How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Skyfall.
Quote #4
Q: Always makes me feel a little melancholy. A grand old warship being ignominiously hauled away for scrap. [sigh] The inevitability of time, don't you think? What do you see?
BOND: A bloody big ship.
The ship in the painting is a pretty strong metaphor for Bond, and for how Q views Bond's role in MI6. Do you think the metaphor Q makes is sailing over Bond's head? Or does he get it and fail to acknowledge it on purpose?
Quote #5
Q: My complexion is hardly relevant.
BOND: Well, your competence is.
Q: Age is no guarantee of efficiency.
BOND: And youth is no guarantee of innovation.
Q and Bond get into a brief but heated debate about age vs. experience. Q thinks Bond is old and tired, while Bond thinks Q is young and incompetent. Both men may be right in their own narrow-minded ways: Bond couldn't hack into a computer system any more than Q could accurately fire a gun. The mutual ageism isn't winning either man any points with the other.
Quote #6
BOND: A gun...and a radio. Not exactly Christmas, is it?
Q: Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don't really go in for that anymore.
Oddly, as much as Bond and Q talk about innovation, Bond's "gadgets" in this film are two of the lowest-tech of them all. Maybe Q doesn't trust Grandpa Bond with anything more advanced?