James Bond

The 1960s was the hottest that the Cold War ever got, and in that turbulent time period the major powers on both sides, as well as the United Nations, heavily invested in and advanced multiple espionage programs. Well-known and talented agents of the era included Jim Phelps, Director of the Impossible Missions Force, an independent agency that frequently handled “indirect assassinations” on behalf of the United States ; Illya Kuryakin, an enigmatic Soviet agent of the international agency United Network for Crime and Law Enforcement (UNCLE) ; Mallory Archer, daring (and wildly promiscuous) OSS operative and daughter of late California detective Miles Archer ; and Natalia Romanova, former Soviet superspy who later defected to the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate (SHIELD). Some of these agents’ exploits were actually well-known and some of the spies were well-liked - UNCLE agent Illya Kuryakin actually hosted an episode of the American musical variety show Hullabaloo despite being a Soviet citizen. However, none was more popular or more successful than the one and only James Bond, Agent 007 of MI6.

Bond was promoted to MI6’s elite “double-oh” program in 1962 and saved the world multiple times in his decade-long career. This, along with his seeming invincibility and longevity (the latter of which will be explained later), have raised questions of whether or not he is a superhuman, and given his reputation for fearlessly facing down and repeatedly thwarting incredible terrorist threats, they cannot be blamed for this belief. Throughout the 1960s he was British Intelligence’s primary agent against the Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion (SPECTRE), a massive global organization that tried multiple times to antagonize the superpowers into nuclear war.

After the extremely publicized and humiliating destruction of a rocket base significantly weakened SPECTRE in 1967, Bond stepped down and retired to his Scotland manor with new wife Honeychile Rider, who he frequently visited after meeting her on the job in 1962. However, after all the attention that Bond had received, MI6 had the USSR and other enemies of the state very intimidated, and Admiral Miles Messervy, then the chief of MI6 codenamed “M”, decided to hire a new agent as James Bond. He tried to persuade Bond with anything he could to get him to stay, but Bond was so eager to leave that he did not even bother to clean his desk of souvenirs from previous missions, ended up belonging to his successor. This other fellow was effective in continuing the campaign against SPECTRE, but he made the tragic mistake of falling in love with and marrying the daughter of a crime lord, Tracy di Vicenzo. Almost immediately after the wedding, she was gunned down in an assassination attempt on Bond’s life by a SPECTRE henchwoman, and the heartbroken, traumatized Bond left MI6 altogether. From then onward, it became a rite of passage for future Bonds to pay their respects to Tracy Bond at her gravesite and reflect on the price of taking on the role. It is said that the man, known only by the last name Ryker, then gave up violence and moved into a flat with a group of London hippies.

The original James Bond was convinced to come out of retirement, and the first thing he did upon returning to the job was to destroy SPECTRE as revenge for what they did to his co-worker. He succeeded, driving their latest elaborate scheme into the ground and forcing SPECTRE leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld into hiding. After that, he was retained for more missions while MI6 searched for a suitable replacement. On his final mission in 1973, Bond assumed the name John Patrick Mason and infiltrated the Pentagon to steal a microfilm containing major American secrets, which British Intelligence wanted in case England ever needed the United States to do something they otherwise wouldn’t. However, “Mason” was caught, disavowed by MI6, and illegally kept prisoner for nearly thirty years. Shortly before his imprisonment, Bond contacted Honeychile beforehand telling her the truth of the situation and that she should put their son into hiding, and she was “suicided” by arson committed by MI6 agents as part of a cover-up.

By this time, MI6 had the next James Bond ready for action: Gareth “Gary” Fenn, formerly a talent scout for a London modeling agency. He was recommended by Austin Powers, a British Intelligence agent and famous modeling photographer who worked for the same agency as Fenn. Shortly before his thirty-year cryogenic freezing in 1967 (inspired by his associate, fellow swinging gentleman Adam Adamant, a Victorian adventurer who was frozen from 1902 to 1966 ), Powers informed MI6 that the talent scout actually had the makings of a brilliant secret agent and just didn’t know it yet, so they staged an attempted assassination plot on a visiting African leader to see how well Fenn would hold up. At the successful resolution of the mission, M, who until that point had posed as the mastermind Chilmore, offered him the job on the spot.

Fenn embraced the role of James Bond and took on some high-flying missions - including one to a space station - in the twelve years he held the position. He demonstrated an interesting effect that happens to most or all agents who are promoted to the position of 007: a memetic psychological effect where he incorporates certain qualities of his predecessors. Fenn became even more debonair, smart-alecky, womanizing, and hard-drinking than before 1973. In 1985, he retired with honors and little regret, and he then showed off the young man who he was confident could be the new MI6: Michael “Mike” Graham11. Fenn personally trained Graham and told Admiral Hargreaves, the new M following Messervy’s death, that he desired for Graham to succeed him. While it worked, he almost immediately stepped down in 1986 after a disastrous failed mission in Arkangelsk, when he watched his partner Alec Trevelyan die on the job******.

By this time MI6 had learned from the snafu with the original Bond and Ryker, and they had a back-up for Graham, a man named Charles Lord. Lord was a disturbed individual whose wife had previously been killed - he was said to have been deeply touched by the Tracy Bond rite of passage - and he was regarded as somewhat of a loose cannon. This came to a head in 1989: after drug lord Franz Sanchez maimed his friend in the CIA and mangled the man’s wife, Lord went on an unlicensed rampage of revenge against Sanchez and was suspended from MI6. He was tentatively offered his job again after succeeding in his mission (Sanchez’s drug empire was a thorn on MI6 and the CIA’s side for much of the decade), but Lord refused. After this mixed blessing/disaster, Hargreaves reevaluated the Bond program and decided that it was a failure. It mostly produced broken men, untold property damage around the world, and bad publicity in more recent years, and with the Cold War ending, it was determined that there was no good reason to continue the program. After Lord left in 1989, it was dissolved, and remained that way for several more years.

However, all that changed with Hargreaves’ successor: Emma Peel. She had worked with MI6 since 1965 - though she briefly left the life of espionage from 1968, when her long-lost husband returned, to some point in the 1970s when he faced an untimely death - and was present for every incarnation of James Bond up to the modern day. She despised most of them (though not nearly as much as Austin Powers, who once hit on her in 1965 after hearing of her husband’s disappearance and was judo-chopped after making a crack about her being a “talented amateur.” This incident only inspired Powers to learn judo, and after he was unfrozen in 1997 she only briefed him on assignments through an intermediary), but despite this, she recognized that sometimes England needed a “blunt instrument” at the ready and the Bond program could be revitalized with the right agent and the right handler at the helm. An incident in 1995 involving the neo-Soviet crime syndicate Janus, which turned out to be headed by a still-living turncoat Trevelyan, spurred the return of Michael Graham.

After leaving behind the role of Bond and taking temporary leave to recover from his trauma, Michael Graham took a job with the United Nations Anti-Crime Organization (UNACO, which was actually the aforementioned UNCLE agency after eventually being co-opted by the United Nations ). In 1995 he was deemed ready to resume the role and successfully took down Janus**, and he held the job for another seven years. Unfortunately, he was disavowed by MI6 in 2002 after being imprisoned in North Korea for 14 months**, and the program was in limbo for another four years.

In 2006, an unexpected turn occurred when the role was given to James Bond Jr., the only son of the original James Bond (though he also had an illegitimate daughter in San Francisco7). Of course, he still had to do the same training and tasks that every 00 candidate (and consequentially every 007 candidate) has to undergo, but a kind of nepotism is still suspected. Nigel Boswell, Agent 006, insists that he only fell short because of Bond Jr.’s connection to Bond Sr., though it was more likely due to his asking about pay increase. But there may really be something in the blood, as this Bond has proven to be extremely skilled, ruthless, and fiercely loyal to MI6 and M. However, is is strongly feared by the chief officers of British Intelligence and Lieutenant Colonel Gareth Mallory, Peel’s replacement upon her murder by rogue agent Raoul Silva in 2012, that Bond will discover what MI6 did to his father, a staunch patriot and star field agent, and how the already deeply disturbed and cold Bond might react if he ever learns. With Bond Sr. at large (but dead in the eyes of the law) as of 1997, the question looms over Mallory’s head like Damocles’ sword.

Bond’s name is not the only that passes on between people like this. M and Q, the latter referring to the head of the special technology department, are passed on as well. “Felix Leiter” is an arbitrary title usually (but not always) given to whoever Bond’s current CIA contact is at the time, in order to protect the identity of the agent. Within MI6, an office joke is that M’s secretary is always called Ms. Moneypenny, a purposedly silly nickname invented as a joke that is now a tradition.