Character Analysis
Doctor Doctor, Give Us the News
Dr. No proves that people can super smart in some areas, such as astrophysics, radiology, or neurosurgery, and completely inept at others, like world domination.
See, Dr. No is a brilliant engineer who created an underwater laboratory, complete with its own nuclear reactor, and has the technology to disrupt U.S. missile launches from hundreds of miles away. While it's not exactly clear what happened to him, it appears that his experiments with radiation caused him to lose his hands, but they've been replaced with prosthetics, which he hides under shiny black leather gloves.
DR. NO: A handicap is what you make of it.
Dr. No shows us that even with weird robot hands, a person can do anything. How inspiring.
Okay, the American Association of People with Disabilities isn't going to make Dr. No their spokesman any time soon. World domination isn't exactly good PR (at least not in the 1960s), and Dr. No is especially bad at it.
He's great at hiding his plan. Just look at how everyone is scared of going anywhere near his island.
QUARREL: That Crab Key scares me plenty. Friends of mine went out there once after seashells. Only trouble, they never came back again.
Dr. No has sown fear of Crab Key by having the island patrolled by a fire-spewing tank, which islanders think is a dragon. And anyone who actually sets foot on Crab Key? Well, he has them killed. That'll keep people out of your neighborhood.
But then he invites James Bond, the one person who can stop him, into his lair, serves him dinner, and doesn't even try and poison him. This is like Lex Luther giving Superman a key to his house, or Joker telling Batman what his sleeping schedule is. Dr. No spends most of his time manipulating the plot from off screen, that when he finally does appear, we kind of wish he'd have stayed in the shadows.
Not only does No carelessly let Bond run around his lair, he tells him his entire plot. Dr. No has basically designed a super tough video game, and then shown Bond a YouTube video on how to beat it.
Maybe he does this out of sheer cockiness.
DR. NO: I never fail, Mr. Bond.
Never say never (again), Dr. No. There's always a first time. And Dr. No's first failure turns out to be his last.
Dr. No's Timeline