Why does Bond...

words

...get his license to kill back after LTK. Surely after his gross insubordination and the fact that all he managed to do was kill a drug dealer (probably a minor cog in a huge machine that started in Colombia), he would have been drummed out of the service.

I mean, I know its all fantasy, but these issues were never really addressed. I'm sure M would have had something to say after Bond beat up a couple of fellow agents and ran out on him!

GiovannaDaina2007

I think he gets it back because they now Leiter is his only friend and that as someone whose wife was also killed, it would really all be too much to bear. I think they know there wouldn't be another incident like this and they have more to gain by keeping him in the fold.

words

GiovannaDaina2007 wrote:

I think he gets it back because they now Leiter is his only friend and that as someone whose wife was also killed, it would really all be too much to bear. I think they know there wouldn't be another incident like this and they have more to gain by keeping him in the fold.

Thanks for your interesting comment (and hello btw!).

I guess they may afford Bond special dispensation for his value to the 'firm'. Ijust think its funny that after all he gets up to they are all at that party at the end merrily chortling about it all. And what about Q? He pinched government property & took it out of the country!

darenhat

One of the aspects of LTK was that Bond did most everything very clandestinely. MI6 knew what happened, DEA and CIA most likely knew through Leiter, but the general public had no clue that any events transpired were connected. It was frequently eluded to in the films (OHMSS and TMWTGG as examples) that what Bond did on his own time did not really concern the Service to a great degree.

As for insubordination? I agree that Bond should have felt some repurcussions...and he might have. You could even suggest that that is the reason there is no 'Bond missions' between 89 and 95 . In lieu of the situation, after a review of his service record, and since no one was shedding tears for Sanchez or his organization, and in light of the fact that the British government could not be implicated, Bond may been given a special dispensation.

highhopes

words wrote:

...get his license to kill back after LTK. Surely after his gross insubordination and the fact that all he managed to do was kill a drug dealer (probably a minor cog in a huge machine that started in Colombia), he would have been drummed out of the service.

I mean, I know its all fantasy, but these issues were never really addressed. I'm sure M would have had something to say after Bond beat up a couple of fellow agents and ran out on him!

Because "James Bond, License To Scold" doesn't have quite the same ring on a movie poster

Mr Henderson

The original Bond books were based on a lot of "what-ifs" that Ian Fleming had at least considered about a service that was, when Fleming was involved, at least, in it's infancy.

Suggest you look at the early development of intel in the period between 1935-1940 and then in the growing Cold War, 1947-1953.

If you think for one moment that anything as far as going out and taking things into your own hands, and wild west shootouts were not going on, then you should consider that the period of unrest into which the original Bond stories were placed took place after World War II in a Europe that was still scrambling for law, order and enough people to build agencies. It was not just a matter of hiring employees as today,... there was a shortage of personnel because people had been killed in the war. In many ways, it was, is, and may always be the case you can send send someone out to a remote or warzone location if they are a problem, and not have to bother with firing them or any form of probation. The Foreign Service has a distinct advantage in that "distance" as a punishment can be the case. Out of sight, out of mind can be a means of accomplishing things.

Tradecraft places a strange set of burdens on a person. They are not trained to live within conventional society, but marginally at the edge or beyond. Humans are not perfect, and there are situations that can try the best, most well-intentioned people. Bond could be described as a "blunt object" which is pointed in the direction and let loose. Is this a common thing today? Substitute post WWII Europe for Iraq today. We had best be damned grateful this kind of thing is foreign to us, and that we can look at is as fiction. The reality is even worse.