00 agent replacement waiting period

I had this thought the other day about the waiting period of replacing a 00 agent after one retires, gets killed in battle, or has been missing for a long period of time.

In 'Skyfall', Bond is missing for a few months and is presumed dead. M even writes a eulogy for him. But there is no mention of a replacement agent to take the 007 number. This also happens in the novel 'The Man With the Golden Gun', with Bond being missing/presumed dead for a year. Again, no mention of someone else given the 007 handle.

So what do think the waiting period could be? I would imagine when an agent retires or a confirmed kill they would look for replacements soon after. For the case of missing/presumed dead, I would think 6 months would be an appropriate waiting period.

Comments

  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent
    I think there's s a difference between replacing a missing OO and, for lack of a better term, retiring his or her number. Bond got to 00 status pretty quickly -- too quickly, M says in Casino Royale. At the same time, for the purposes of avoiding confusion, I suspect a 00 number could be vacated a year or two before another person assumes it in order to avoid confusion.
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy Behind you !Posts: 63,792MI6 Agent
    Good observation TheNextLeiter, I'd never thought about it
    before. Although I would agree with Gassy man. -{
    "I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
  • stagstag Posts: 2,083MI6 Agent
    I suppose it also may depend on how long it took to train someone to 00 operator standard? After all I doubt if you would just be plucked from the ranks, there would be intensive training & physiological testing, exercises & such. You would have to learn the trade craft associated with that department, weaponry, armed & unarmed combat, how to handle explosives, covert entry techniques, resistance to interrogation, escape & evasion, etc etc. It would stand to reason that SIS should have a pool of 'ordinary' officers who have passed through that same training & would be ready to assume 00 duties if the need arose, otherwise the service could find themselves with a serious manpower shortfall. Fleming never went into detail about Bonds training (or refresher training - another vital component to maintain skills) but perhaps it can be summed up by the following.

    http://rense.com/general12/fr.htm

    FYI these agents had a real 'license to kill'.
  • stagstag Posts: 2,083MI6 Agent
    SOE had its own Q department for R&D. It was based in the Natural History Museum, London.

    Some of the weapons as used by SOE agents:

    http://www.macdonaldarms.com/armoury/OSS.php

    This is an interesting watch &, given the time period, would most likely have been the basis for SIS (00) training:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsDTZKbVZiw
  • CmdrAtticusCmdrAtticus United StatesPosts: 1,102MI6 Agent
    Mallory tells M it had been three months since she lost the hard drive (and Bond). I believe that during that time she probably had chosen a new recruit for the 00 section and they were probably being trained -there was no need to mention this in the film. In fact, the impression I got was that the failure of human intel with this operation was one of the points in the plot - that 00's were out of date with modern intel using high tech applications (which is what Silva and Q were all about). As far as being given his number - I always got from Fleming that these numbers were not handed it out in a strict numerical order but in a more random fashion in order to confuse the enemy. If I remember right there were only three 00's in the department.
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