Octopussy (1983) | Music

Maurice Binder's primary inspiration for the Octopussy credits was a new toy: lasers. Conceptually, the Octopussy sequence is similar to From Russia with Love or Goldfinger. Instead of the credits or scenes from the movie projected on women's bodies though, it's laser images of the 007 logo, an octopus, and the outline of Bond.

There are some cool extra bits too, like when multiple arms wrap around an image of Roger Moore (though there are only five, not eight). I also like the gun that emits a foggy light from its barrel while shooting women into the air.

Binder also uses plenty of his signature silhouettes, too. Naked women and suited men do what they usually do in these things, though Binder sometimes has their actions imitate the lyrics of the theme song. He does that with the models whose faces we can see too, like when a woman opens her eyes as Rita Coolidge sings about not wanting to waste a waking moment.

By the time Octopussy was made, John Barry had settled his tax debt with the UK and was free to work on the movies again. He wrote the Octopussy theme with Andrew Lloyd Webber's writing partner Tim Rice, who'd already done Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita by then, and who would go on to work on two of Disney's most successful animated musicals, Aladdin and The Lion King.

It was going to be impossible to write a song called "Octopussy" and have anyone take it seriously, so Barry and Rice came up with "All Time High," suggesting the romance between Bond and Octopussy and using imagery from the circus' trapeze act.

Cubby Broccoli initially wanted Laura Branigan to sing it. She was hugely popular at the time thanks to songs like "Gloria," "Self Control," and "Solitaire," as well as having songs on the Flashdance and Ghostbusters soundtracks. But Broccoli's daughter Barbara was a huge Rita Coolidge fan and was always playing Coolidge songs around the office. (Barbara was also involved in the family business and was assistant director on Octopussy). The story goes that her dad heard one of Coolidge's songs one day and asked Barbara who it was, saying that that was the sound he wanted for the theme song.

The song was pretty successful and spent four weeks at #1 on the US' Adult Contemporary charts. I remember it's being on the radio all the time in 1983 and even though I don't like it, it has nostalgic appeal to me because it reminds me of driving around my hometown at a time in my life when I had maximum freedom with minimum responsibilities. Thankfully, the trend of soft, easy listening ballads for Bond themes was going to take a major break after this one.

True to form, Barry uses the Bond Theme modestly for Octopussy. It shows up in the auto rickshaw chase, but only after Bond is seriously stabbed. I guess the point is that the mission has been fun and games up to this point, but now it gets serious. Although not really serious, because this is a typical Roger Moore film, after all.

The other couple of times the Bond Theme shows up, it's used more traditionally to highlight big action set pieces. It plays when Bond takes a car with no tires onto railroad tracks to catch a train, then again at various times during the final assault on Kamal's Monsoon Palace, including the arrival of Bond and Q in the Union Jack balloon and Bond's horseback chase to catch Kamal's plane.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. The Spy Who Loved Me ("Nobody Does It Better")
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service instrumental theme
3. Diamonds Are Forever
4. You Only Live Twice
5. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
6. Live and Let Die
7. Dr No
8. Thunderball
9. Goldfinger
10. From Russia With Love (Matt Monro vocal version)

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. From Russia with Love
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Diamonds Are Forever
8. Live and Let Die
9. Moonraker
10. Octopussy

Octopussy (1983) | Villains

The best thing about the recurring character of General Gogol is that he's not the typical, cliché Soviet general that used to be so ubiquitous in Cold War-era adventure films. As it turns out, the Bond series was saving that stereotype for General Orlov.

Steven Berkoff played this kind of character a lot in the '80s. Even when he wasn't directly giving us Soviet military officers (like in Rambo: First Blood, Part II), he was the go-to guy for instantly hateable villains like Beverly Hills Cop's Victor Maitland or Kristin Scott Thomas' bigoted father in Under the Cherry Moon. He even played Adolf Hitler in War and Remembrance. He's way over the top in Octopussy though and his zealous screaming of random words in hilariously cartoonish.

Orlov's biggest flaw though is that he's just so dumb. His plan sucks, to begin with. His end game is to get a nuke onto a US base where he can blow it up, but to do that he comes up with a bizarre plan involving replacing Soviet jewelry with fakes and smuggling the real stuff to Western Europe. It's not until late in this plan that someone realizes, "Oh, crap. What if there's an audit?" Which of course there is, leading to a clumsy fix that alerts MI6 to what's going on.

The plan is only one example of Orlov's stupidity though. Trying to keep Bond from preventing the bomb's journey to the US base, Orlov gets in his car and chases the train with Bond and the bomb on it. That's fine, but when the train crosses the border from East to West Germany, Orlov gets out of the car and chases the train through the checkpoint on foot, past the screaming guards with machine guns. I understand that he thought it was important to stop Bond, but how did he think that scenario was going to end?



I don't understand Kamal Khan at all. He's as stupid as Orlov, but even more overconfident. I mean, the guy cheats at backgammon with loaded dice that always roll double sixes. It doesn't get any more unsubtle than that. And while he's got Bond at the Monsoon Palace, he decides not to cancel or relocate his meeting with Orlov, but goes ahead and lets the general fly in on a big, Soviet helicopter, giving Bond his first clue about the Soviets' involvement in the smuggling scheme.

The thing I really don't understand about Kamal though is his motivation. His role in the smuggling is easy enough to figure out. Orlov provides the jewelry, Octopussy gets it over to the West, and Kamal sells it. But why is Kamal involved with the bomb? What reason does he have to help with that part of Orlov's plan?



Like I mentioned earlier, I have big questions about Mischka and Grischska, the knife-throwing twins from Octopussy's circus. They work for Octopussy, but aren't part of her cult. And they seem to take their orders from Kamal.

I wonder how separate Kamal and Octopussy's organizations really are. There's a lot of overlap in people who seem to answer to one of the leaders, but actually answer to the other. That makes it seem like the two groups have been working together for a long time. Long enough, say, for Kamal to plant Mischka and Grischska in the circus. But that makes it even less clear why Kamal is willing to nuke the circus and everything he's invested in it.

Not that the movie is thinking that hard about any of this.



Gobinda is my favorite bad guy in the whole movie. He starts off shaky though by deliberately calling to mind one of the most iconic henchmen in the whole series. Exactly like Oddjob, he vindictively crushes the equipment that his master was using to try to cheat Bond. That's a bold move.

But I like Gobinda better than Oddjob. We don't get to know Oddjob well enough to have a sense of his intelligence, but the fact that he doesn't show any sign of figuring things out is probably telling. Gobinda on the other hand is observant and smart. A lot smarter than his boss, anyway. There are a couple of times when Bond tries to outwit Gobinda and fails.

Incidentally, one of my favorite parts of the movie is when Bond is a "prisoner" at Kamal's palace and Magda turns Bond down for a drink in his room. Bond looks at Gobinda, who's escorting him, and says, "I don't suppose you'd care for a nightcap?" I always wish Gobinda would take him up on it and then they'd become buddies and fight Kamal together. Gobinda deserves a better ally than the one he has.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
4. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
6. Doctor No (Dr. No)
7. General Gogol (For Your Eyes Only)
8. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)
9. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
10. Hugo Drax (Moonraker)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Gobinda (Octopussy)
6. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
7. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
8. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me)
9. Irma Bunt (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
10. Miss Taro (Dr. No)

Octopussy (1983) | Women

I have vague memories of liking Magda at one point, but now I couldn't tell you why that was if you had a Walther PPK pointed at my head. She's arrogant, rude, and generally unpleasant. She's also unsubtle and incompetent. Her whole plan for stealing back the Fabergé egg is to wake up early and lift it out of Bond's jacket. And when he foils that by waking up too, she hides it behind her back while standing in front of a full-length mirror. The greatest deception of Bond's career is pretending not to notice so that she could escape with it and the hidden tracking device.

It's also Magda who tells Bond all about her octopus tattoo, which leads him to Octopussy. Bond wouldn't have otherwise had a clue about that part of the operation.



Maud Adams turns in a remarkable performance as one of the most compelling women in any of the Bond films. But enough about The Man with the Golden Gun.

She's not bad in Octopussy, it's just tough to get a handle on her character. The idea of her is great: the daughter of a Bond villain (although its super inappropriate and creepy that her dad gave her the nickname of Octopussy) who's formed her own cult of warrior women. She's very powerful at first and I love the way Kamal defers to her for a while. We ultimately learn though that Kamal's only patronizing her. He needs her criminal infrastructure and he's perfectly willing to betray and murder her once his objectives are met. As Kamal rises in importance to the story, Octopussy diminishes. She's just a tool in Kamal and Orlov's plan. Her own people (the knife-throwing twins in particular) seem to be actually taking their orders from Kamal.

The script isn't even sure what to do with her and Bond. There's potential for a great relationship and lots of drama when the daughter of a Bond villain becomes Bond's ally and lover. But the only tension the movie offers is a lame argument because he refuses to leave the Secret Service and come work for her. And even that feels manufactured so we can have them immediately go to make-up sex.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Melina Havelock (For Your Eyes Only)
3. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
4. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
5. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
6. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
7. Holly Goodhead (Moonraker)
8. Mary Goodnight (The Man with the Golden Gun)
9. Andrea Anders (The Man with the Golden Gun)
10. Honey Rider (Dr. No)

Octopussy (1983) | Bond

Actors and Allies



More than any other movie since Goldfinger, Bond is in full-on Blunt Instrument mode in Octopussy. He latches on early to Kamal Khan as the person behind the fake Fabergé, but doesn't know the whole story, so his tactic is to insert himself into Kamal's business and see what shakes out. I'd rather see him do more detective work, but that's very Fleming.

Roger Moore is right at his expiration date on playing Bond by this point. His being older worked well in For Your Eyes Only, but it's not addressed in Octopussy. The movie gets credit sometimes for casting an "older" Maud Adams, but she was only 38 at the time. Moore was 56. But he's still believable in the role and there's no sign of his getting tired of it like we saw in Sean Connery's last couple of films. Moore was getting tired of it, but he was too much of a pro to let it affect his performance.

Moore was only contracted for three Bond movies, so everything after The Spy Who Loved Me was negotiated on a picture-by-picture basis. He had no intention of coming back for Octopussy and the producers were already looking at Timothy Dalton (among other actors) when they got word that Kevin McClory was developing his own Bond film based on his rights to the Thunderball story. That, plus Sean Connery's returning to play Bond in it, made Broccoli and Wilson nervous enough that they didn't want to risk competing against McClory and Connery with an untested Bond of their own. They negotiated with Moore and got him back.

That history probably explains what's going on with Moneypenny's new, young assistant, Penelope Smallbone. On its surface, it seems like a real jerk move: keeping Moore, but phasing out Lois Maxwell who's the same age. It's creepy to see Bond hitting on a much younger person as a resigned and disappointed Moneypenny warns that a bouquet of roses (originally meant for her) are "all you'll ever get from him." But once you know that plans were already being made for Moore's departure, transitioning in a younger admin for the new Bond to play against makes sense. That didn't take though (maybe because Moore came back yet again for the next one?) and Octopussy is Smallbone's only appearance. The actual reasons she was introduced, but didn't stick around are mysteries.

We talked a little about the new M yesterday. I miss Bernard Lee and there's no replacing him, but I also like Robert Brown. He's less cranky than Lee was usually written. I get the sense that he's not going to put up with a lot of nonsense either, but he looks like he won't take it as personally as his predecessor. He's kind of a bureaucrat that way, for better or worse. It's refreshing in this movie, but I imagine that I'll soon want an M who's more emotionally involved.

The Minister of Defense seems shockingly okay with Bond after the Prime Minster/parrot fiasco at the end of For Your Eyes Only. Even though these movies don't reference each other that directly, it's still weird seeing the MoD welcome Bond to a briefing without grumping at him.

Q's assistant Smithers is back, played again by Jeremy Bulloch. This is his last appearance in the series, which is sad, because I like the possibilities he brought. He's always testing one of Q's contraptions and Bond seems to like him. He could have become a fun ally for Bond within Q-Branch who's able to recognize and comment on the silliness of that department. A nice foil to Q's self-seriousness.

Bond also has allies in the field, starting with Bianca, the agent he works with in the cold open. We don't know much about her, but I like how she conducts herself. She has a relaxed relationship with Bond. She's not infatuated with him and he's not condescending to her. She's cool and professional.

We also spend some time with 009, the first time another Double-O has been on screen this long. In fact, the only time we've seen another one except for the brief, not-really look at the whole group during the Thunderball briefing. 009 is a tough agent, but he doesn't seem that smart. Why does he hold onto his balloons when he's running through the forest and trying to sneak away from a pair of killers? The only person who's surprised when one of them pops is him.

Finally, we come to Vijay. I don't know why I'm not ranking Bond's allies, but Vijay would be near the top of the list. That's partly personal. When I was growing up, our family was close friends with a family from India who was somehow related to tennis star Vijay Amritraj. I didn't know who he was until I saw Octopussy, but they were very proud of him and I can see why. He's totally casual and charming. When he dies, it pisses me off and it's one of the few ally deaths in these movies that seems to mean anything to Bond. (Amritraj also plays the captain of a stranded Federation ship in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, so that's two of my favorite series that he's part of.)

Vijay also has the single best line in the whole movie. At the start of the auto rickshaw chase, Bond yells out the old cliché, "We've got company!" and Vijay responds, "No problem! This is a company car!"

Best Quip



"Hmm?" to Magda's comment that she needs "refilling."

Worst Quip



"Toro? Sounds like a load of bull."

Gadgets



Bond uses a few gadgets in this one. The first time he tries to blow up the weapons facility in the cold open, he sneaks a bomb inside a briefcase with a secret compartment inside. And of course there's the mini jet and the fake horse trailer that carries it.

The crocodile submarine is the goofiest one and probably my favorite, but Bond gets most use out of the wristwatch/pen combo that lets him track and listen in on the bug implanted in the Fabergé egg. And for extra kicks, the pen also shoots acid.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me)
2. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
3. Jet pack (Thunderball)
4. Glastron CV23HT speed boat (Moonraker)
5. Acrostar Mini Jet (Octopussy)
6. Crocodile submarine (Octopussy)
7. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
8. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)
9. Ski pole rocket (The Spy Who Loved Me)
10. Magnetic buzzsaw watch (Live and Let Die)

Bond's Best Outfit



He shoulda worn this the entire movie.

Bond's Worst Outfit



Duh.

Octopussy (1983) | Story

Plot Summary

A rogue general uses forged jewelry to increase Soviet control over Europe. His plan is as dumb and convoluted as it sounds.

Influences

Combining two Fleming short stories worked well in For Your Eyes Only. It was the second-highest grossing Bond film to date, behind Moonraker. Broccoli and Wilson returned to that formula for the next one, this time with "Octopussy" and "The Property of a Lady." Sadly, it wasn't as artistically successful this time around. That's partly because the silliness of earlier Moore films pushed its way back in, but it's mostly due to the felt need for bigger stakes than the short stories had to offer. "Octopussy" is a very personal story and it's smart of the movie to just use it as background.

"The Property of a Lady" is also a very small tale, but it has wider ramifications concerning a mole in MI6. It's too bad Octopussy didn't go that direction instead of making the auction part of an easily discovered plot by a zealous and dim-witted Soviet general.

There's a dinner scene in India that feels inspired by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but Octopussy came out the year before Temple, so I guess that's coincidence. Apparently, we all thought Indian food was nasty in the '80s. I've got some great restaurants I'd like to take '80s Us to.

There's also a Tarzan reference, but as CT brings up on Nerd Lunch's Return of the Jedi discussion (available for download next week), there's a federal law stating that any movie partially set in a jungle or forest has to include someone swinging through the trees and screaming like Tarzan.

How Is the Book Different?

The main character (other than Bond) from "Octopussy" is Dexter Smythe, a British soldier who murdered an innocent man for some Nazi gold. The movie's title character turns out to be Smythe's daughter. When she and Bond tell the story, the details of the murder are mostly the same except that it's been moved from post-WWII Europe to Southeast Asia.

And again, the auctioned Fabergé egg isn't paying off a mole in MI6 like in "The Property of a Lady," but is financing... actually, I'm still not clear on what it's financing. The relationships between the three criminal groups in the movie don't make sense and I'm never sure who's getting what out of the deal.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



Bond catches Kamal Khan cheating at backgammon and teaches him a lesson a la Fleming's Moonraker and Goldfinger. Unlike those scenarios, Kamal is lousy at cheating (loaded dice? really?) and the game lacks any tension, but it's at least trying to evoke Fleming, so points for that.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



It's a tie between the Tarzan yell and the gag where Vijay is whacking bad guys with a tennis racket while onlookers look from side to side like they're at a match.

Cold Open



For Your Eyes Only had gotten away from the trend of using the teaser to set up the movie's plot, but at least it had a thematic element in common with its film. Octopussy doesn't even do that. Instead, it's just a mini-adventure with no connection to anything else.

It opens at a horse show in what looks like Cuba. They never really say, but there's a military dude with a big black beard and a cigar, so let's go with that. Bond shows up at the horse show with a fellow agent named Bianca, disguises himself as a colonel, and sneaks over to the military base next door to blow up some high-tech looking weapons. He's caught, but Bianca helps him escape and he uses an Acrostar Mini Jet to buzz the base, get them to shoot a heat-seeking missile at him, outrun the missile, and lead it back to the base to blow the whole thing up. Seems like a weird, convoluted plan where tons of things could go wrong.

On second thought, it does have a lot in common with the rest of the movie.

That mini-jet is pretty impressive though, so it's still going to crack the Top Ten.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. The Spy Who Loved Me
2. Moonraker
3. Thunderball
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
5. Goldfinger
6. The Man with the Golden Gun
7. For Your Eyes Only
8. Octopussy
9. From Russia With Love
10. Diamonds Are Forever

Movie Series Continuity



The hat rack trick is back for the second time in a row. This time, Bond almost throws his hat on the rack, but stops when he notices Moneypenny's new assistant, Penelope Smallbone.

We have a new M, played by Robert Brown. The movie doesn't call attention to it, so he might be playing Sir Miles Messervy or a completely new character. I like to think he's a new character, but it doesn't matter. As I've said before, there's no theory, however nerdy or implausible, that will let the Bond films work as a consistent continuity.

Bond isn't quite a know-it-all, but he knows more than the average person about Fabergé eggs. Maybe because he's not obnoxious about it, M seems impressed, but he also takes some pleasure in telling Bond something he doesn't know: that the egg is a forgery. That looks like it's coming more from M's own appreciation of dramatic reveal though than from wanting to show Bond up.

The Minister of Defense is still here for the briefings and frankly I'm getting a little tired of him. It feels like micro-managing by now and Fleming's M wouldn't have appreciated it.

Gogol is also back, but I love him and welcome him any time he wants to show up. I especially love how he contrasts with the villainous General Orlov.

Q and M are still in the field quite a bit. Especially Q, who's practically Bond's sidekick in Octopussy, but M also shows up in Berlin at one point.

And finally, there's the question of Bond's notoriety. Kamal Khan has never heard of him, which is a change from the way the series has been playing this angle so far. On the other hand, Vijay first gets Bond's attention by playing the Bond Theme on his pungi. So that tune actually exists in Bond's world and is associated with him? Maybe Kamal is just clueless. That's a distinct possibility considering the rest of his actions in the movie.

Octopussy and The Living Daylights | "The Property of a Lady"

In 1963, English auction house Sotheby's commissioned Fleming to write a short story for their annual journal, The Ivory Hammer. The result was "The Property of a Lady," with Bond attending a Sotheby's auction for a Fabergé egg. The egg was sent by the Soviets as payment to a known double agent in MI6, so Bond suspects that the woman's KGB contact in London will be present at the auction to help drive up the price. Bond's job is identify this contact so that he can later be deported, throwing a kink in the Soviets' activities in Britain.

It's no surprise that a writer who makes card games and golf sound exciting can do the same thing for a jewelry auction, so there's nothing wrong with the build up and tension in the story. But "The Property of a Lady" doesn't hold together logically super well. Why exactly is the KGB contact risking exposure when the egg will fetch a very nice price without his interference? It seems unnecessarily greedy, especially on behalf of a double agent who's conceivably doing her job out of patriotism. Fleming kind of fumbles the ending too. All the drama is in the auction scene, but once Bond identifies his target, there's nothing else to keep me interested and it feels like Fleming knows it. He agreed that "The Property of a Lady" wasn't great work and reportedly refused payment for it. A couple of decades later though, the major elements of the story found their way into the movie Octopussy, which did a better job of building a compelling story around the idea.

There's not any character development for Bond in the story, but a couple of important characters do show up. Ronald Vallance of Scotland Yard reappears after his introduction in Moonraker and also contributing to Bond's work in Diamonds Are Forever and "Risico." He's mentioned as Sir Ronald Vallance in this story, which I think is new, so congratulations to him on that.

The other major character is Mary Goodnight. This isn't her true introduction to the series, but since I'm reading stories in the order of Bond's experience and not in the order that Fleming wrote them, it's the first time she's showing up for me. She's the new secretary in the Double-O section, replacing Lil, and it's tough to get a handle on her from just this story. Presumably she gets a better introduction in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, her true first appearance. In "The Property of a Lady" though, I missed Lil and it feels like Bond does too, though he doesn't mention her. He seems to think Goodnight is hot, but he doesn't flirt with her and doesn't even seem to respect or like her. Fleming does specifically mention that Bond's already in a bad mood about something else though, so maybe I shouldn't read much into that. Look forward to getting to know her better in OHMSS, because she becomes a major player in Bond's life in the last Fleming novels.

Octopussy and The Living Daylights | "The Living Daylights"

"The Living Daylights" was first published in 1962 as part of a color supplement for The Sunday Times. The Times was a rival to the Daily Express, which had been serializing and adapting Bond stories for about six years by that point, so the Express was naturally upset. In fact, "The Living Daylights" created a big rift between Fleming and the Express to the point that the Bond strip was abruptly ended part way through the adaptation of Thunderball. More about that on Thursday, though. "The Living Daylights" was also published in the United States a few months later in Argosy magazine.

I have a lot of praise to gush on the movie The Living Daylights, which I'll do at the proper time, but one of the things I love about it as that it adapts its short story pretty faithfully, but with a twist that propels the rest of the movie. In the short story, Bond is called to Berlin to assassinate the person who has in turn been assigned to assassinate someone escaping to the West. In the short story, the escapee is a returning double agent instead of a defector, but Bond is still supervised by a tiresome liaison and still changes his shot when he discovers that his target is a woman. And not just any woman, but a cellist he's been watching and fantasizing about as she's come and go from a nearby building over a few days.

One of my favorite lines in the movie version is when Bond lashes back at his annoying supervisor by exclaiming that the worst that can happen is that M will fire Bond, but that Bond would "thank him for it." I've always associated that with Bond's attitude at the end of Casino Royale, but re-reading "The Living Daylights" reminds me that it's yet another element right out of the short story. Bond is uncharacteristically sulky in this story and grumbles a couple of times about not minding if he gets kicked out of the Double-O section.

The best explanation that I have for that is that Bond is changing as a person. He's become less and less selfish since Dr No and has apparently become a happier person for it. Certainly his sense of humor has improved in Goldfinger and Thunderball. There's even a bit in "The Living Daylights" where he acknowledges to someone that the Bentley is a "selfish car." That kind of awareness is remarkable and important. It shows that while Bond still loves his car, he's also a little embarrassed about what it says about his past self. He sees that past selfishness and is able to comment on it, which I don't think he would've been able to do in the early books.

As Bond continues to change, it makes sense that he's becoming less patient with the uglier aspects of his job. His current mission is outright, cold-blooded assassination. He's never been super fond of that (as we saw in From Russia with Love), but it seems to be really getting at him now. The only time he's seemed okay with it was in "For Your Eyes Only," but that was more about his compassion for M than about willingly taking another person's life. My theory about Bond's attitude in "The Living Daylights" is that the assignment has got him especially down and is creating a bad attitude about his job and life in general. If it pops up again over the next few assignments, I'll adjust that theory, but it works for now.

One last thing that bothers me (not about Fleming's writing, but about Bond's mindset) is that Domino doesn't come up at all. From a storytelling perspective, I don't actually expect her to, but from a fannish, continuity-exploring perspective, I wish that there was more fallout from that relationship than just Bond's fantasizing about a pretty cellist. I fantasized myself about Bond and Domino's forming a mature relationship, so it hurts a little that she's just disappeared over the last couple of stories. There may be good, extratextual reasons for that (McClory?), but again, I'm just talking about continuity. Something apparently happened between Bond and Domino to sour things and I want some closure. I don't expect Fleming's next full novel, The Spy Who Loved Me to explain it, but I wish it would. And if not, I'm perfectly willing to come up with something on my own.

[Argosy cover found at Galactic Central]

Octopussy and The Living Daylights | "Octopussy"

The short story “Octopussy” was written late in 1962, but wasn’t published until 1965, after Fleming’s death. It was serialized in the Daily Express, which had also published “From a View to a Kill,” “Risico,” the James Bond comic strip, and had serialized both Diamonds Are Forever and From Russia with Love.

Fans of the movie Octopussy will remember that Maude Adams’ character is friendly towards Bond because he had once allowed her proud, but criminal father the choice of suicide instead of the humiliation of a public trial. The short story is the account of that confrontation and choice.

“Octopussy” sometimes gets compared to “Quantum of Solace” in that Bond’s participation in the story is basically a bookend to the actual tale. But unlike “Quantum of Solace,” where Bond is simply being told the story as a way to pass time, he’s the catalyst for “Octopussy.” His investigation of a decade-old murder has led him to Dexter Smythe and Bond already has all the evidence he needs to put the old man away. As the movie Octopussy says, Bond does offer Smythe a week to get his affairs in order before he’s arrested, which Smythe believes is an opportunity to kill himself. I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say that it’s not as clean and simple as the way Maud Adams tells it.

Whatever Smythe’s final fate, it is pretty clear that Bond intends to let Smythe commit suicide as an alternative to spending his final days in prison. Which is an enormous kindness on Bond’s part considering Bond’s personal investment in the case. The reason Bond requested the investigation when it happened across his desk is that he had a personal relationship with Smythe’s victim. Bond reveals that the dead man was not only the person who taught Bond to ski as a teenager, but was also a surrogate father at a time when Bond really needed one. He offers no more detail than that, but it’s a major clue in the mystery of Bond’s childhood.

I’m reading the short stories in the order that they take place in Bond’s career, not in the order that Fleming wrote them, so it’s possible that Fleming confirms Bond’s being an orphan in one of the last novels. But chronologically, “Octopussy” is the first indication that Bond may have lost his parents and it seems to indicate that he was a teenager when it happened.