All of which will sound mighty familiar to audiences who are only familiar with Daniel Craig's James Bond, or just plain don't remember a whole lot before them. EON very tentatively began to introduce another international criminal empire in their rebooted 007 films from the end of Casino Royale, which lead directly into Quantum Of Solace. They appeared unnamed in the first and then became the central protagonists of the second, an underground terrorist organisation similar to SPECTRE, known as Quantum. Crucially, though, they were not SPECTRE the group were infilitrated far too easily by Bond, after all, and seemed almost more like an Illumnati-style group of powerful people doing dirty backroom dealings. They also couldn't be SPECTRE because of the rights issues that had Thunderball tied up in the courts for years, and allowed the execrable Never Say Never Again get made back in the day. It's a whole thing. Anyway, that's all been ironed out now and means SPECTRE can return in the next Bond film, with the dangling plot thread of Quantum presumably totally abandoned, having been similarly ignored in Skyfall. Or possibly not, since Jesper Christensen's mysterious Mr White is due to appear in the same film. Perhaps his work for the similarly apolitical Quantum will have him being headhunted by Blofeld?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
