WARNING SPOILERS: SPECTRE Plot hole?

Did I miss something but
when M,C and Q go to the CNS building, why is it empty?

Surely it should be staffed 24 hours a day especially on the night they are going live with the new system?

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Comments

  • MalloryMallory Do mosquitoes have friends?
    Posts: 2,035
    Well, it is midnight so they're probably all in bed.

    Also the Nine Eyes programme was designed to take the Human element out of spy work (along with all the other nefarious benefits) so apart from technicians there probably wouldn't be that many people.

    Or the budget was cut for extras. Cheapskates.
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    " We have people every where " became with budget cuts to spectre's staff
    " We have people every where. ........ Between 9am and 6pm " :D
  • Haha!

    The place should have been full of CNS staff, British government people though not SPECTRE/QUANTUM folk.

    This is a major government IT project across 9 countries what could possibly go wrong?

    Plus there should be people there doing all the usual remote spying anyway.

  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    I think you have a point, didn't occur to me on watching, but I agree.
    You'd think it would be full of staff.
  • When they watch M talking to his staff from the SPECTRE lair they should have had him announcing massive overtime cuts. :)
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    :)) " We're all in this together"
  • Posts: 6,396
    George Osborne had them all laid off in an attempt to save the economy. :D
  • The same budget cuts appear to have hit train staff
  • DariusDarius UK
    Posts: 354
    Everyone knows that there's fight between Hinx and Bond on the train because it's been televised everywhere, so I don't see the need to put spoiler tags on this. What I don't get is how Bond and Swann get away with demolishing half the train.
  • Posts: 94
    What's troubling me is that one minute Hinx is trying very hard to kill Bond on the train and just a few hours later Bond is welcomed as a guest to the villains lair he's even collected by chauffeur in a classic Rolls.What gives ?
  • Posts: 832
    ^ umm that's how bond films work? The villain displays false hospitality then tries to kill him?
  • Darius wrote: »
    Everyone knows that there's fight between Hinx and Bond on the train because it's been televised everywhere, so I don't see the need to put spoiler tags on this. What I don't get is how Bond and Swann get away with demolishing half the train.

    I don't think being overly cautious is a crime.

    I suppose there wasn't a enquiry from train staff after the fights Moore and Connery had on trains
  • DariusDarius UK
    Posts: 354
    Well, the Connery and Moore fights were confined to just one compartment suite, whereas the one in SP took out most of the public staterooms and ended up in the storage car. It stretches the imagination a little to think that the train authorities just shrugged it off -- unless Bond slipped them a huge sum of money to do so.

    The same applies to GE where Bond single-headedly demolishes half of St. Petersburg, catches up with a high speed train in a tank (while shaking off most of the Russian army and police force), and then just vanishes to resurface in Cuba, of all places. Who picked up the check for all that, I wonder?
  • edited October 2015 Posts: 562
    yes exactly, not unique to SP. The staff would still hear a lot of noise from the compartment. More unusual is that there were zero extras on the train while the fight was going on.

    Brilliant fight whatever.
  • RC7RC7
    Posts: 10,512
    A very fanciful definition of 'plot hole' in the OP.
  • edited October 2015 Posts: 1,068
    I read Hinx as less a henchman and more his own man that wants to impress ESB and win favour - recall back to the Rome meeting and his introduction when ESB asks whether there's anyone better to stand up and assume the responsibility of the new vacancy. Throughout then he's tracking and aiming to end Bond I believe independently of ESB. Sure, the invitation by ESB could've just been the cue for his personal 'assistant' muscle to end the smug guy at the end of the table's tenure.

    As for lack of passengers or staff, would you poke your nose in when there's all Hell breaking loose and gunshots? What's to say the train on the way to nowhere had many passengers anyhow?

    Staff in the fully automated 24/7 surveillance building? The idea as it was sold by "C" is that there didn't need to be any bodies on the ground to usher the new era of gov.t intelligence.
  • DariusDarius UK
    Posts: 354
    True @RC7, this isn't really a "plot hole", more of a "scene resolution hole" where the audience are left to make up their own minds as to how one scene gave rise to another.

    I think that the two are very close relatives though.
  • andmcit wrote: »

    As for lack of passengers or staff, would you poke your nose in when there's all Hell breaking loose and gunshots? What's to say the train on the way to nowhere had many passengers anyhow?

    Given the recent incident where the French train guards locked themselves in during an attack then maybe it's not so far fetched... :)
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3206426/U-S-Marines-armed-gunman-onboard-high-speed-train-Amsterdam-Paris.html

    Staff in the fully automated 24/7 surveillance building? The idea as it was sold by "C" is that there didn't need to be any bodies on the ground to usher the new era of gov.t intelligence.

    Bodies in the building are not bodies on the ground which is kind of the point - plus it hadn't even gone live at that point.
  • This anomaly is common to the directorial style of Sam Mendes. As a theatrical director, he is used to economising on the bodies on stage. If a character on stage doesn't have a function to perform (dialogue or action) they aren't included in his vision, which is okay on stage as the audience is often left to build the additional backdrop using their imagination. But in film the backdrop is often just as important, to help the cinema audience suspend disbelief and stay engaged. It is a weakness of both SF and SP that reality signals like this get missed.
  • SirHilaryBraySirHilaryBray Scotland
    Posts: 2,138
    Why does Oberhauser tell Madeleine when they meet say "I remember you when you were a child" she says "I don't remember you" he says "oh but I remember you" it felt that there was more to this but it's not clarified why he says this. I thought back to when Madeleine tells Bind about how she shot a man who had come to there house to kill her father but the explanation didn't come just reflecting it just makes the conversation weird.
  • 00Ralf00Ralf Germany
    Posts: 149
    How the heck did Bond recover from the lobotomy drill torture? It struck me as incredibly weird that he skillfully took down a few SPECTRE minions and flew a helicopter seconds after it... To me, it would've been more effective if, like in Goldfinger, the drills were slowly approaching his head and never actually reached it.
  • DariusDarius UK
    edited October 2015 Posts: 354
    00Ralf wrote: »
    How the heck did Bond recover from the lobotomy drill torture? It struck me as incredibly weird that he skillfully took down a few SPECTRE minions and flew a helicopter seconds after it... To me, it would've been more effective if, like in Goldfinger, the drills were slowly approaching his head and never actually reached it.

    Bond was not being lobotomised. A lobotomy is carried out on the frontal lobe of the brain, not in the neck, where Bond was being tortured. The drills were positioned just under the ears, which is...
    ...an allusion to the novel Colonel Sun, where Bond is tortured by Sun, who stimulates his tympanic membrane with a meat skewer.
    In SP, this was clearly deemed to be too rich for a mainstream 12A audience, so the drills are seen penetrating Bond's neck just below the ears, where they would presumably stimulate the cervical plexus without causing permanent or lasting damage.

  • edited October 2015 Posts: 4,599
    I would like to see any comments from doctors within the forum but my gut reaction (happy to be corrected) is that the likelihood of someone drilling into you in that area (twice) and being able to recover so quickly/easily is slim to say the least. As some others have pointed to, the movie could have had more tension and the drill bit getting closer and closer to his head/eye and the watch ticking down may have been an alternative to seeing the drill go in and out twice into his neck
    PS looking forward to mythbusters doing this scene
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    Could the drill actually have acted like an acupuncture treatment ?
    So helping Bond's recovery. :D
  • Posts: 4,599
    Well you're the Dr!
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    :))
  • DariusDarius UK
    edited October 2015 Posts: 354
    patb wrote: »
    I would like to see any comments from doctors within the forum but my gut reaction (happy to be corrected) is that the likelihood of someone drilling into you in that area (twice) and being able to recover so quickly/easily is slim to say the least. As some others have pointed to, the movie could have had more tension and the drill bit getting closer and closer to his head/eye and the watch ticking down may have been an alternative to seeing the drill go in and out twice into his neck
    PS looking forward to mythbusters doing this scene

    The reality is that drill stimulation to nerves in this area would create serious problems and an instant recovery would be unlikely, depending on whether lasting harm was intended or not. But, hey, this is James Bond we're talking about here. We're not in reality, we're in fantasy! This is the man who can pull a light aircraft out of a vertical nose-dive; the man who can survive a fall from a jet without harm by purloining a convenient parachute; the man who can survive a fall into a river from a height of three hundred feet; the man who can... well, you get the point.
  • Posts: 11,425
    As has been mentioned elsewhere, there are lot of strangely empty locations and cityscapes in SP. We can only assume Mendes blew the extras budget in Mexico.
  • Posts: 4,599
    A man who can drive an invisible car? The car is used by so many as when the line was crossed but the drill scene, to me at least, is equally far fetched. Just looking for an even playing field.
  • What was the point of the torture if it had no impact? At least in CR we can assume he has become infertile.
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