Deathmatch 2026: Sideswipes

Special Interest
281

Horses for courses it is. Moneypenny has a long history of betting on the wrong horse - backing Douglas-Home when she should have backed Wilson; backing Wilson when she should have backed Heath - and has secretly diverted reptile funds destined to fight Communism directly to Ladbrokes since the Suez crisis (the funds allocated to keep Washington onside disappeared in Moneypenny’s infamous bet on the three-legged wonder nag ‘Pride of Pompousia’; the findings of that board of enquiry will be declassified 2156…). Fortunately for her, every once in awhile Ladbrokes took pity on her and expanded her credit with the company, which resulted in almost 30 years of losses by 1985.

The rest, as they say, is gambling history.

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282

Once again, there are no wrong choices. All three make Monepenny a truly distinctive character with layers even Brosnan would hesitate to peel back.

And while the horse option is the best and most consequential one I opt for the Manilow reaction, or as the scientific term is: Martin‘s „cleaning woman“-effect. It would have transformed Bliss into true bliss. Humming „her name was Lola, she was a showgirl“ while contacting Necros (by putting „Ready to take a chance again“ on his walkman) and then sitting back, singing along with „Can‘t smile without you“, picturing James without his head really unable to smile without it.

Oh, man, THAT is the real stuff the Moneypenny Diaries should have been all about.

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283

I also opted for the “Manilow Revenge Affair” as Napoleon Solo would have called it.
How did Necros find out about being in Vienna? I never asked myself this question, but now it is asked… there had to be somenone talking like a bird and this bird whistled a little tune… Copacabana, I presume?

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284

I think there’s mileage in a Moneypenny-Warmflash tete-a-tete duel to the death, as it were. Frankly, you could remove Bond and Silva from SF, sub in the two ladies and probably not lose too much. A whole load of chasing up and down Whitehall and the Tube. I’ll leave it to the honourable Jim to decide who drops a tube train on whom.

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285

And its non-arrival may be the twist.

Agreed. But as Dustin points out, we know Drax is a villain too. As well as Stromberg and Scaramanga. It can be a matter of taste to have a villain revealed further along, a.k.a., DAF, but it is not demanded.

The solving of the mystery is secondary, even tertiary, to what SPECTRE is about. The audience watches Bond as he follows his programming, and wonders if it will fail, or if he will overcome it.

Whether or not someone follows their program may be a non-mystery to some people, but to those of us who had to battle against, and defeat their programming, it is far from a non-mystery, and most engaging.

Maybe it is a case of knowing too much, as with the hacked memos as well, so that what is actually on the screen gets obscured by extraneous knowledge:

The globes are silly–I love them–but they are silly. But then MR is a live-action cartoon, and Lonsdale plays Drax appropriately for the film in which he finds himself.

The threat in SPECTRE is global surveillance, much worse in my view. I commend to you this book:

Neither does Drax. He tells Chang to arrange some harm for Bond, and we see him phoning Rent-a-Henchman to obtain Jaws, whom he orders to eject Bond and Goodhead into space. Blofeld at least sits at the controls of the drill device, even if he could have had a henchperson do it for him.

Just like some of our current oligarchs.

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286

Drax does plenty of villainy deeds by throwing the flesh to the dobermans then talking extensively before he finally signals them to feed.

I kid. But I just rewatched the scene and it tallies with the killing of Dufour. By snapping his fingers the dogs are triggered to feed on the woman. They are Drax’ creatures, his weapons. Chang holding their leash is a mere detail, Drax commands them perfectly.

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287

There is some value in not seeing Blofeld do a lot - we still know that he is planning and authorizing all of it. And not being that imposing as a person also adds to his danger: bumbling idiots with power and money, as we now can see every day, are the most despicable villains.

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288

Drax is perfect for his film. Other villains are suited for theirs. For my approach, I try not to think “This is the villain-type I want,” and then be disappointed if I get a different one. But then, internal aesthetics are important to me (as everyone knows LOL). Charles Gray’s Blofeld is perfect for DAF, but how much villainy does he do? And, as you have noted, are we even sure it is Blofeld who is doing the villainy (considering how quickly he calls for the Bathosub, that may not be Blofeld).

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289

And often employing a quiet, unassuming mind to get their way–today’s villains are as often Russell Vought’s as Hugo Drax’s.

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290

June 29.

The dark and dastardly deeds of Miss Moneypenny.

  • Despite his direct experience and clear qualifications for the role, Villiers mysteriously withdraws his strong application to be Mallory’s p.a. when a faked social media history is leaked suggesting enthusiasm for murdering mendicants and collecting almonds and wristwatches.
  • In Spectre, Q claims he has two cats. By No Time to Die, he appears to be down to one (“Chitty-Chitty”). Moneypenny’s leathery handbag looks new. Draw your own conclusions about the fate of Bang-Bang.
  • There were more personal possessions retrieved from Skyfall but Moneypenny only hands over the ones that will annoy Bond and serve C’s purposes. The rest she keeps under her bed, taking the occasional lick.
  • Moneypenny tells Silva about the tunnels below new MI6. Moneypenny organises the fake policemen to help him. Moneypenny leaks the location of the enquiry. Moneypenny just wants to get on with the transition (there’s a £50 bonus) and, not being a Dench M appointee, has no loyalty there at all.
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291

I love her cruel energy to only give Bond what she wants. Licking the rest is so deliciously wrong, it could only be topped by also licking the bulldog.

And didn‘t she consider to distract Bond during the nightly phone call from Rome by hinting at having M in her bed? Only M thought that would be confusing since he was secretly being C, with the other C just being a front and secretly being Lucia who actually was Moneypenny before the new regime took over, although Oberhauser was angry because he came up with the idea of being someone else, so he ordered Lucia to transition to being Hinx who already regularly transforms into Q whenever he sees a furless cat, but Silva actually wanted to be Lucia, too, so Oberhauser decided he would fix all this in post while cosplaying as Blofeld - with a cat which actually had fur.

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292

No wrong answers here. I vote for Moneypenny being Silva’s inside source since it also - finally! - explains the tube train. During her studies at LSE she had a side job as tube train driver with TfL and arranged to have all the former colleagues who annoyed her onboard that train.

By the by, SIS’ next annual staff outing is a train trip from Jamaica’s Bloody Bay to Green Island Harbour, a suggestion by Moneypenny and supposedly great fun. The train is bound to leave at noon and it’s so so sad Moneypenny can’t join the fun. Must be something she ate, like crisps or inconsolable rage and bloodlust…

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293

Yet another one that would further enhance Spectre. The mountain of coincidence that its “story” is built on is actually quite impressive. But having Moneypenny selectively giving Bond that photograph, knowing that it’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the picture, helps to make the ridiculousness of Bond receiving a photograph of a childhood friend and then running into them literally the next day and finding out they’re one of the world’s, supposed, great supervillains a bit easier to swallow for the audience.

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294

Also one wonders, had Bond met his childhood acquaintance and the guy was just an ordinary employee or an artist or middle management staffer at M&S, would he have decided to kill him too? Or let’s say Oberhauser is aspiring for greater fame, changes his name - as you do - and becomes a notorious figurehead for a populist totalitarian movement; could Bond still do away with a tribune of the plebs and get away with it? What’s the difference between Bond getting riled because one’s a villain, one’s a crook and another one just an ordinary guy parking too close to his Bentley?

And what about the guys stopping Bond at Eton Wall Game decades ago, must they fear for their lives too? Isn’t the chance a character like Bond, suffering from severe trauma and ptsd, is having paranoid schizophrenia himself much bigger than his childhood acquaintance developing into a mega villain out to corner the global surveillance market, but also having the idée fixe to haunt Bond and be ‘the author of all his pain’? Isn’t The Seven Percent Solution the much more likely answer to SPECTRE?

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295

Clearly something went on with Villiers. He may have been a bit of a mincer, but he appeared to be vaguely competent; a low bar for sure, but definitely one that Moneypenny has struggled to reach over the years, what with all her bleating on about rings and dinner dates and learn to speak Japanese books.

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June 30.

An interesting month of votes, initially dominated by the evils of Amazon’s potential sales strategies, but overwhelmed towards the end by the raw malignancy and possible cannibalism of Miss Moneypenny (it’s all there; be not so blind to see).

Accordingly, tipping the pink daft Ascot hat (in which I look utterly butterly) to a titan of absolute wrongness, the dark and dreadful deeds of Miss Moneypenny:

  • Moneypenny finally did work out what Bond and M were up to in Tokyo. The least sleazy part involved pangolins, creamy brie and chorus boys. The incident with the fugu banquet and the Austrian exchange student is really, really… really? She intends to self-publish this account next week via her new comrade-in-evil, Bez-Os.
  • Having eavesdropped for years, Moneypenny knows in advance Bond is going to the Bahamas to find the Vulcan. She quickly contacts her handler who insists she tries to distract Bond with the photo of Domino, so that he pursues her rather than bothering to urgently look for a big aeroplane. This almost works. Without this intervention, Thunderball would be about 30 minutes long. Eeeeevil incarnate. Doesn’t matter that it failed; she’s still in the room, listening in…
  • Having hidden her in Bond’s wardrobe, and knowing Bond will just abandon the woman, Moneypenny goes back to Bond’s flat later in the morning and does some vile, upsettingly desecrating things to Miss Caruso with a wire hanger. She then uses the same hanger to fix Bond’s espresso machine so, y’know, not all bad.
  • In the GoldenEye matter, it wasn’t a theatre trip that the crisis interrupted, it was a night at her unlicensed savage dog fighting enterprise. Never accept her invitation there (and never, ever be in her debt, even if it’s for the tea-cart kitty); her bad side is a spectacularly dangerous place to be. Villiers. Calthorpe. Freddie Gray. Jim Fanning. All went. Never heard of again. Nice doggy.
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297

As so often, no wrong answers here. I opt for the Caruso/wirehanger combo simply because for a long time I’ve suspected Bond has a decomposing body in his closet. Would be interesting to see him coming home from a mission to find that body - and the police at his doorstep to ask him for help with their inquiries…

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298

Like the honourable Jim, I too wish for a kitchen like Bond’s and would have picked the Caruso/wire hanger combo as it’s important to have appliances in good working order (my mother gave our household the world’s slowest toaster but that’s an aside).

I’m going for the GoldenEye dogfighting ring. Shades of Guy Ritchie’s “Snatch” perhaps……As Moneypenny would say “Do you know what nemesis means?”…..

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299

The hanger is a banger (fnarr), but I choose the Thunderball option, simply because it is so disconcertingly obvious that the whole plot makes even less sense than the others - and only MP‘s little photo plan would make sense of it all.

Which again goes to show what a buffoon M is, whether in its male, female or Fiennes form. That character just has concepts of a plan, always (well…) being rescued by a guy who is only capable of doing things his way, disregarding in a most ironic way any order uttered during the minute in the office (not always the 007 minute). M is a boss whose secretary runs circles around him (very realistic), and maybe his ability to drink himself silly at Blades is not the one essential to keep a country safe and secrets even safer.

Or is he all in on Moneypenny (NSFW, sorry) and her nefarious cannibalism? Is he secretly her… father? (see: EON‘s book of unused ideas for future Bond films). Together they will rule the new Brittania funded by crypto millionaires who just give their millons without any hopes for political destruction of democracy in order to sell more useless stuff like Brexiteer costumes.

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300

All options are interesting, but… I just have to know what exactly happened in Tokyo!
Can’t wait any longer, I just have to know!

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