Well, what you get is a series that at one fills half-an-hour of a child's time and provides some harmless entertainment for any tolerant adult. James Bond Jr. offers us the adventures of the famous 007's teenage nephew and gave children the chance to view action and gadgets without worrying about any restrictive film rating.
James Bond Jr., nephew to the notorious secret agent, attends a private school - Warfield Prep School - in the heart of England. The school is attended by a number of other vaguely familiar characters - like I.Q., grandson of Q, the Bond gadget-master, and Gordo Leiter, surfer-dude son of Bond's occasional CIA contact Felix - padded out with standard stereotypes like a crotchety, but occasionally reasonable, headmaster and a spoilt rich-kid called Trevor Noseworthy IV.
Warfield Prep was originally a Counter Intelligence Training Base that was abandoned and converted to a school. There are still remnants of its former existence in the shape of secret passages and a helicopter-landing pad. The stock pictures, seen from beyond the perimeter wall and gates, make the building look like a cross between a fortress and a beached Naval frigate.
James is consistently interrupted from his studies by the minions of S.C.U.M. (Saboteurs and Criminals United in Mayhem), who number amongst them familiar villains, like Goldfinger and a slightly extreme version of Jaws, and many new ones, like Dr DeRange, a barmy psychopathic French scientist turned villain. The organisation is run by the S.C.U.M.Lord, an imposing man in a fedora, face-scarf and purple suit, who rules from afar most of the time and pets his loyal companion Scuzball, a white, snarling Pitbull Terrier.
The story telling is basic at best, targeted firmly at the under-10's, and the animation is adequate at the most - but that hasn't stopped the roller-coaster popularity of the Pokemon phenomenon. Stock images, like Warfield Prep, and car chases that lack excitement or energy are common, robbing the series of any chance to impress or excite. The plots are hammered into potential stories by way of school outings, sports trophies and exchange trips, like a poorly plotted fantasy novel relies on kick starting proceedings with a stranger in an inn or a princess-kidnapping dragon. The series also lacks any of the sparkling wit and innuendo of the Bond movies, whether because of the target age group or because the writers genuinely lacked the talent or time to come up with anything better.
The characters are, in many instances, connected to, or converted from, the original Bond concept, with a plentiful sprinkling of individuals who tended to represent a fringe of characters more suited to battling superheroes than secret agents. This may be down to marketing executives believing that adding cybernetic limbs and lasers to anything will make it sell to the kids. Dr. No, for example, has become a gaunt, green-skinned character with cybernetic claws for hands; while Jaws has had his entire jaw replaced with a metal mantrap of a mouth and sports a desperate blue suit, red shirt and yellow flower combination.
This volume, "The Beginning" includes the original first episode of the same name along with "Appointment in Macau" and "A Race with Disaster". The first is really an introduction to format, with Bond battling off the interests of S.C.U.M. Lord in his high-tech car. The second finds Dr No and Lo-Fat making an appearance during a foreign exchange trip. And the final episode, the strangest in terms of accents if nothing else, sees Dr DeRange and his middle European sounding henchmen stealing a hi-tech racing car in an act of subterfuge to claim an even greater prize.
There is genuinely nothing offensive here and the action and accents are enough to keep kids and adults entertained. This is the sort of tape you can happily lap up in a single sitting and maybe even be left wanting more.
