{"id":2688,"date":"2015-05-23T10:00:30","date_gmt":"2015-05-23T10:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.payneful.co.uk\/blogsplosion\/?p=2688"},"modified":"2018-12-17T09:01:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T09:01:42","slug":"james-bond-isnt-a-timelord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.payneful.co.uk\/blogsplosion\/2015\/05\/23\/james-bond-isnt-a-timelord\/","title":{"rendered":"James Bond Isn’t a Timelord"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a die-hard James Bond fan, one of the biggest struggles is coming to terms with one of the larger ever-present issues the franchise has: continuity.<\/p>\n

If that’s a foreign word to you, it refers to how a work of fiction progresses as a whole. For example, Doctor Who<\/em> has now been running for 50+ years and, aside from the odd retcon1<\/a><\/sup>, everything that has happened is “in continuity” with each new actor being a “new face” for the same character. One of the ways they maintain this is by having the Doctor’s adventures run parallel to the present day – most incarnations of the Doctor will, in-between planet and time-hopping, at some point touch “home base” in the present day. Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant would often pop back to the 2000s to visit Rose’s family, Matt Smith would return to 2010’s England for Amy Pond’s benefit and so on.<\/p>\n

\"Broadchurch\"
I like to think that Broadchurch is just what happened to the human clone version of the Doctor<\/a>. You know, after he left Rose because he’d had enough of her feckin’ mother.<\/div><\/div>\n

Continuity’s main adversary is time2<\/a><\/sup>. Works of fiction that take place over the course of years are subject to changes in society, technology, political correctness3<\/a><\/sup> and so on, which can lead to continuity being a little bit patchy in places. The best example I can think of is in the Star Wars<\/em> films – the original trilogy had lots of practical, bulky, colourless spaceships but the prequels indulged in using CGI to develop colourful, bizarre, often sleek “sports” ships. Similarly the light sabre fights became more elaborate for the “younger” versions of characters.<\/p>\n

Bond’s continuity is an absolute mess. Seven very different actors from very different eras. Spy stories tend to reflect the politics and technology of the time, and this is very apparent in the Bond films. Most of the films revelled in the ever-present Cold War background threat of the Russians, so when the Cold War ended he was pitted against the modern media (Tomorrow Never Dies<\/em>), Korea (Die Another Day<\/em><\/a>) and corporations looking to privatise water (Quantum of Solace<\/em>). Judi Dench’s M even playfully jokes that the world no longer needs Bond in GoldenEye by referring to him as a “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur – a relic of the Cold War”.<\/p>\n

\"Bond
Hey, at least five of these Bonds would consider that a compliment. The sixth seems to think that Judi Dench’s M is his mum.<\/div><\/div>\n

If James Bond is the same man in every film, he has lived from a era where mobile phones didn’t exist to an era where one constitutes 90% of his gadgets. He’s driven 60’s sports cars, blocky 80’s sports cars and modern, growling supercars. For this to work, the man would have to be about eighty now, if not older. You can suspend disbelief just enough to believe that it is the same character, even though angry Daniel Craig is far removed from Pierce Brosnan’s indifferent crooning, and both are nothing like the eyebrow-raising deadpan of Roger Moore.<\/p>\n

I read this article on Tor.com recently that focused on one particular smoking gun of continuity issues<\/a>, one I touched on a few years back in a recap of Casino Royale<\/em><\/a>; that being the Aston Martin DB5 he won in a game of cards. The issue in particular being that the Aston Martin miraculously gains all the gadgets it was given in Goldfinger<\/em>…which is where Bond was originally given the car in the first place (Q specifically refers to it as “your new car” and Connery’s Bond is visibly less than thrilled about his new vehicle).<\/p>\n

\"Bond
I’ve still got the image of this event in my blog’s gallery from when I recapped Goldfinger<\/a>. Look! He’s sulking like a spoiled little kid!<\/div><\/div>\n

There are a few popular theories as to how Bond could work given the 50+ year time-frame:<\/p>\n