There ain't no Q in Quantum

Last Sunday I saw the latest in the Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace. A good film, great action, not as much Bond Babe™ as we have seen in the past, but a great way to spend a few quid on a Sunday evening.

However something kept nagging at me, something missing from the Daniel Craig era of Bond-ness and for ages I couldn’t put my finger on it, until last night the penny dropped.

You see in the early books, Bond was more about the brawn and less about the gadgets (which Craig has obviously taken to heart). This meant that there was no requirement for quite possibly my favourite character (after Bond himself obviously) in this franchise: Quartermaster, aka Q.

Perhaps it is the geek in me looking for a place in the world of Bond, but I always found Q fascinating, I remember going through the short clips of when Bond would descend into his lab (it was usually underground and always well hidden), looking at all the gadgets and generally causing mayhem. Hommage has been paid to these clips in many other films, one that immediately springs to mind is Van Helsing descending into a lab-like room underneath the Vatican to pick up crossbows, gadgets and sundry equipment.

I somehow feel that Bond is now missing something without this aspect of the later books. One slight advantage is that the product placement adverts now come before the film so that you are explicitly made aware of the fact that Bond uses Brand X phone and Brand Y car, and gets that part out of the way. However the greatest upturn from it was that the scintillating Dame Judy Dench had far more screen-time and succeeded in creating an edgy dynamic between M and Bond that carried parts of the film, but more importantly created a believable continuity from Casino Royale.

Overall it gets my thumbs up and worth the cinema ticket premium, but I’m still not sure about a blonde Bond.