Host
Ronald Lee
Podcast Content
Russias lethal SMERSH organization wants British secret agent James Bond dead, and baits a honeytrap with a hot decoding device and a hot cipher clerk.In, SMERSH wants to kill James Bond with ignominy to send a message to other intelligence agencies that SMERSH rules and MI6 drools. The only significant changes are that instead of the SPECTREs, the SPECTREs, the fictional, not-state-based syndicate, which actually appears in Flemings novels, the main motive for their plot is the hot decoding device, with British spy James Bonds death being merely the collateral. The only major change is that it is SPECTRE rather than SMERSH trying to kill Bond, and the primary motivation of their scheme is to capture a hot decoding device, with British secret agent James Bond death being just a bonus. Bonds stories are all, of course, cut from the same cloth, and the tension is therefore created by the fact that Fleming is showing exactly how Red Grant, an evil assassin for the SMERSH, , an evil assassin, would eventually come across to Bond, would eventually come across to him, who would eventually come across to Bond, who would eventually come across and attempt to murder Bond. If Fleming had an iota of social awareness, Fleming did not show it in his writing, and if you can not turn off certain critical parts of your brain while reading his stories, you are going to blow a lobe.Bond stories are of course all cut from the same cloth, so the tension comes from Fleming revealing just how the evil SMERSH assassin Red Grant will finally confront and try to kill Bond. One thing that I loved about reading Flemings novels is the fact that British spymaster James Bond is different than the Bond he is in his movies.
In the James Bond movie franchise, Bonds main enemies are turned into ghosts, first used in the Ian Fleming novel Thunderball. Agents and allies of the real-world SMERSH were 0 7s main adversaries for much of Flemings books, but with time, Fleming chose to replace them with Bonds film organisation, the SPECTRE. The replacement of SMERSH with The SPECTRE organization also allowed Fleming to break away from reality constraints in further Flemings 007 films and novels.
Dr. No rapidly made James Bonds name and iconography a pop cultural phenomenon, and by having SMERSH as Bonds primary groupie foe, the movie potentially stoked even greater enmity between the Cold War sides. Since those events, James Bond has sought vengeance in numerous instances, beginning with Ian Flemings second novel Live and Let Die, in which Bond is almost entirely disinterested in destroying the Soviet Unions financing schemes for Mister Big, until he discovers Big is a SMERSH operative. The movie From Russia With Love has James Bond originally thinking that he is fighting against SMERSH, but learns the villains are actually working for Bonds archenemies, including villain Rosa Klebb, who is a SMERSH agent that has secretly defected to SPECTRE.
In the movie adaptation, Rosa Klebbs colonel, Lotte Lenya, has defected her position at SMERSH in order to work for SPECTRE. In the movie, Colonel Rosa Klebb is depicted as the former SMERSH chief, who has defected to become a member of SPECTRE (Blofeld calls her No. Colonel Rosa Klebb is assigned by General Grubozaboyschikov, SMERSHs head, to lead an operation to take revenge against James Bond for his involvement in the deaths of the SMERSHs three agents, Le Chiffre, Mister Big, and Hugo Drax. Later, in James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me, the novelization of the movie The Spy Who Loved Me, Colonel Nikotine is, with no explanation, promoted to the rank of colonel-general and becomes head of the SMERSH.
Later in the movie, Bond recruited Mata Haris and his daughters, Marta Bond, to spy for SMERSH. In a thread of the plot, Bond decides that because SMERSH is entrapping the spies through sexual acts, British Intelligence must train the agent to stand up to any female entrapment. The primary is a lengthy, slow-paced sequence where a female SMERSH operative, Mimi , pretending to be Mrs. Widow, attempts to seduce or kill Bond. The sequence featuring an unseemly fellow agent nearly blowing off Bonds cover played out somewhat differently in Flemings first Bond novel and movie.
Book Six, movie One -- and, as in From Russia With Love, the two are fairly close. The second Bond movie is a fairly faithful adaptation of Flemings first Bond novel.
So Thunderball, unique amongst the books in being an adaptation of a movie that was not made at the time. Flemings first Bond novel--with his rights eventually re-available after being tied down by the spoofs of the 1960s--formed the basis for an official reboot of the movie franchise early on in Daniel Craigs tenure. Bond films often diverged far from their source novels , but original material by Ian Fleming continued to seep into films, in sometimes startling ways. The one with the longest holdover is that of Russia, for Ian Fleming, a vast, mostly unseen, and unknown, behemoth which made Bond possible, and essential for Fleming.
Mr. Fleming is frequently accused of making Bond a thinly veiled projection of himself. Yes, theories that Bond was the codename of several agents began even before Sean Connery left the character.