Nailing it the First Time: A Dr. No Script Analysis
With all the recent speculation over who the next James Bond is going to be, I thought it’d be a great time to rewatch them all from the beginning; that way, when the choice comes in, I can cite the primary sources when I complain, just like everybody else. I’ve seen a good chunk of these movies, but never in order–and none from the pre-Daniel Craig era since I was a child, so I didn’t really know what I was getting into. So when I finally finished watching Dr. No, the first in a nearly 65-year-old film franchise, I was blown away. Not necessarily by how good it is (it is really good), but just by how much the writers and director seemed to nail the “Bond” style and formula that we’ve come to love right from the jump, and how every film that’s followed has more-or-less stuck to the exact same beats. Because when you get something right the first time, there’s no need to fix it.
OPENING IMAGE
The film opens in Jamaica, as we see three blind beggars walking in a row around their neighborhood, asking people for change as they go. (The script refers to these gentlemen as “Chinese Negroes”. Not really sure what that means, but on the off chance it’s as offensive as it sounds, please consider this a trigger warning).
Anyway, we follow these men as they make their way around the island, giving the audience a preview of the foreign land in which this Bond film is to be placed.
INCITING INCIDENT
We make our way to a country club-type resort on the island known as the “Queen’s Club”, where we find 4 British men playing cards: Strangways, Professor Dent, Potter, and Pleydell Smith. Strangways abruptly leaves the game after winning a decent-sized hand.
He goes to the parking lot of the Queen’s Club and proceeds to unlock his car when he’s suddenly approached by the three blind beggars. Just after giving them some change, the three men simultaneously pull out guns and fire rapidly, killing Strangways on the spot. A getaway car appears out of nowhere, the men load up the body, and they leave the scene without attracting so much as a single witness.
We cut to Strangways’s house, where his Secretary Mary is operating a complicated radio system. We now know that Strangways is involved in some business known as “Universal Exports”, but don’t quite know what this business entails. Anyway, as Mary continues to operate the radio, the three blind beggars (who are now revealed to be fully-seeing assassins) break into the home, shoot her, and steal two classified folders out of Strangways’s filing cabinet, titled “Crab Key” and “Dr. No”.
Already, we’ve been given our mystery, clues, and the spectacular location in which the film takes place; all crucial staples to any good Bond film.
SET UP
We cut to a casino, where a beautiful woman plays cards against a mysterious suited man across the table. Despite her consistent raising of the stakes, he continues to outplay her. The two exchange names, and it’s revealed that the man across the table is none other than James Bond himself.
After Bond gets up due to the urgent call, we cut to the famous MI6 headquarters, where Bond works as one of Britain’s top secret agents. There, we meet for the first time MI6’s secretary, Moneypenny (who flirts with Bond every chance she gets), and the head of MI6, M (AKA the only person Bond has to answer to).
M tells Bond that they’ve lost all contact with Strangways, who has suddenly disappeared, along with his secretary. It’s revealed that Strangways was Britain’s top secret agent in Jamaica, and that Universal Exports is really just a cover for the British Intelligence Agency. It is also revealed that Strangways was right in the middle of investigating the mysterious interference of American rockets.
When Bond gets home to pack for his mission, he finds Sylvia, the woman from the casino, playing golf in his living room. They have some cute back-and-forths, and then they sleep together (of course), which really serves no purpose to the plot other than to show that Bond can and will pull whenever given the opportunity.
DEBATE
Bond lands in Jamaica and is immediately greeted by a chauffeur. Suspicious of this, Bond heads over to the telephone booth and calls Pleydell Smith, another agent, and asks if he’s sent a car. Pleydell says no, and Bond now realizes that this chauffeur isn’t who he says he is. Regardless, Bond hops into the car to see this thing through.
As all of this is going down, another suspicious figure by the name of Leiter is spying on Bond throughout the entire interaction. And when Bond gets in the car with the chauffeur, Leiter gets into another car with his own chauffeur (Quarrel) to follow them.
After a few minutes of toying with the man, Bond finally reveals his gun and tells the driver to pull over.
The two have a classic 60’s brawl before the chauffeur admits defeat and asks if it's okay if he smokes a cigarette. Expecting to get some answers, Bond says it’s fine, but instead of smoking the cigarette, the man eats it, falls to the ground, and dies.
BREAK INTO TWO
Act 2 begins with Bond fully aware that he’s been spotted and in danger. With nothing left to lose, Bond begins to openly investigate Strangways’s murder…starting with his home and the rest of the boys at the Queen’s Club.
At Strangways’s house, Bond makes two important discoveries: 1, that Strangways had become infatuated with geology just before his death, and 2, that Strangways just so happens to be fishing buddies with one of the suspicious men that had been following Bond around the island.
Next, at the Queen’s Club, Bond interrogates the other cardplayers.
Bond goes to the harbor to talk to the fisherman Quarrel, who wants nothing to do with him. And of course, a chase ensues.
And then, of course, a fight ensues. Quarrel had led Bond right into a trap, where another goon, Pus-Feller, grabs him from behind. Luckily, Bond gets out of it, just like he always does.
Bond’s upper hand doesn’t last long, though, as Leiter suddenly appears from behind with a gun. After a split second of despair, Leiter reveals himself to be CIA, and Quarrel and Pus-Feller are helping him out. As you can see, every character is a mystery, and every threat comes with some sort of twist that reveals itself within seconds. This happens constantly, so get used to it.
The group of men gets dinner together, where Quarrel tells Bond about how he and Strangways used to explore the islands for rocks, but the only place they couldn’t get too close to was the island Crab Key owned by the Chinese man known as Dr. No.
MIDPOINT
The halfway point finds Bond with a clear direction to head in. He has most of the information regarding the mystery (rocks, Crab Key, something going on with rockets), knows who may be the primary suspect (Dr. No), and knows, for the most part, who he can trust (Leiter, Quarrel, Pleydell Smith).
The only thing he doesn’t understand is why Strangways had been collecting rock samples, so he visits the island's top laboratory to talk to Professor Dent.
BAD TO WORSE
After his meeting with Bond, Dent takes a boat out to Crab Key to speak with Dr. No. He’s led into a grand, villainous lair where Dr. No only communicates to him via loudspeaker, not in person, making his presence much more ominous.
Back at Pleydell Smith’s office, Bond requests all the files they have on Dr. No and Crab Key. Taro, Smith’s secretary, says that they can’t be found anywhere, and that the last person to have them was Strangways. Hmm…quite convenient.
Instead of focusing on the task at hand, Bond then becomes infatuated with Taro and asks to see her later that night (his Achilles Heel for the next 70 years).
Anyway, later that day, Bond performs some tests on some leftover rock samples that Strangway left behind with Quarrel, and he discovers that they’re ridiculously radioactive. Professor Dent was lying…
This next part of the script drags on, so I’m gonna brush through it pretty quickly, but Bond leaves Quarrel to go visit Taro at his apartment up in the mountains. On his way there, a car starts chasing him; he escapes, the other car falls off a cliff and explodes, and he makes it to Taro’s, clearly knowing that she set him up. Despite this, he sleeps with her anyway.
In the midst of all this, Taro calls someone to come kill Bond, and Bond calls someone to come arrest Taro. Bond’s guy comes first, Taro gets arrested, and Bond goes back inside to wait for his would-be assassin. After several hours, none other than Professor Dent walks through the door…
BREAK INTO THREE
Act 3 finds Bond and Quarrel arriving on the beaches of Crab Key via canoe. They quickly hide their boat and take cover in the bushes in order to rest. When they awaken, they find a young, blonde woman by the name of Honey Ryder collecting seashells on the beach.
Within seconds of Bond saying that, a military-grade ship arrives at the shore and starts firing at the beach.
After the ship leaves, Honey rushes over to her canoe and discovers that it’s been shot to bits. Now she has no way off the island and must stick with Bond and Quarrel.
The three of them dig deeper into the island, wading in the rivers and marching through the forest. There are several more close calls with the island’s security, more “evidence” of dragons, and the very melodramatic reveal that Dr. No killed Honey’s father. All the fun silly stuff you’d come to expect from a movie like this.
Now nighttime, the three make their way across a shallow swamp when they see a tank with a flamethrower moving in the distance: the dragon.
Quarrel and Bond start firing as the dragon gets closer, but its metallic body is bulletproof. Then, quite anticlimactically, the dragon’s flamethrower roars out and burns Quarrel to a crisp.
The dragon stops, and two men in Hazmat suits get out and arrest Bond and Honey, taking them back to Dr. No’s lair.
FINALE
They get back to No’s lair, which is filled with employees all wearing Hazmat suits. They strip and spray Bond and Honey down with a chemical wash to reduce their radioactivity from the island (we still don’t really know what’s going on with that) before locking them inside a cell that resembles a hotel room more than a prison.
While drinking some coffee and plotting their escape, the two suddenly become very sleepy and pass out (it was poisoned, of course). Now, this is another part I’m just going to gloss over, because it’s also basically pointless. While unconscious, Dr. No enters their rooms and looks at them for like a second before leaving. Then they wake up again. Nothing important comes from this sequence of events whatsoever.
Anyway, after waking up, they’re escorted downstairs…
This is our first time getting a good, clear look at Dr. No, who appears to have two robotic false hands in place of his old ones (all the Bond villains have little quirks like this).
They go and sit down at the dinner table, where Dr. No gives them his full backstory (who his parents were, how he became so wealthy, how he lost his hands to a radioactive experiment gone wrong, etc). Now, he is using the radioactive power on Crab Key Island to disrupt American rocket launches, all on behalf of the mysterious criminal enterprise known as Spectre.
Their meal is interrupted by the announcement of the rocket launch. Dr. No separates Bond and Honey, sending them each to their own personal cells (much less comfortable than the hotel-themed one from before).
But Bond doesn’t remain trapped for long. He breaks into the cell’s air vent and begins to crawl throughout the air shaft. He drops down, attacks one of Dr. No’s goons (Chang), and steals his clothes.
Now undercover, Bond strolls into the reactor room, where Dr. No and dozens of other scientists prepare to harness the nuclear power from the island to stop the Americans’ rocket from taking off.
Just as the rocket is about to launch, Bond (dressed as Chang) overloads the system with an excessive amount of radioactivity (movie logic, I don’t know). The building begins to shake, sirens go off, and the rocket takes off without fail. Bond stopped Dr. No’s plan, but now there’s a new problem: the island has become unstable and is ready to explode.
Everyone on the island rushes to escape, but before Bond can slip out, he’s spotted by Dr. No. The two duke it out on the walkway above a nuclear reactive pool of water below, until…
Having now killed Dr. No, Bond rushes around the headquarters, desperately searching for Honey Ryder. With the help of an employee, he finds her tied up to the floor of a dark cell. He frees her, but they’re running out of time.
They rush to the port of the island, where employees are fleeing for canoes and diving into the water for their lives. They find a small boat and jump in, both barely conscious at this point, and take off for the mainland…
CLOSING IMAGE
After what seems to be several hours, Bond and Honey run out of fuel. With nothing else to do but float, the two embrace each other and romantically fall to the floor of the vessel and out of frame.
Then, a moment later, Leiter arrives next to them on a much larger vessel with the Marines. Bond gives one of his famous quips, embraces his girl, and the credits roll.
WHY IT’S GREAT
As I mentioned before, this film is great because it successfully created the blueprint and set the standard for every single Bond film that came in the 64 years that followed it. Obviously, the books deserve credit in this regard too, but there are just so many more fun elements of the film that can’t be achieved through novels alone. The themes, the look, the style, the endless fun tropes, the campy yet somehow cool dialogue–I could go on and on. Nothing else comes nearly as close to being as timeless as this movie, and the script played such a major role in achieving that feat. I’m not sure what’s in store for the next James Bond films, but if there’s anything to be learned from their predecessors, it’s that they should probably stick to the formula developed in the original Dr. No, because it works every time.
