What Would We Do Without Q?

Monique Whitaker looks at the gadgets that have made James Bond tick over the years


When you re battling the foes of good and your escape from a mine to prevent the theft of a nuclear missile hinges on nothing more than your watch, that s when you re thankful you re James Bond, with gadget genius Q at your disposal. It s easy to put up with Q s teasing when it s his forethought that lets you shoot a grappling hook out of your custom Omega Seamaster watch, which then pulls you up 50 feet of ultra-strong microfilament to safety.

Life is tough and hazardous when you re in the employ of the British Secret Service. There are some dangers, though, that they don t teach you about in spy school.
Luckily, James Bond is equipped for all eventualities, and now he s survived his greatest challenge. He s regained his suave sophistication, wresting it from the somewhat outdated stereotype he was in danger of becoming. Also gone are the tacky catch phrases and purely pneumatic Bond beauties. In their place, grit and drama, with women who are still gorgeous and somewhat smarter.

But while the style and social mores of the Bond films may only recently have made the leap to the present day, 007 s gadgets have always been ahead of their time and these are some of the most memorable:

Minox A/IIIs camera
It might date back to the 60s Bond flick On Her Majesty s Secret Service, but this super spy camera, measuring a teeny 82 x 28 x 16mm, could still rival some of the smallest digital offerings around today, even though it had to fit in a roll of film.

Best of all, this little Minox wasn t just a bit of silver-screen fakery for George Lazenby s Bond to play with. It was a genuine model that first came out in 1955 and was the go-to camera for real spies around the world for almost a decade-and-a-half after that.

Pretty handy, too, that it came disguised as a Zippo lighter, but perhaps having 007 s secret agent number embossed on the device wasn t the most discreet choice.

Aston Martin DBS V12
How about something a little more up-to-the-minute? Bond s beautiful Aston Martin fits the bill. It s fast, sleek and full of the kind of things you need when you re busy saving the planet, not least a bulletproof windshield.

Most of us are excited enough to have a car with cup-holders and electric windows; not so this man. When you re a dashing spy, you need a vehicle packed with useful tools and weapons. It can also be quite handy to have an automated system in your glove compartment, as he did in Casino Royale, to tell you what to do so as not to die of poisoning.

Even better, Daniel Craig s Bond gets shocked back to life by the portable defibrillator in his Aston Martin. Who said sports cars were dangerous?

Aston Martin DB5
This car was no doubt very safe for anyone in it, but decidedly less so for those trying to run it off the road. In Goldfinger, it sports an ejector seat on the passenger side, in case the company on a long trip becomes tiresome; automatic revolving number plates, so you can blend in with all those other DB5s on the road (doesn t everyone have one?); a bulletproof back window; tyre-slashers; headlights concealing machine guns; and even a pursuer-thwarting device that sprays out oil or smoke.

Wrist dart gun
You don t want to be without this when you re trying to prevent humanity from being wiped out by a madman at a space station. With his trusty dart gun, Bond was able to escape being crushed to death by extreme G-forces in a centrifuge and to bring about the villainous Hugo Drax s end.

The nerve-impulse controlled gun comes with five armour-piercing and water camera five cyanide-tipped darts. You ll have something for every occasion.

Parker Jotter ballpoint pen
007 may like to think of himself as something of a freewheeling rebel, but he s very clearly a man for hire. Not only is he under the direction of his Secret Service boss, M, he s also happy to endorse more than a few brands from watches and cars to cellphones and pens as he shoots and speed camera database shags his way around the world.

Parker got some good screen time alongside our favourite secret agent, with their Jotter ballpoint that doubles as a class-four grenade. Just three clicks of the pen to arm it, and another three to disarm.

Golden Eye baddie, Boris, gets hold of the grenade pen and keeps unwittingly clicking it to relieve his nerves as his boss s evil plans unravel. It s fortunate that Pierce Brosnan s Bond is good at counting, since he has to track the clicks to stop the pen blowing them all up. He keeps perfect score, knocks the pen out of Boris s hand at the crucial moment, and uses the ensuing explosion to escape. (You can see the tense pen-clicking scene at http://tinyurl.com /bondpen)

Dentonite toothpaste
Dental health is important, whether you re a small child or a superspy. It is perhaps best, though, that you make sure never to try to clean your teeth with plastic explosive. It must be tough for 007 having to remember these things.

Licence to Kill sees Bond blast out the bulletproof window of an evildoer s office in a casino. He just smears the paste around the glass, inserts the fuse, and then heads off to blow it up from a nearby rooftop, with the detonator disguised as a box of cigarettes.

Deadly Briefcase
You have to love this classic Bond gadget that takes a star turn in From Russia with Love. It doesn t just hold a whole stack of ammunition, it s also got 50 gold sovereigns hidden away in it to help 007 out of any financial crises that may arise.

Oh, and technika camera there s the knife that you can pop out of the side of this smart black briefcase, as well as the talcum powder that s really teargas. But what if all this stuff falls into the wrong hands? Not to worry; it s totally tamper-proof, being specially designed to explode if it s not opened in just the right way.

Lotus Esprit
Bond s Aston Martins are very nice, but one thing his Lotus Esprit (below) has on them is its ability to turn from a flashy roadster into a nifty little submarine vehicle at least in The Spy Who Loved Me.

When you have an enemy who lives underwater,you need an elegant mode of transportation to his lair, a Lotus whose wheels flip over into fins is the only choice.

Voice Duplicator
This is possibly one of the cleverest Bond gadgets. If real, it would let you do an untold number of amazing (and illegal) things with just a phone, but would likely also cause havoc. The voice duplicator lets 007 match the sound of almost anyone, enabling him to make a phone call pretending to be someone else.

He puts the device to good use in Diamonds are Forever, a movie that also features nifty little stick-on fake fingerprints.

When you re a secret agent, incredible gadgets aren t just a nice extra; they re a necessity.



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