I was tempted to say the alarm clock since it’s such a trashy old thing like you’d find in a 70s landfill. If you want to kill somebody in a bed with a bomb there’s no need for a ‘cover’ for the infernal machine; you just put the stuff under the mattress.
However, the umbrella thingy is clearly even worse. Its blades don’t reach the target’s throat unless it would be a wildly obese one. Even then it’s doubtful they’d do more than superficial harm. So I’d need to have not only an enemy fat enough to depart these mundane planes by way of natural selection, the guy would have to be dumb enough to either not notice his umbrella was exchanged, or - worse even - accept an umbrella gifted to him. I can actually only think of a very limited number of targets fitting that description…
Useless Q scenes are indeed a great Sideswipes topic.
I go for LTK, not because the alarm clock is less useful than the umbrella. But because it is absolutely useless for the movie.
I do have a fondness for Q (sounds even weirder than it is). But in LTK he should not have been used at all. The intended comic relief became a burden. Imagine yourself being on a vendetta which has your employer hunting you down, and your bumbling old uncle appears at your doorstep. Especially since he is working for your employer. All the seriousness of the film takes a nose dive at that point.
The better Q scenes for LTK would have been about him using everything at his disposal to find Bond for M, showing his inner conflict.
But Q helping Bond on a mission against orders was a dangerous trend that started here. And became just as useless in SPECTRE.
Boy, this summer weather really makes me think sunny thoughts.
By the way, Jim, the Bond vs Bond deathmatch choices, were exquisitely brutal. Thank you.
Clearly the alarm clock is the most useless. I mean, it’s “guaranteed never to wake anyone who uses it”. That doesn’t really sound like a particularly effective alarm clock, if you ask me.
I agree for the LTK movie the whole Q is coming to Bond and whant to help him out always made it for me less credible, for a movie everyone was telling the time of it’s release that it was tougher and more real than before.
LTK definitely would have been stronger had it just been Bond and Pam going after Sanchez on their own. If they felt like they needed the comic relief, they could have leaned a bit more on Wayne Newton to provide it rather than setting the precedent that everyone in the MI6 office was fit to be a field agent.
I agree having Bond truly “out on his own and out for revenge” would have been more effective. If Q flew out to provide unauthorised assistance to Bond he would be sacked, regardless of his long service to MI6. But there’s a heart and soul aspect I do like with Bond’s inner circle being like family. It’s present in other content too, NTTD, First Light, etc. At the end of the day, unreality is part of the Bond experience even in the more serious stories.
The exploding alarm clock is pretty “pointless” as gadgets go, seeing as how ANY timer-based bomb is essentially an exploding alarm clock. To the extent that it’s “clever” at all, I suppose, it’s because the victim would unknowingly be in charge of deciding the moment of their own destruction.
However, the “stinging” umbrella is entirely unworkable, because there’s no way the victim wouldn’t notice the person climbing the step-ladder next to them with a watering can in hand.
Okay, just kidding, but it depends entirely on the victim opening the umbrella before any rain starts to fall. If it’s already raining when the person steps outside, the bumbershoot will either snap shut before it’s over their head (best case for Q, it’ll impale their wrist) or fail to open at all because the “lock shut” mechanism would’ve been triggered already by the rain.
However, neither is as useless as the “having trouble keeping it up” rope trick rope in OP. How could climbing a rope have killed the climber if the thing DID work and how exactly does one convince the enemy to climb it in the first place?
You’re right that it’s completely at odds with what is otherwise the tone of the film; it’s like slipping Benny Hill into a Death Wish movie. But it’s also a way of hedging bets and if my experience was at all typical, it paid off. When I saw LTK in the cinema, there was an uncustomary silence from the audience through most of the film and a vibe – if such a thing can be measured – that said, “What have we stumbled into and how exactly is this a James Bond movie?” When Q showed up, there was an almost palpable wave of relief and affection, and his scenes got more laughs than they probably deserved on the merits of the writing itself. Looking back on the film decades later, we may think “this stuff doesn’t belong and it’s a distraction,” but at the time it was a welcome lifeline to disoriented and restless audiences trying to check their ticket stubs in the low light to confirm they hadn’t accidentally bought admission to a Steven Seagal film.
The alarm clock isn’t that stupid. we’ve seen countless movies in which people (be it good or bad guys) find out that there’s a bomb because they hear something ticking. The alarm clock can be hidden in plain sight.
"Something’s ticking, there must be a bomb somewhere… Ah, no, it’s just that old alarm clock over there. For a brief moment I really thought that…“
This is probably the core argument for the segment - and the largely useless/Q’useless ‘surveillance’ support later on - that the film needed the comic relief to keep its balance on the fence between Bond film and action spectacle.
We mustn’t forget, up to that point Bond films had their mandatory segment of silliness and/or parody - Lawrence of Arabia, crocodile drag submersible, bubble approach to Blofeld’s oil rig, hovercraft gondola - and while LICENCE TO KILL had the morning grey interrupted wedding/shootout/skydive with groom and best man needing train bearers (bizarre to say the least; gas masks would have been only gradually weirder) the film lacks the entire feeling of Bond being a member of M’s outfit.
Q appearing on his own initiative helps smoothing that over better than M mumbling ‘Good luck’ or the miscast Moneypenny.
Unless of course you’ve envisioned this scene: 007 has just finished his scrambled eggs cooked by Mrs Miggins or whatever-her-name-is, and is off on his latest death-defying mission. Walther PPK - check; 3-4 $4000 Tom Ford suits - check. Expensive Rolex “strong enough to deflect the path of a bullet, or so Q claims” - check. All loaded up and off down the street in a quarter-million invisible Aston Martin.
But wait, he’s coming back! Why? Because he forgot to pack his alarm clock (looking out of date from DN onwards) that was bought in Portobello Road market for 2 and a half quid. He’s going to need that to distract Goldfinger from the winning putt…..
The alarm clock is not just kind of dopey, it looks too “old” and cheap even for Q. It’s almost as nonsensical as the tea tray that they’re getting ready for Ahmed’s party. If Bond survives for a hundred years, we’ll end up with android henchmen and computer villains; what will never be needed is a maglev tea delivery service.
Maybe Bond, M and practically anybody working at Mi6 already knew that the whole Q department was basically a running joke for tax money spent on developing useless stuff, and Bond visited the lab only because he felt sorry for Q, like you do for your grandpa who has lost it.
This checks out. This kind of decision making at the top of the organization would also explain how they constantly miss out on the traitors or otherwise bad people operating within or closely associated with their own organization: Trevelyan, Mitchell, Frost, Elektra, Silva, Vesper, Bloferhauser, and I’m sure I’m missing some.
It also arguably marks a turning point in the Bond/Q relationship. Until now, Bond has treated Q with a sort of bored bemusement while Q has responded with exasperated frustration. And yet we’ve sensed over time a playful subtext, intuiting these two sparring partners actually harbor affection for each other, like Doc and Festus or Spock and McCoy. With LTK, Q confirms these suspicions by sticking his neck out professionally to support Bond on a very personal mission, despite (we may assume) M’s strong disapproval should he find out. Q honestly believes it’s his gadgets that keep Bond alive and he cares enough about the guy to make sure he has some. I’m not sure that would’ve been true of Q circa GF or TB, but it’s where we’ve gotten to by 1989.
After this one, Brozza Bond treats Q as something of a beloved if eccentric uncle, while Q’s attitude is (IMO) more overtly solicitous. When “R” shows up and starts needling Bond, Q cuts him off as if to say, “Hey! Only I get to pick on 007!” For me it plays like family members who may bicker amongst themselves, but fiercely defend each other against outsiders. But maybe it’s just me.
I once had the great good fortune to spend part of an afternoon in Mr Llewelyn’s company and he listed LTK as a personal favorite , most likely because it gave him more to do than usual and once or twice play a humorous scene where he wasn’t the butt of the joke (the audience loved it when he used his radio-rake exactly once and then tossed it carelessly aside…Bond’s bad influence rubbing off?).
Oh hooray, it’s Q (no-one ever says this) and his big bucket of casually racist old tat.
In passing, it’s a relief he wasn’t in Live and Let Die; that could have erupted into war.
So who’s he going to carelessly insult today? Why! It’s the peoples of Egypt.
Which is more Q-seless?
Nasty metal spike that shoots right up the Brosnan that requires the victim to be lured into sitting on a camel seat. They don’t like it up 'em, etc. Possibly also homophobic. Two for one!
Floating metal tray for decapitation fun, requiring the victim to be lured to sit in a very, very specific place at the end of the visible magnetic run. If sitting anywhere else, it possesses neither function nor purpose, not even as a tray.
The floating metal tray would work in the Bond universe. After all, we know that most villains thoroughly enjoy sitting at a comically long table across from Bond while delivering a soliloquy about how grand his scheme to destroy the world is and how nobody before him had ever been enough of a visionary to come up with such a brilliant plan. All the while, of course, he’s not visionary enough to see that Bond is setting this magnetic tray of death up in front of him and, of course, deploys it right as the villain begins explaining the most important aspect of whatever evil plan he has decided to try to carry out.
Both seem to be Q‘s specialty: inventing stuff which needs to encounter very specific circumstances in order to work. Kind of the equivalent of Bond, of course, so that fits after all.
I guess the tray is even more peculiar since it already looks quite wobbly and needs some overweight old guy to not be able to rise from his seat quickly. Which could have come handy at Versailles.
And this is actually very early-Fleming-ish: in Live and Let Die’s first confrontation with Mr Big, Bond is sitting in front of Big’s expensive desk - in a parody of the M briefing - and the villain warns him about the .45 keyhole* in case Bond has any hostile intentions.
Though the magnetic tray seems promising at first I have to admit I never saw anyone sitting in such an unusual place at a bar. Maybe it might work in one of these sushi restaurants but I doubt the result is worth cleaning up the mess right after the hit.
*Wouldn’t the keyhole for a drawer be on Big’s side? And why warning Bond about it when it would surely mean he’ll move out of the line of fire as soon as hostilities start? Been asking myself for 50 years now…
They both refer to this segment of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME:
Various ‘ingenious’ weapons are on display while the party crosses Q’s laboratory*. The one in question here is the 30cm dagger blade springing from the camel saddle.
*Already a stretch to have M and Moneypenny travel the globe for a bit of banter and briefing. But the whole of Q branch? Unless of course we’re meant to believe every field station of the Secret Service is equipped like the Regents Park HQ.
