MovieChat Forums > Dr. No (1962) Discussion > Dr. No's plan would inevitably fail

Dr. No's plan would inevitably fail

posted 2 years ago by RustyShacklefurd (2026)
15 replies | jump to latest

He has 2 MI6 agents killed because they're helping the CIA investiage Crab Key. MI6 sends Bond to investigate further and Dr. No tries several times to have him killed. If he succeeds in killing Bond then MI6 will just send more people to investigate. It would only be a matter of time before the Americans or British definitively conclude that Crab Key is responsible for disrupting the American rocket launches. It would only be a matter of time before the Americans or British openly forced their way onto Crab Key and shut down Dr. No's operation. Killing Bond would just delay the inevitable.

[–] moviechatterer (13772) 2 years ago

I'd imagine thats a plot hole central to several spy / terrorist / master criminal type movies

[–] Egosomnia (794) a year ago

"MI6 will just send more people to investigate."

I trust they will be more successful...

[–] RustyShacklefurd (2026) a year ago

Dr. No might realize that it would hurt more than help if he killed even more MI6 agents. Eventually MI6 may send so many agents with so much security that it would be impossible for Dr. No to kill all of them. Eventually the Jamaican government would become directly involved in the investigation. Eventually there would be so much power behind the investigation that Dr. No couldn't possibly stop it.

[–] Egosomnia (794) a year ago

My reply was a line from "Goldfinger", when Bond, strapped to a golden table and facing a laser, says, "You're forgetting one thing. If I fail to report, 008 replaces me."

Goldfinger replies with that line. :)

[–] RustyShacklefurd (2026) a year ago

The situations are hardly analogous. At that point in the movie Bond literally knew nothing about Goldfinger's plan. All Bond knew was the phrase 'Operation Grandslam'. If 008 tried to follow up on Bond's investigation, if 008 even chose to do so, then he would have nowhere to begin. 008 wouldn't even know about the phrase 'Operation Grandslam'. 008 would have no idea of what Goldfinger was planning. In contrast, with this movie Dr. No had already put his plan into action. Bond and everyone else investigating the matter already knew what was going on. They all knew someone was using radio jamming to disrupt NASA rocket launches. The only things they didn't know were who was doing it and where they were doing it. They had everything they needed to answer those 2 questions. Ascertaining the certainty that the radio jamming was coming from Crab Key was inevitable by the time Bond got involved. It was impossible by that point for Dr. No to permanently prevent that inevitability.

[–] Egosomnia (794) a year ago

I was just joking, Rusty. ;)

[–] millsey72 (9695) a year ago

Can we all please be serious on these boards. There is no need for humor or sarcasm

[–] Egosomnia (794) a year ago

Now THAT was funny! :)

[–] Ace_Spade (9435) a year ago

Well, okay, but Bond barely thwarts Dr. No. It's the last moments when he succeeds. Had Bond been delayed by even a few days, Dr. No would have completed his plan, demonstrated SPECTRE's power, and moved on to extortion and terrorism - more openly than before. In other words, further agents not only wouldn't succeed, but couldn't.

Now, assassins might succeed, but Bond's mission was on a timeline, and he barely made it.

[–] RustyShacklefurd (2026) a year ago

I'm not talking about whether Bond himself thwarts Dr. No. I'm talking about MI6 as a whole. And I remind you that SPECTRE's power in terms of disrupting American rocket launches had already been demonstrated. They had already done it several times. I don't know what Dr. No would move on to. The plan seemed to be to disrupt rocket launches indefinitely. If Bond was killed and Dr. No kept on disrupting rocket launches then MI6 would just send more people to investigate, they may have even gotten the Jamaican government directly involved and eventually the investigation would be too focused and powerful for Dr. No to stop it from shutting down his whole operation on Crab Key.

[–] Ace_Spade (9435) a year ago

Yes, but Dr. No might have been able to kill several more agents and disrupt several more rocket launches before being forced out. They also had multiple moles in the MI6 operations. Maybe Dr. No and SPECTRE were convinced that they could indefinitely keep giving agents the runaround before terminating them.

[–] RustyShacklefurd (2026) a year ago

The point is Dr. No's whole operation on Crab Key would eventually be shut down, no matter how long it took. It would become a war of attrition he couldn't win. I have no reason to believe that Dr. No didn't understand that reality. I think his plan was simply to keep disrupting rocket launches for as long as it remained feasible.

[–] Ace_Spade (9435) a year ago

I think we're pretty much in agreement here. His operation couldn't remain there indefinitely, or at least, not without some permutation or "second phase" that we never got to see (and Dr. No never got to start).

[–] execpro22 (6) 9 months ago

Nope. If you remember when Dr No is discussing his plans with Bond he states that the Island and mission here are TEMPORARY. Once the mission had been completed which was to mess up the next rocket test, Dr No would move on to another mission and location. So, it didn't matter to him if he offed more MI6 agents because the operation was temporary to him.

[–] RustyShacklefurd (2026) 9 months ago

Dr. No didn't say that his mission would be accomplished when he disrupted the next rocket launch. He never explained exactly what his mission being "accomplished" actually meant.