Some Bond memes in Archer

Better late than never, I’ve finally got round to watching Archer, the animated spoof espionage series featuring the suave, irresponsible, and misogynistic secret agent, Stirling Archer. Naturally, the whole series draws very heavily on the James Bond films for inspiration, and H Jon Benjamin, who voices Archer, reveals in an interview with MI6 Confidential that his performance is based to some extent on Sean Connery’s Bond. Apart from referencing Bond in a general sense, the series alludes more specifically to the films, and I noted a few of these references while watching season one.
 
The ninth episode, ‘Job Offer’, in which Archer takes a job with a rival agency, Archer and Lana, his colleague and former lover, are tied on a metal table and threatened by a laser beam, à la Goldfinger. ‘Skytanic’ (episode 7) has an airship that brought to my mind A View to a Kill. The sixth episode, ‘Skorpio’, in which Archer rescues Lana from an arms dealer, features Archer in frogman mode and involved in an underwater battle that could have been taken from the storyboards of Thunderball.
 

A scene from 'Skorpio', Archer, season 1

James Bond is name-checked a couple of times in the series, and the cover of the season one DVD clearly derives from the poster of Live and Let Die.

Fictional spies of earlier vintage are not forgotten either. In ‘Dial M for Mother’ (episode 10), Malory Archer, agency chief and Archer’s mother, has a copy of Greenmantle by John Buchan beside her on her bed. The episode title is especially interesting. It references a Hitchcock film, of course, but it takes on extra significance in the context of James Bond: M was Ian Fleming’s nickname for his mother, Eve, and according to Fleming’s biographer, John Pearson, Eve provided some of the inspiration for James Bond’s chief.
 

A scene from 'Dial M for Mother', Archer, season 1

Issue 25 of MI6 Confidential has an excellent article on Archer, which includes interviews with the cast and the creative team, and is well-worth reading. Meanwhile, I’ll get on with catching up on the remaining seven series.

A note on the origin of the loquacious villain

The trope or meme of the loquacious villain who loves the sound of his own voice and can’t help revealing the secrets of his nefarious scheme is a familiar one from the Bond films and similar action or adventure films. It’s attested, too, in literature. We see it in the Bond novels, of course, but also in older fiction. A novel by William Le Queux offers one example.

In The Mysterious Three (1915), Dago Paulton (the book is of its time!), with his accomplice, Baronne de Cauldron, has trapped the hero, Richard Ashton and his adventurer friend, Frank Faulkner, in a room of a chateau in France. Paulton begins to make things very clear to Ashton.

“You possess information you have no right to possess,” he tells Ashton. “You know the Thorolds’ secret, and until your lips are closed I shall not feel safe.”

“You can’t suppose I shall reveal it,” Ashton answers.

“Not reveal it, man, when you know what is at stake! You must think me very confiding if you suppose I shall trust your bare assurance. As I have said, I intend to – to – well, to close both your mouths.”

“Why Faulkner’s,” Ashton asked.

“Because he is to marry Gladys Deroxe, who is so friendly with Vera Thorold, who is to be my wife. Vera knows too much, and may have told her little friend what she knows. I mistrust Vera’s friends – even her friends’ friends. You understand?”

“Oh, why talk so much!” the Baronne interrupts. “Tell him everything in a few words, and have done with it!”

The Baronne’s interjection reminded me of Scott in Austin Powers (“Why don't you just shoot him now? I'll go get a gun”), and suggests that the talkative villain was a somewhat over-familiar trope even when Le Queux was writing. I’m sure there are other examples, for instance from the likes of John Buchan, and it’s a topic to I will certainly return. Watch this space!

Danger Mouse, Special Agent Oso and James Bond

A little while ago, I posted a tweet about a couple of Bond-inspired episode titles from the latest series of Danger Mouse, featuring the world's greatest secret agent. I was subsequently alerted to another children’s animated series, Special Agent Oso, whose episode titles are also Bond-inspired.
 

The title of episode 13 of series 2 (2017) of Danger Mouse

 
Special Agent Oso is a pre-school series about a bear who, in each episode, helps a child complete a task (for instance, flying a kite or setting the table). The series was originally broadcast on the Disney Channel in 2009. Series 1 was broadcast between 2009 and 2010, the second from 2010 to 2012. In total, 116 episodes were shown, each one with a title that plays on the names of the Bond films or, in two cases, the titles of Bond songs.
 
There is, for example, ‘From Grandma With Love’ (From Russia With Love), ‘A Zoo To A Thrill’ (A View To A Kill), ‘The Chairs Are Not Enough’ (The World Is Not Enough), and Dr Snow (Dr No). Some of the titles are unintentionally ironic. ‘License to Cheer Up’ is obviously based on Licence to Kill, which, until the Daniel Craig era, had been the most serious and humourless Bond film of the series. ‘Drink Another Day’ (Die Another Day), meanwhile, could be the very words Bond lives by.
 
Just for fun, I catalogued all the titles and did some basic analysis to see if any patterns emerged in the selection of Bond film titles. The most commonly used film name is Goldfinger with 11 occurrences. Octopussy, Tomorrow Never Dies, Moonraker, and Never Say Never Again are the least frequently used film names, with one occurrence each.
 

Frequency of Bond film titles used in Special Agent Oso

 
There is no clear difference in the choice of titles between the two series; generally, the most commonly used film names in series 1 remain common in series 2, but there are some interesting differences. Diamonds Are Forever, Licence to Kill and The World Is Not Enough are used less in series 2, while Dr No, The Man With The Golden Gun, and Thunderball increase in frequency in series 2. The most substantial increase is Quantum of Solace, which isn’t represented at all in series 1, but accounts for almost 6% of titles in series 2. Series 1 was broadcast in 2009, after Quantum of Solace had been released, but presumably planning of the series began before the film’s release date of 2008.
 

Comparative proportions of film titles used in series 1 and 2 of Special Agent Oso

 
What is mildly surprising is the middle ranking of From Russia With Love. The film title is a favourite of newspaper headline writers, but evidently the writers of Special Agent Oso haven’t been quite so keen. It seems that what is suitable for the press isn’t necessarily so suitable or amenable for children’s programming. The survey of Special Agent Oso titles also shows that Bond film names have varying levels of adaptability. Octopussy and Moonraker have poor adaptability and are little used, while Goldfinger has a high level of adaptability and is prolific.
 
Returning to Danger Mouse, since the cartoon was relaunched in 2015, there have been only ten episodes with Bond-inspired titles. While this is too small a dataset for comparison with Special Agent Oso, it is revealing that the only Bond film title to be used twice in Danger Mouse is Goldfinger – Greenfinger (also the name of a Special Agent Oso episode) and Gold Flinger.

Bond Vehicle Collectibles, and Corgi's DB5 as archaeological artefact

The other week a work colleague of mine brought in an old, rather play-worn Corgi Aston Martin DB5 to show me, knowing that I was a James Bond fan. I was delighted that he had done so, and I examined the car so that I could tell him more about it. I told him that the car was an early model, being gold painted, rather than silver, and that it had other features typical of the early model; the bullet-proof screen at the back, for instance, was raised by pressing the exhaust pipe, rather than the overriders extending from the rear bumper, as in later models.

Coincidentally, I had just read a new book about toy James Bond vehicles, so was able to give my colleague much more information about Corgi’s best known model. Bond Vehicle Collectibles (Amberley, 2017) by Paul Brent Adams is a guide to the Bond-related toy vehicles produced not only by Corgi, but other manufacturers, among them Hot Wheels and Johnny Lightning. The book is written from a collector’s point of view, and so contains a useful account of all the different models, their scales, and variations in design, and provides advice about filling gaps in a Bond car collection (for instance where official models of a car that featured in a Bond film don’t exist).
 

Bond Vehicle Collectibles (Amberley, 2017)

What’s best about the book, though, is its stunning colour photographs. Most of the images are of cars produced for the 'James Bond Car Collection', a part-work issued by Eaglemoss (in the UK, at least) in monthly instalments from 2007. The collection included many cars never produced by Corgi or other manufacturers. Coincidentally (again!), this series has just been relaunched by Eaglemoss as 'Bond in Motion: The Official James Bond Die-Cast Collection'.
 
The book is a slim one, and if you’re after more detail on the Corgi models, I recommend Dave Worrall’s 1996 book, The James Bond Diecasts of Corgi. However, for a good overview of all the toy vehicles and some great photography, then Paul Adams’ book is a must.

Returning to my colleague’s DB5, it occurred to me as I was turning it round in my hands and looking closely at the details, that I was seeing the car as an artefact (I am, after all, an archaeologist). There was a great deal one could tell just from that model, and many of the questions I’m looking to answer when I examine, say, Roman pottery, I could also ask of the DB5 – date, type, origin, condition, context, and so on, allowing me not just to catalogue aspects of its design and manufacture, but also form a picture of its use and history as an object. The model cars of James Bond may well yet be a future specialism in the study of material culture, with Bond Vehicle Collectables and other books providing much of the groundwork!