254 replies to this topic

[Captain Tightpants]

I think it would be better-suited to a secondary villain, one who is susceptible to seduction - the villain convinces him that he is the only one brilliant enough to do what the villain needs. Especially if Bond can turn that against him, leading to his downfall.

[Mr. Blofeld]

Hmmmmm... I don't want to seem like I keep throwing out useless ideas, but what if our villain thinks he is so superior that he underestimates his "pawns" (bear with me, here) -- that he is a man who acts, as Douglas Adams so eloquently put it, "with the total arrogance of someone who doesn't even know what arrogance means"?

He is an unselfconscious villain, not in the Goldfinger mode (of knowing how ridiculous his schemes must look), but seeming ridiculous to Bond and company... until he lays out the total villainy of his planned actions, and becomes very, very serious, indeed.

He is incredibly pompous, believing fully in his own self-superiority, but you do not want to underestimate him because of it.

[Righty007]

He is incredibly pompous, believing fully in his own self-superiority...

Modeling this villain after yourself I presume?

[Captain Tightpants]

I had an idea for an action sequence: the villains strap a bomb to somebody, and in order to stay alive, they have to drive around town, passing certain checkpoints to buy more time. Bond is on-scene, and steadily begins to work out that the whole thing is a set-up; every time they pass a checkpoint, more time is added to the count-down timer (probably a clock on the bomb). However, no signal is sent out. There is nothing communicating with the bomb and the checkpoint to instruct the bomb that it has passed said checkpoint. He proves this by crashing the car and waiting for the timer to run out, and nothing happens. The entire thing is a set-up to distract Bond.

[terminus]

I think it would be better-suited to a secondary villain, one who is susceptible to seduction - the villain convinces him that he is the only one brilliant enough to do what the villain needs. Especially if Bond can turn that against him, leading to his downfall.

I could be convinced to lean in this direction - but it would need to be carefully done.

Hmmmmm... I don't want to seem like I keep throwing out useless ideas, but what if our villain thinks he is so superior that he underestimates his "pawns" (bear with me, here) -- that he is a man who acts, as Douglas Adams so eloquently put it, "with the total arrogance of someone who doesn't even know what arrogance means"?

He is an unselfconscious villain, not in the Goldfinger mode (of knowing how ridiculous his schemes must look), but seeming ridiculous to Bond and company... until he lays out the total villainy of his planned actions, and becomes very, very serious, indeed.

He is incredibly pompous, believing fully in his own self-superiority, but you do not want to underestimate him because of it.

I think with the trail of breadcrumbs that Bond must follow, we won't necessarily figure out the true villain until a decent way into the story itself, perhaps. I think you are correct in the postulation that he would consider himself so smart that he's created this scheme to force Bond and MI6 to track down this 'lost' weapon - but can't even concieve of the eventuality that Bond would be able to realise (albeit, towards the end) that the whole plot has been a set-up and turns the tables, outsmarting our master villain/villainess.

I had an idea for an action sequence: the villains strap a bomb to somebody, and in order to stay alive, they have to drive around town, passing certain checkpoints to buy more time. Bond is on-scene, and steadily begins to work out that the whole thing is a set-up; every time they pass a checkpoint, more time is added to the count-down timer (probably a clock on the bomb). However, no signal is sent out. There is nothing communicating with the bomb and the checkpoint to instruct the bomb that it has passed said checkpoint. He proves this by crashing the car and waiting for the timer to run out, and nothing happens. The entire thing is a set-up to distract Bond.

It's something I could see being included - we would need to figure it out carefully because it would involve some knowledge of the town in which the piece is set, I think. It wouldn't fit as the Australian "pretitle sequence" and probably wouldn't fit in the UK sections or on the cruise liner piece (perhaps the cruise liner from Southampton/Portsmouth/Liverpool to New York could be where Bond reencounters the random woman from his vacation - at which point, the villain assumes they are working in cohesion and targets her?). So it would need to be Canada.

[Captain Tightpants]

It's something I could see being included - we would need to figure it out carefully because it would involve some knowledge of the town in which the piece is set, I think. It wouldn't fit as the Australian "pretitle sequence" and probably wouldn't fit in the UK sections or on the cruise liner piece (perhaps the cruise liner from Southampton/Portsmouth/Liverpool to New York could be where Bond reencounters the random woman from his vacation - at which point, the villain assumes they are working in cohesion and targets her?). So it would need to be Canada.

I never envisioned it as the pre-title sequence, though if the PTS is set in Australia, I can help you there since I'm Australian myself. Sydney would probably be the best place to put it; I know that city best.

But I had something else in mind: one of the plot elements is that Bond must find and protect a person who has the knowledge and/or power to stop the villain dead in his tracks, right?

- a closeted government official is brutally murdered in the seedy underbelly of the gay scene
- there is an investigation into a phone hacking scandal
- a mission involving MI6/The Double-Oh Section goes horrifically wrong
- after a mission, Bond is assigned to two weeks leave and stumbles upon the plot
- a specific person has vital information that could take down the villain of the piece
- Bond is temporarily withdrawn from active service and ent to Shrublands
- there is a dangerous conspiracy that begins to unravel during the novel

Well, he (or she) can be the one strapped to the bomb. The villain doesn't need to kill this person in order to succeed - he just needs to slow this person down enough that he can put his plans into action. Killing this particular person doesn't really do anything, anyway; Bond will simply keep coming. But if the villain were to keep Bond occupied by strapping a bomb to the person who can stop him and forcing Bond to drive all over the city in a bogus game of hide-and-seek, it takes care of two problems. And we can work the histrionic elements into the villain by way of his actions in this scene if we want to (but I think it would still work best for a secondary villain).

I don't think it would be too difficult to do, even if we didn't know that much about the city. All we really need is a route to follow (it starts on the eastern bank and finishes near Parc du Mont-Royal). The purpose of the scene is to create tension, and we're not going to do that if we list all the turns Bond makes, or rattle off all the landmarks he passes. It's really just a case of working out how the bomb system works: I imagine that driving past certain cell phone towers would add more time to the bomb, with the location of the next tower given by the car's GPS. However, Bond uses a cell phone scanning device to work out that its a hoax. All cell phones send out a standard search-and-retrieve signal, looking for a tower. It basically asks "are you there?", and that's how it measures reception. Universities use devices that can scan for these signals during examinations. The fake bomb would supposedly be sending out these signals to cell phone towers, and when it receives an answer, it would add more time to the bomb as Bond would chase down the next checkpoint. However, by using a signal-scanning device, Bond works out that no information is being exchanged between the bomb and the tower. The scene ends with Bond crashing the car and letting the timer count down to zero. When it gets there, either 1) nothing happens, or 2) the timer simply reverts to its original countdown and begins again.

[Mr. Blofeld]

I can see them driving around Quebec City (or possibly the older section of it, which is a popular tourist destination), trying to stop at certain sections -- but is Bond still on vacation, at this time, or is he in Canada for a different reason?

[terminus]

I have said it repeatedly before, by the time Bond is in Canada, he is NOT on vacation anymore.

Here's the current travel-chart:


Australia - "PTS"
Manchester - Murder of MI6 Operative
Mexico (or somewhere similarly exotic) - Bond on vacation
London - Bond recalled, given briefing
Manchester to Southampton/Portsmouth/Liverpool - Bond investigates murder, which leads to ...
Cruise Liner - Bond remeets the girl from the vacation
New York -
Canada (Quebec/Montreal/Vancouver - perhaps others) - Main Bulk of the plot



IF we wanted to use Felix - then we've got the sequence in New York in which to position him to help Bond, but this doesn't need to happen, and we'd need to discuss Felix even more were we going to use him more.


CT - you had the idea for Bond and the people smuggling in Australia on the ferry or boat (the details escape me). Perhaps we could focus on this sequence for the moment and flesh it out - as it is mostly standalone but will give us something to focus on for the moment.

Could you elaborate on how you picture the sequence of events occuring and over, possibly, how many chapters you would see it unfolding. I'm picturing that, at most, we would want to give over maybe three chapters to the Australia segment (note, this is not cemented, just so we have a vague idea of how long we're spending in each location)

[Captain Tightpants]

CT - you had the idea for Bond and the people smuggling in Australia on the ferry or boat (the details escape me). Perhaps we could focus on this sequence for the moment and flesh it out - as it is mostly standalone but will give us something to focus on for the moment.

Could you elaborate on how you picture the sequence of events occuring and over, possibly, how many chapters you would see it unfolding. I'm picturing that, at most, we would want to give over maybe three chapters to the Australia segment (note, this is not cemented, just so we have a vague idea of how long we're spending in each location)

Okay. It's kind of a politically-charged issue right now. Illegal immigrants - the official term is 'asylum seekers' - pay people-smugglers in Indonesia to get them into Australia. Most of the boats they use are dangerous, and the usually get intercepted by the Australian Navy. The asylum seekers are sent to detention centres for processing. A lot of people who try this are legitimate refugees, but we need to know who they are and if they have an actual claim to asylum and many of them have no way of backing up their claims. This is a problem because it takes a long time to process applications, and people are arriving faster than they can be processed, and nobody really knows what to do about it. Right now, the emphasis is on a joint program with Indonesia to prosecute people-smugglers, to stop the boats from leaving Indonesia. Previous attempts to handle the problem have been absolute disasters; the Howard government introduced the "Pacific Solution", which basically made it somebody else's problem. Of course, the Howard government was completely incompetent (and the immigration department was run by Phillip Ruddock, who was one of the most unlikeable politicians the country has ever seen), and they found themselves in the "Children Overbaord" affair, claiming that asylum seekers had thrown children into the water to force the HMAS Adelaide to take them to Australia, which was a fabrication.

But perhaps the most embarrassing incident was the Tampa crisis, when a group of Afghan asylum seekers took control of the MV Tampa, a Norwegian container vessel. The Tampa responded to a distress call from the Palapa 1, a smuggling vessel that was overloaded with four hundred refugess (when it was certified to carry just twenty-seven people) and had become stricken about six hours away from Christmas Island (a major interception point off Australia's north-west coat). The captain of the Tampa requested permission to enter Australian territorial waters, but, knowing that the refugees were on-board, Australia denied the request and tried to send the Tampa to Indonesia. However, the refugees cottoned on to this pretty quickly and instead demanded the Tampa go to Australia anyway. The captain ended up declaring a state of emergency and entered Australian waters to seek medical aid for some of the refugees, and the SAS-R were deployed to intercept the ship. It triggered an international incident because Norway accused Australia of irnoring international maritime law (if a vessel is in distress, it needs to dock at the nearest port; Christmas Island was six hours away, but the government tried to send the Tampa to Indonesia, twelve hours away). The Tampa crisis was an embarrassment because nobody wanted to be there - the crew of the Tampa didn't, the refugees didn't, the SAS soldiers didn't, and the public didn't; the only people who wanted the ship to go to Indonesia were the politicians who wanted to make border protection an election issue.

What I have in mind for the first sequence of the story revolves around people-smuggling. I imagine that Bond would be called in to deal with a terrorist trying to smuggle himself into Australia on-board an asylum seeker boat. Bond, in association with the Australian Navy, intercept a boat off the coast of Western Australia based on intelligence that the terrorist will be there. The mission would go badly, probably involving the loss of life, which combined with the government mishandling the situation in the first place would attract controversy in Britain as the public ask why MI6 is getting itself involved in regional politics on the other side of the world.

[terminus]

I like the sound of the Australian sequence you're envisaging - feel free to flesh it out more, though I'm not sure about the controversy that would get brought to the events. Unless we tie this into the subsequent events at the briefing with M ("after the cock-up in Australia, we can hardly afford another Gareth Williams incident smearing the good name of the establishment ...") then I could see it working.

Feel free to develop the suggestion as you see fit, CT, but keep us updated on your fleshing out of the sequence!

I postulated Mexico as a location for Bond to be sent on vacation - but does anyone have any other suggestions for locations that we could use for the few chapters we'd be there (long enough for Bond to encounter and have a minor romance with the main girl). I imagine it would need to be somewhere exotic (especially if the majority of the novel is in Canada and the UK) and somewhere that we can have girls in bikinis climbing out of swimming pools and garnering admiring glances from the men nearby.

[Captain Tightpants]

I figure the sequence would involve something like this: Bond arrives on a warship, the HMAS Macquarie, beginning the search for a skiff coming in from Indonesia. He has solid intelligence that a known terrorist is on-board. The terrorist, however, is not going to go quietly, and so takes the entire skiff hostage. He outlines a series of demands calling for the release of his comrades, but Bond knows they are already dead. The Macquarie escorts the skiff to a beach in Western Australia where the standoff continues. The terrorist gives the Australian government one hour to meet his demands, or else he will start executing one hostage per minute - and with over three hundred hostages, he can go on for nearly six hours. Bond ends the standoff by killing the terrorist, but because he is forced to rush to prevent the deaths of hostages, he misses the fact that the terrorist is carrying a dead man's switch. When dropped, it sets off a bomb that kills a handful of asylum seekers. The incident receives massive coverage worldwide, and though an investigation clears Bond of any wrongdoing (he did, after all, have to take the shot before the terrorist killed someone), M sends him on vacation to keep him out of the public eye.

[007jamesbond]

why not Hawaii as Bond vacation spot?

And I think we are getting closer to a treatment....what esle do we need to do?

[terminus]

It's a good idea - but perhaps a bit too commercial - though it would certainly be a possible location given the renewed interest via Hawaii 5-0.

We are sort of constructing the treatment, slowly building it up from the beginning. 007jamesbond - there is no rush to get to building a full treatment. If we're to build things up with enough substance to keep them going for nigh on 52 chapters, we are going to need to have a good deal of understanding to them.

[coco1997]

Just thought I'd pop in to commend you guys on the fine developments--and to say that if you need any help in researching something you may not have a particular knowledge of, feel free to ask me.

[007jamesbond]

never mind...

Edited by 007jamesbond, 08 August 2011 - 04:47 AM.

[Captain Tightpants]

I believe the agent is being murdered in the gay nightclub. It's more damning that way - if he was murdered outside, then maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man is also an MI6 officer. His identity is protected. The riots in London happened because of a police shooting, but nobody knows the identity of the officer who is murdered in our story.

Also, we're already using phone-hacking as a plot device, plus elements of the Madeline Pulver incident, but at least we're adapting them to fit the story. To have everyone suddenly start rioting is just ripping stories from headlines.

[terminus]

Just thought I'd pop in to commend you guys on the fine developments--and to say that if you need any help in researching something you may not have a particular knowledge of, feel free to ask me.

Thanks, buddy - we'll keep you to that!

never mind...

NEVER be afraid of suggesting something for the project - even if the idea is knocked back, it can stimulate further discussion and generate ideas in ways that you may not have anticipated.

I believe the agent is being murdered in the gay nightclub. It's more damning that way - if he was murdered outside, then maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man is also an MI6 officer. His identity is protected. The riots in London happened because of a police shooting, but nobody knows the identity of the officer who is murdered in our story.

Also, we're already using phone-hacking as a plot device, plus elements of the Madeline Pulver incident, but at least we're adapting them to fit the story. To have everyone suddenly start rioting is just ripping stories from headlines.

But - as CT said - we do need the murder to look like an actual murder, to pull MI6 into the mystery and to push them on towards locating the actual superweapon on behalf of the villain. A death in a riot would look too much like an accident - and that wouldn't draw MI6 into the death in the manner that an outright murder would.

[Captain Tightpants]

I think he meant having things play out in such a way that the agent's death triggered the riot rather than having the death take place during it. But like I said - the riots in London were the result of a police shooting, so imitating it would just be ripping things from the headlines. We've already got variations on the Madeline Pulver incident and phone-hacking scandal, so riots in Manchester would be taking things a little too far. Plus, if we just keep taking every headline and adapting it into the story, all we're going to get is a bloated an incoherent mess of a story ... if anyone ever gets around to writing it.

[Mr. Blofeld]

I've got ideas for names swirling around in my head; do you want me to say them now, or wait until the plot work is done?

[coco1997]

I've got ideas for names swirling around in my head; do you want me to say them now, or wait until the plot work is done?

Character names? That might be valuable, so we can stop referring to the characters by the generic labels we've been using so far.

[007jamesbond]

I've got ideas for names swirling around in my head; do you want me to say them now, or wait until the plot work is done?

I would like to see your ideas

[Mr. Blofeld]

Well... just names; they can be applied to whatever characters you see fit. I've sort of gotten them together based on sound quality; for instance, one of them already sounds like a villain, and you'll see why:

- Frederig Holst (Danish; possibly called "The Ghost")

- Edwin Champion (possibly a member of the House of Lords)

- Velma Strutter (a bit cartoonish, sorry; it can be dumped or revised if needed)

- Paul Beckwith

- Rudolf Maté

- Dr. Hermann Warm (pronounced "Voarm"; head of the "superweapon" project)

- Stanley Cortez (possible contact in Mexico; mother was an Englishwoman whose favorite film star was Stanley Baker)

[terminus]

- Frederig Holst (Danish; possibly called "The Ghost")
- Edwin Champion (possibly a member of the House of Lords)
- Velma Strutter (a bit cartoonish, sorry; it can be dumped or revised if needed)
- Paul Beckwith
- Rudolf Maté
- Dr. Hermann Warm (pronounced "Voarm"; head of the "superweapon" project)
- Stanley Cortez (possible contact in Mexico; mother was an Englishwoman whose favorite film star was Stanley Baker)

Some of them are good - but some of them, such as Champion and Strutter, and Warm (to an extent), were too reminiscent of a bad Fleming pastiche.

I had a working name in my head for both the main girl and the villain and a possible name for a bit-part girl -

Marcus Scratchman, for the villain
Eva Adams, for the main girl
Xanthia - for a minor girl

[Mr. Blofeld]

I had some ideas for possible chapter titles, as well (and possibly our title for the whole work):

Chapter Titles:

- Door Without a Key

- "Non, Rien de Rien?"


Book Title:

- A Quality of Mercy (from Shakespeare; has a nice ring to it, no?)


I also had an idea for the name of the "superweapon" project; if it's not too presumptuous of me, perhaps it could be called the "Terminus Project"? Certainly sounds appropriate...

[terminus]

As helpful as chapter names and even names for the book are - it's taking us a little bit off track. We don't quite know how the events we have discussed will break down chapter-wise yet, so we can't really determine what chapters will be called - nor what the story as a whole is going to end up being called.

That said, I've been calling the project 'Semper Occultus' in my head

I think we need to swing back to the discussion of the story and decide where Bond is sent on his enforced vacation - we've got Hawaii and Mexico both in contention, though it could be anywhere exotic and tropical. We could even use Jamaica, if we wanted.

[Mr. Blofeld]

Perhaps the cruise liner and Mexico locations could be switched? A cruise seems the easiest thing to pack Bond off on, for a government desperate to get him on a "forced vacation", and having Mexico be where he re-encounters "vacation lady" could lead nicely into trying to get in touch with the British embassy in Mexico, leading into Cortez's involvement...

...or some such.

[Captain Tightpants]

A few name suggestions:

Oliver Derrick, the operative murdered in the gay nightclub.

Isaac Berry, the MI5 agent investigating Derrick's death.

Leon Bartholomew, a British tabloid pundit in the vein of Bill O'Reilly, who has no real politics of his own.

Tamara Laitman, a bored socialite who Bond meets while on vacation.

[Mr. Blofeld]

Perhaps the murdered operative could have effects on him similar to the Taman Shud Case? It's still one of the most tantalizing unsolved mysteries in Australian history; might be useful to inject our tale with some of that same mysteriousness...

[terminus]

Perhaps the cruise liner and Mexico locations could be switched? A cruise seems the easiest thing to pack Bond off on, for a government desperate to get him on a "forced vacation", and having Mexico be where he re-encounters "vacation lady" could lead nicely into trying to get in touch with the British embassy in Mexico, leading into Cortez's involvement...

...or some such.

Hmmmm. I suppose swapping it around would work, but would make the vacation chapters very limited in scope or having a multitude of locations and more research! It's a nice idea, Mr. Blofeld, just not sure it would work.

A few name suggestions:

Oliver Derrick, the operative murdered in the gay nightclub.

Isaac Berry, the MI5 agent investigating Derrick's death.

Leon Bartholomew, a British tabloid pundit in the vein of Bill O'Reilly, who has no real politics of his own.

Tamara Laitman, a bored socialite who Bond meets while on vacation.

I do like these names, as much as I liked Eva and Xanthia. I am officially coining the girl that Bond meets on vacation as Tamara Laitman, whether she ends up being a socialite or an air stewardess as was originally hypothesised somewhere earlier in the thread.

We'll keep the others in our heads.

Perhaps the murdered operative could have effects on him similar to the Taman Shud Case? It's still one of the most tantalizing unsolved mysteries in Australian history; might be useful to inject our tale with some of that same mysteriousness...

There will be some mysteriousness, so to speak, with the murder mystery investigation into the murder of the MI6 operative and Bond and his MI5 cohort following the trail to the cruise liner and onwards to New York. I think we've got enough 'mystery' with the unravelling DaVincid Code style trail that Bond must follow to reach the super-weapon.

[007jamesbond]

Jacob Smith, a CSIS agent assigned as the Mi6 Liasion Officer who Bond encounters while in Canada to assist with the mission.
Paul Weber, a german assassin sent to kill Bond in Canada
Jake William, a ASIS agent assigned to help Bond in the PTS

sorry if the names sucks....I dont know what other characters will be used

Edited by 007jamesbond, 10 August 2011 - 03:09 AM.