Headscratchers / Dr. No

• Who in their right mind would work in a place with lighted signs saying ABANDON AREA?? I imagine Dr. No's insurance is insane.
  • The roads around some real-life nuclear plants have signs reading 'evacuation route' - sometimes you need an escape plan.
    • I live in Florida, and there are 'evacuation routes' a block or two from my house. Hurricanes happen!
  • It is similar to other safety systems found in industrial and scientific facilities, warning of employees of dangerous conditions. Really, it's just a different version of a fire alarm, and indicates that Dr. No isn't going to let his staff die of radiation poisoning.
  • After Dr. No dies and the mooks have all ran off, why doesn't Bond just turn the reactor off and call in the Marines? Seriously.
    • It was probably too late to stop the base exploding by then.
    • Presumably the reactor went into meltdown, after which nothing in the plant can stop it happening. Makes you wonder about the aftermath...
• What was Dr No's number within SPECTRE? The later films established that SPECTRE leaders have numbers, with Blofeld being Number One. So, does any merchandise/promotional material/whatever give No's number?
  • It's never officially given, to my knowledge. I seem to remember him being designated 4 somewhere once, though. I suspect that's because 4's the lowest number never used by a named character. (They go 1: Blofeld, 2: Largo, 3: Klebb, 4: unnamed guy in YOLT, 5: Kronsteen, 6: Jacques Bouvar, leaving a nice gap for No to be the "original" Number 4 before the YOLT guy. Plus that means Bond's neatly ascending the SPECTRE hierarchy.)
• Where are Honey's pants when James rescues her at the end of the film?
  • There's a bit of Fridge Horror in that, as Dr. No had implied to Bond that guards would have their way with her.
• Why did the titular doctor make so many attempts on Bond's life? You could give the murder of Strangways some justification by saying that he just knew too much, but if No had just remained patient Bond wouldn't have had much to go on. And what exactly was he planning to do after that, kill every single agent that came on to Jamaica to investigate?
  • They may have wanted to initially monitor him at first, possibly bring him in for questioning when he rode away with the fake driver as soon as he arrived in Jamaica. With Bond easily seeing through the ruse and with him beginning to make considerable headway in the case, it's possible Dr. No felt getting rid of Bond would be easier in the long run then allowing him the opportunity to uncover the truth. And in truth, it was Dent who panicked and visited No during the day. Dr. No simply didn't have the right man to deal with Bond and needed to rid himself of an inevitable problem.
• What was the point of drugging the coffee? Bond and Honey were already prisoners and everything they had on them was taken during the radiation cleansing procedure? Next we see Bond sleeping in bed and someone, presumably Dr. No, looking over him. Not only did they drug them, but someone apparently put them to bed.
  • It was Dr No. Most likely the motive was that he was going to invite Bond to dinner and didn't want to take chances that he and Honey would break out of their room somehow before then. He was probably busy with planning the next stage of his operation when Bond showed up (the nurses mention that they didn't know when Bond would show up, only that he would) and, beyond that, No is a Control Freak who wants to dictate when and where and how he and Bond finally meet.
  • It's a holdover from the novel: he likes to perform "medical experiments" (actually just sadistic tortures) on prisoners, and he wanted to have a look at them to decide what experiments they’d be suited for. In the scene in the novel he inspects their sleeping bodies carefully and then decides Bond is a good candidate for his Death Course, which in the movie becomes just an Air Vent Escape.
• Where WAS Chang? Bond beat him up for disguise as he was undressing and presumably went straight into Dr No's rocket toppling chamber. If Bond hadn't done that Chang would STILL not be at his station - did he risk the wrath of Dr No for a bathroom break?
• Why do Dr. No and Honey Ryder refer to Bond as a police officer? Before Honey talks about her father's death, she mentions that "I've never met a detective before." and asks Bond if he'll arrest No. And later, Dr. No tells Bond "Unfortunately, i misjudged you. You are just a stupid Policeman." So, in no way is Bond a Policeman or a Detective. Is this just a leftover line? Was Bond originally supposed to actually be a Detective/Policeman in the script instead of with MI6?
  • It's just an insult. No is claiming to be a new breed of criminal mastermind and saying Bond’s just stupid small-time law enforcement when he doesn’t agree. He's also just turned down No's offer to defect to SPECTRE. The conversation’s straight from the book IIRC. As for Honey’s comment, he is technically there to investigate the disappearance of Strangways, so she’s just making incorrect (but reasonable) assumptions.
    • It's also a bit of a holdover from the novels, where Bond frequently tells the Bond girls that he's "a kind of policeman", in order to offer a vague explanation for his actions and get them to trust him, without fully disclosing his true affiliations.
• In the novel, one measure Bond takes to foil would-be thieves from going through his suitcase: a three-foot length of steel wire that runs through loops inside the lid and holds it shut. Once he fills the case and closes the lid, how does he thread the wire into place?

---