Q, the head of Q Branch (Major Boothroyd, for most of the series), spent decades building things for Bond, and Bond spent decades ignoring a good share of them. Some were handed to him and never switched on. Others never left the lab at all. They flattened test dummies in the background while Q explained something more sensible in the foreground.
These are Q gadgets that Q or Q Branch showed on screen and that Bond never used in that film. This list pairs each one with one real scene later in the same film, a moment where Bond was in trouble and the gadget was sitting on a shelf somewhere. Two kinds count. Some were issued to Bond and never used. Others were lab tests he never touched. The scenes all happen. What the gadget would have done there is our invention.
For the gadgets Bond did put to work, see our white elephant gift list and our car gadgets list.
8 to 6: Would Have Helped. Slightly.
8. The Hovering Tea Tray, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
At Q’s field lab in Egypt, a magnetically propelled tea tray shoots across the room fast enough to take a test dummy’s head off. Bond watches the demonstration. Nobody packs it for him.
The scene that needed it: On the train to Sardinia, Jaws is waiting in Anya’s compartment. The fight goes badly enough that Bond wins only by shocking Jaws through his steel teeth with a broken electric lamp, then sending him out through the window.
Verdict: A fast metal tray against a man with a mouthful of steel. At best it buys Bond a second or two while Jaws decides whether to dodge it or bite it.
7. The Ejector Office Chair, GoldenEye (1995)
In the background of GoldenEye’s Q Branch scene, a staff member settles into a comfortable-looking chair, picks up a phone and is fired across the room, chair and all. Q is busy telling Bond to bring his equipment back in one piece. (This is not the famous ejector seat. That one is in the Goldfinger Aston Martin, and Bond does use it, as our car gadgets list explains.)
The scene that needed it: In the Cuban control room, Boris sits at his keyboard trying to undo Natalya’s sabotage of the satellite, with Bond a prisoner and his gear confiscated. One adjustment to Boris’s seat and the problem leaves the room at speed. It would have been fitting, too: earlier, when Natalya needed Boris’s password, the answer to his riddle was a chair. Bond got it on the first try. What actually happened in that room, with Boris and one of Bond’s confiscated gadgets, is covered in our lairs list.
Verdict: It would have bought real time. The catch is installation: Bond is a captive in that room, so someone else would have had to swap the chairs first.
6. The Exploding Alarm Clock, Licence to Kill (1989)
When Q turns up in Isthmus on his own time with a bag of equipment, the kit includes an alarm clock that’s actually a bomb. Q pitches it with a joke about it never waking anyone who uses it. Bond never uses it.
The scene that needed it: Bond has already got close enough to Sanchez to pitch himself as a hired gun. Then he tries to kill him with a long-range shot, and two Hong Kong narcotics officers, who had their own plans for Sanchez, break up the attempt and haul Bond away.
Verdict: A bomb disguised as a bedside clock is quieter than a rifle and needs nobody to look away at the right moment. It still needs a way into Sanchez’s house, which Bond doesn’t have yet. Middle of the pack, because the delivery problem is as big as the gadget.
5 to 4: Would Have Saved a Few Bruises
5. The Arm Cast, For Your Eyes Only (1981)
Smithers demonstrates a plaster cast that looks like any other broken arm, except that it swings out at ferocious speed and flattens a test dummy. Q Branch meant it for an attacker coming up from behind. It never makes it out of the lab.
The scene that needed it: In Cortina, Bond walks onto the ice rink at night and is jumped by three men in full hockey gear. One of them aims a skate at his head and puts a hole in the barrier instead. Bond fends all three off, but it’s a three-against-one brawl on the ice.
Verdict: The cast is built for exactly one move, the attacker who comes from behind, and a hockey ambush is mostly people coming from behind. For once, the injury would have been the concealed weapon.
4. The Exploding Bolas, Moonraker (1979)
At the MI6 base in Brazil, Q Branch shows off bolas that wrap around a person and then explode. The Cultbox Moonraker retrospective called it a pity Bond never got to use them anywhere else, and we agree. Sadly the demo comes after Jaws chased him on the Sugarloaf cable car, so that fight was always going to happen without them.
The scene that needed it: Later, up the Amazon, Jaws catches up with Bond again, captures him and delivers him to Drax. What Drax did with him next is in our list of villains who should have just shot him.
Verdict: Bolas are made for stopping something large that’s coming at you, and Jaws is the largest thing in the film. They wouldn’t have finished him. By this point he has already shrugged off a fall from a plane and a cable car crash. But tied up and smoking, he doesn’t deliver Bond to anyone.
3 to 1: Would Have Ended the Scene Early
3. The Bagpipes, The World Is Not Enough (1999)
In Q’s lab, on the same visit where Bond picks up the ski jacket he’ll need later, a set of bagpipes turns out to be a machine gun and a flamethrower. Bond gets the jacket. The bagpipes stay behind.
The scene that needed it: Skiing in the Caucasus with Elektra, Bond is attacked by four parahawks, snowmobiles hung from paragliders, flown by armed men. He gets them both through it with skiing, luck and a ski jacket that inflates into a protective ball when the avalanche comes down.
Verdict: Four armed flying snowmobiles against a man on skis. A machine gun gives Bond something to shoot back with, and a flamethrower gives the pilots something to think about. The only obstacle is skiing with a set of bagpipes, which Bond would treat as a minor detail.
2. The Ghetto Blaster, The Living Daylights (1987)
Q shows Bond a portable stereo that’s really a shoulder-fired rocket launcher. Q Branch is building it for the Americans, so Bond doesn’t get one.
The scene that needed it: At Whitaker’s estate in Tangier, Whitaker comes at Bond with a gun that has a bulletproof shield built in. Bond empties his pistol into the shield and runs dry. The key ring Q did give him ends it from there, a story told in our white elephant list.
Verdict: The shield is built to stop pistol rounds, and Bond is holding a pistol. A rocket changes that conversation in one shot. The key ring got there in the end, which is the only reason this isn’t number one.
1. The BMW Z3, GoldenEye (1995)
James Bond’s BMW Z3 in GoldenEye is a two-seat roadster that Q hands over with radar, a self-destruct system, missiles behind the headlights and more. Bond never uses any of it, and the car itself is barely on screen. According to Wikipedia, the director put that down to the BMW deal arriving too late in production to write the car into the action. Off screen, BMW says 100 customers were offered a Bond edition Z3 through the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog. None of those came with missiles either.
The scene that needed it: In Cuba, Bond trades the car to CIA man Jack Wade for Wade’s light plane, then he and Natalya fly off to look for the hidden satellite dish. The plane is shot down by a missile. Bond and Natalya crash in the jungle, and Xenia drops from a helicopter to attack them. Bond finally brings the helicopter down with Xenia’s own rifle. The Z3, meanwhile, was last seen driving off with Wade.
Verdict: A helicopter attack is the most direct match on this list, and these missiles were issued to Bond, not just tested in front of him. The catch is the same delivery problem the chair and the clock have: to use them, Bond would have had to keep the car, and he needed the plane to search for the dish. He traded his missiles to Jack Wade for a plane that got shot down.
The Verdict
Eight gadgets, eight scenes, and Bond got out of every one of them without the gadget that would have made it easy. The BMW takes the top spot because Bond had the answer to his problem parked in Cuba and traded it away. Q would point out that surviving without his equipment is not the same as not needing it.