Q Branch has spent sixty years testing things on its own staff. At a private company, a health and safety inspector would have had a lot to say about that. Q Branch is not a private company.
Britain’s Health and Safety Executive can’t prosecute or fine the Crown, so when a government lab breaks the rules, the inspector reaches for a Crown Improvement Notice. It’s a real, official HSE document. It says what’s wrong, gives at least 21 days to fix it, and has no legal force at all. Q could frame it.
So we sent the inspector into every Q lab we could find and ranked the tests by how stern the notice would be. The rule: the closer a real person got to the dangerous end, the sterner the notice. A colleague inside the gadget beats a colleague standing near live fire, which beats a dummy. Inside each tier, the order is our estimate of how badly it could have gone. Every notice is invented; HSE and its Crown notices are real. This is a comedy site, not legal advice.
12 to 10: Nobody Needed a Stretcher
Two of these labs are abroad, where our inspector has no business being: the law behind these notices covers Great Britain, not India or South America. He went anyway. Q Branch’s paperwork travels.
12. The Tear-Gas Parking Meter, Goldfinger (1964)
The very first Q lab scene has a parking meter that releases tear gas when you feed it a coin. Two engineers test it inside a glass booth, wearing gas masks. Read that again: protective equipment, a sealed test area, nobody in the line of fire. It’s the best-run test in the series, and it happened in 1964. The same lab, where Q walks Bond through the DB5’s ejector seat, keeps a wall of rifles and a machine gun on open display. The inspector noticed on the way out.
Contravention: None in this test. Firearms stored on an open wall in a working lab.
Remedy: Lock up the guns. Frame the parking meter procedure and hang it where the guns were.
Inspector’s note: Whoever ran this test should be put in charge of every other test on this list.
11. Q’s Rope, Octopussy (1983)
In Q’s lab in India, Q tries to recreate the Indian rope trick with a rope that rises by remote control. It does not stay up. “Blast!” When Bond asks whether he’s having trouble keeping it up, Q has his answer ready: “Experimental model.” Across the room, Smithers has a door whose knocker swings it open hard enough to smash whoever is knocking. In the test, that was a dummy, flattened against the wall.
Contravention: Climbing equipment that falls over. A front door that attacks visitors.
Remedy: Load-test the rope with something other than optimism. Fit Smithers’ door with a bell.
Inspector’s note: I let myself in through the side entrance.
10. The Bolas, Moonraker (1979)
Moonraker’s field lab hides behind the walls of a monastery in South America. Bond walks in on a set of bolas being tested on a dummy: they wrap around it, then explode. “Balls, Q?” “Bolas, 007.” The order goes out to have them “ready for Army Day.” Nearby, a dummy taking a siesta splits open to reveal a machine gun. Bond never takes the bolas with him, which we hold against him in our list of gadgets he never used.
Contravention: Live explosives tested inside a monastery.
Remedy: Move explosive tests to a range. Wake the dummy before it hurts someone.
Inspector’s note: Two dummies on site. One exploded, the other was armed. Neither had been trained.
9 to 7: Live Fire, Indoor Venue
9. The Jetpack, Die Another Day (2002)
Die Another Day moves Q Branch into a disused Underground station, where the old gadgets are kept on display. Bond switches on the jetpack from Thunderball and it starts to lift off before Q grabs it and shuts it down. Bond also sets off the hidden knife in an old briefcase, which gets the obvious question from Q: “Must you touch everything?”
Contravention: Museum exhibits left in working order. Visitors allowed to touch them.
Remedy: Rope off the exhibits. Make the jetpack a jetpack-shaped object.
Inspector’s note: The visitor in question was a licensed professional. That made it worse.
8. The Bagpipes, The World Is Not Enough (1999)
A piper in Q’s lab plays a few notes, then opens fire on a mannequin with the bagpipes and sets it alight, with Bond standing in the room. Bond: “I suppose we all have to pay the piper sometime, right, Q?” Q: “Oh, pipe down, 007.” The bagpipes stay in the lab, which turned out to be a mistake on a ski slope a few scenes later.
Contravention: A machine gun and a flamethrower combined in one instrument and fired indoors.
Remedy: Separate the flamethrower from the drones.
Inspector’s note: The noise exposure limit was exceeded before any shooting started.
7. The Rocket Stereo, The Living Daylights (1987)
In The Living Daylights, a Q Branch staffer shoulders a portable stereo and fires a rocket out of it across the lab, with Bond and Q in the room. Q explains it’s something they’re making for the Americans, which is why Bond never gets one.
Contravention: Rocket fired across a shared workspace with visitors present.
Remedy: Visitors wait outside during rocket tests. Check the export paperwork while you’re out there.
Inspector’s note: The customer is American. Their safety regulator is not my problem.
6 to 2: Staff Were the Test Equipment
6. The Leg Cast, GoldenEye (1995)
GoldenEye’s Q rolls up in a wheelchair with his leg in a cast. Bond asks if it was skiing. “Hunting!” The cast then fires a rocket across the lab, and it explodes on a target. Q isn’t standing near the launcher. He’s wearing it.
Contravention: Missile launched indoors by the head of the department, seated.
Remedy: Fire missiles outdoors. Stand up first.
Inspector’s note: Q describes the cast as a hunting injury. I have asked what he was hunting.
5. Smithers’ Arm Cast, For Your Eyes Only (1981)
In For Your Eyes Only, Smithers wears a plaster cast built to spring out and club whoever is behind him. Q checks on the project: “Smithers, how’s the arm?” “Coming along very nicely, thank you, sir.” The cast never leaves the lab, though Bond could have used it. The same lab has an umbrella whose hooked spikes close around the neck of whoever is under it as soon as rain hits the top.
Contravention: Employee wearing a striking device as a medical appliance. An umbrella that turns dangerous in its intended weather.
Remedy: Take the cast off the employee before testing it on anything. Withdraw the umbrella: one that attacks in the rain attacks in London.
Inspector’s note: Smithers says the arm is coming along very nicely. I’ve asked for that in writing.
4. The Avalanche Jacket, The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Q orders his assistant R to put on a ski jacket and demonstrate it for Bond. R fumbles with it. Q: “Pull the tag.” The jacket inflates into a sphere with R sealed inside it. Q’s parting advice to Bond later in the scene is “Always have an escape plan.” The jacket doesn’t have one.
Contravention: Demonstration performed on a staff member, on instruction, with no way out.
Remedy: Fit an exit. Let R pick his own demonstrations.
Inspector’s note: Please stop testing equipment on the new man.
3. The Sofa, The Living Daylights (1987)
In The Living Daylights, Q tells a technician to “sit down and make yourself comfortable.” The sofa flips him under its cushions, and Q takes the free seat.
Copied to: Q, personally.
Contravention: Furniture that swallows staff. Staff invited to sit on it by their manager.
Remedy: Remove the sofa from general seating. Retrieve the technician.
Inspector’s note: Q reports the sofa is very comfortable. He would know. He’s the one on top of it.
2. The Phone Box, GoldenEye (1995)
In the background of GoldenEye’s lab, a technician steps into a British phone box. An airbag inflates and pins him inside, and he’s later wheeled out of the lab, still in the box.
Contravention: Person tested inside a confined space with no release. Casualty removed by trolley, still inside the test equipment.
Remedy: A door that opens from the inside.
Inspector’s note: I asked to interview the technician. I was told he was still in the box.
Stop Work Immediately
1. The Bulletproof Vest, Goldfinger (1964)
In the same Goldfinger lab that ran the tidiest test on this list, a researcher fires a submachine gun into a colleague’s chest to test the armor under his coat. This one gets a second notice stapled to the first. HSE’s real title for it is Notice that work should be stopped (risk of serious injury) for Crown Employers.
Contravention: Live automatic fire at an employee. On purpose.
Remedy: Use a dummy. Q Branch owns plenty; see entries 10 and 11.
Inspector’s note: The vest may have worked. The method did not.
Bonus: Not on Any Form
The Laptop, Skyfall (2012)
In Skyfall, Q tries to crack the villain’s laptop, and it gets into MI6’s own servers instead, opening the security doors and letting Silva escape. “He hacked us.” Nobody in the lab was hurt, and a safety inspector has no form for this one. It’s the only accident on this page that let a prisoner out.
Contravention: None this office can cite.
Remedy: Never plug the villain into the building.
Inspector’s note: Q’s own advice, from entry 4: always have an escape plan. Silva did.
The Inspector’s Verdict
The best-run test in Q Branch history and the worst one happened in the same room, in the same film, in 1964. Sixty years of notices later, the parking meter is still the only one that passed.
Verdict: lock up the guns, promote the parking meter team.