choice Barbara, you can return to whatever it is that you do. What is it that you do?
Gogol because he’s been behind at least one attempt on Bond before - and probably a number of others that ended up on the cutting room floor. Wouldn’t be surprised to learn Gogol was the head of KGB’s special task force ‘Smiert Bond’ and sending him vile emails and Polonium greeting cards for some time.
Also, I sense huge cross-promotional opportunities for getting in touch with youth culture (of the early 2000s)
That Russian Liverpudlian Gaoler Bloke on the other hand certainly has been a product of the spy town system where pupils are streamlined into their respective target countries. Funny he ended up not exactly in Liverpool…
Might actually have been a colleague of Bond in deep cover working on undermining the Russian troops in Afghanistan. Probably tried to signal Bond he’s actually on his side but didn’t get the point across.
Gogol, just for nostalgia’s sake - oh, he was so much the evil, but slightly tumb Russian buerocrat that us Cold War kids just loved to hate - or later on accept him as the a bit scary, cheek-pinching uncle (not that cheek, hopefully).
Then again, these days, Gogol also has turned into Joe Butcher, so he can say, too “I never left”.
Magda is still doing that tunika thing (which is more dangerous than it looks, so don’t do this at home, kids!) and Venz is still Venz but has changed two letters and made two his first name (and not exercising hasn’t helped his girdle either.
As for that Bloke - I just couldn´t find him on James Bond Wiki.
Fat gaoler man with the silly accent in the Russian airbase in The Living Daylights. Probably listed as “jailer”, one suspects. Even though he is obviously English English, of a sort.
Magda teamed up with Pussy Galore to create the first all-female spiritual retreat in upstate New York. On 350 acres of pristine Adirondack land, they have created a safe haven for women. The poet Adrienne Rich was a frequent visitor. James Bond’s name is never mentioned.
Professor Joe Butcher (my choice) teamed up with Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy, to start a new ministry combining salvation and quality bedding products. It is called “Bed, Bath, and the Great Beyond.”
It’s a right old Tuesday of a Tuesday, innit? The last weekend a dusty memory of the usual anticlimax, the next just out of reach of your grubby little mitts. Probably time to probably do some probably “work”, Barbara.
Sold as you are on the concept that the Bond films are a hewn-from-granite logical progression of one long story, the opportunity remains to bring back some earlier characters, much-loved as they are and a tactic open to the giddy applause of the “fans”, whatever they might be. Oh! The applause!
Today’s options: Non-hostiles from the Brosnans. You remember Brosnan - all gurney sexface and cravats and hair and running just like that Trump tick dances. No shoulder shall remain unbitten. Yes, exactly, that one
Caroline, a monger of inexplicable but very meta evaluations
Admiral Roebuck, a monger of WAR!
Dr Molly Warmflash, a monger of being reported to the General Medical Council
I realy liked the character Raoul, unfortunately his part was very short, he could have been a new Columbo, or even Kerim Bey. A mist oportunity
PS: Why is Roebuck 34% after one vote and the others 33%, somehow that looks like some kind of bribery. Where can I deposit my dollari to let the right people go through to get the right result for me?
Also, he’s a monger of WAR! You go argue with him.
(I don’t think the system does fractional percentages so when you have thirds or similar fractionals, it awards the extra percentage to the first one alphabetically).
Caroline it is - because this character can be retrofitted into evaluating the entire series, from the henchmen (Oddjob: +5 for garb, +10 for deadliness), minor villainous personal (Helga Brandt -9 for responsible use of corporate funds; -10 for overly complicated scheming to engage opposition agents); world/ressource/strategic position dominance schemes (GOLDFINGER -4; OCTOPUSSY +7; QUANTUM OF SOLACE dnq); main villain quality (NO TIME TO DIE Safin -6; M +10) so on so forth.
We can re-edit cgi Caroline into the entire backlist and rerelease them as meta-director’s cut for a sum total of 20p cost per copy and sell them for £ 69.99 as ‘Gold Standard Evaluation Edition’ in time for Christmas.
Warmflash, please, since every health evaluation always allows Bond to go into service, no matter how many shoulders cracked, shot or bitten, no matter how warped his psyche is, how preoccupied his liver is with cleansing the alcohol from the body, how many ulcers his weird diet must bring. Or how often the question of his relevance is asked by those who actually profit from declaring him forever relevant.
Being blown to bits won’t keep Warmflash from assigning our man a clean bill of health, and that’s what we need right now: getting him on his next mission.
I’m going with him. Can have some vaguely sleazy adventures trading around the Caribbean. If you’re British AND of indeterminate middle-age, I’d offer an Arthur Daley type character, but with Spanish substituted for Cockney rhyming slang. Not so much “Minder” but “Meander”…
Caroline and Molly are unavailable as they are with Magda and Pussy in the Adirondacks, where Bond remains “he who will not be named.”
Admiral Roebuck got cashiered along with Liz Truss, and in retirement is indulging his hobbies of building ships in a bottle, and hosting Battleship tournaments.
So Raoul it is, appropriately so, as he has survived for all these years as an agent in Cuba.
