A View to an Eyeful

I still maintain that the final scenes of A View to a Kill (1985) are probably the most disturbing of the entire Bond series.  More so even than the bleak ending of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) or the apparent finality of that of No Time to Die (2021).   Because the sight of Q behaving like some kind of elderly Peeping Tom as he uses his official surveillance devices to catch an eyeful of Roger Moore's 007 soaping down Tanya Roberts in the shower is far more traumatic than either Diana Rigg being gunned down on her wedding day or Bond himself apparently perishing in an act of self sacrifice.  But I suppose one guy of pensionable age spying on the sexual antics of another wrong-side-of-fifty dude with a significantly younger woman, pretty much sums up what the franchise had become by this time: an action series increasingly reliant upon an ageing fan base and struggling to connect with younger audiences.  Not surprisingly, the film was Moore's swansong in the role, as the series performed one of its periodical resets and he gave way to a series of younger actors and a somewhat grittier style. (Although even this change in style had been prefigured by 1981's For Your Eyes Only, which had been designed to introduce a new, younger, actor to the role, before Moore agreed to continue as Bond).   Thankfully, the change of leads and direction seemed to curb Q's voyeuristic tendencies.

Of course, these voyeuristic tendencies were evident before A View to a Kill - let's not forget Q using Bond's Secret Service watch to eavesdrop on him getting his rocks off with Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only or his putting his zero gravity bonking of Lois Chiles on the big screen for an audience in Moonraker (1979).  In Octopussy (1983), Moore's Bond wisely keeps Q close at hand during the film's denouement, (he'd already tipped Bond off to his possible activities by demonstrating his miniature cameras which broadcast live pictures to wrist watches earlier in the film).  Which brings us to the other problem I have with Q's activities in the later Roger Moore Bond films - why does he keep turning up in person to do all this stuff?  I mean, he's a senior MI6 officer who, thanks to his work, must be party to all manner of State secrets, surely they'd never let him out of the office?  Yet there he is, piloting a hot air balloon in Octopussy pretending to be a Greek Orthodox priest (!) in For Your Eyes Only and, of course, sitting in a van spying on Bond's sex life in A View to a Kill. Has the Secret Intelligence Service's budget really been cut so severely that the likes of Q have to go out into the field because they've had to make all of their field operatives, (apart from the 00s apparently), redundant?  (Further evidence of this lies in the fact that not only does Q's assistant Smithers (Jeremy Bulloch), have to go into the field with him to equip Bond in Octopussy, but he also has to double up on surveillance duties in the same film, following Louis Jourdain in a Secret Service black cab. Unfortunately the film doesn't reveal whether MI6 was so hard up by this time that he took a couple of paying fares on his way back to HQ).

Still, on the positive side, these latter day Roger Moore Bonds at least can't be accused of ageism.  Indeed, they give hope to us guys of a certain age not only that it is still possible for the debonair older man to get off with unfeasibly attractive younger women, but that our libidos will remain strong enough past pensionable age to still be interested in indulging in hi-tech voyeurism.  So, I'll go out and order some safari suits now...