When James Bond is on a mission, time is never on his side. That's not the right part of his body to find it.

And in times of danger, James Bond never has time on his hands. Actually, it's a little farther up his arm.

Just what the heck am I talking about?

Why, wristwatches, naturally.

In the regular world they're easily overlooked. They peek out unobtrusively from under a shirt cuff. Nevertheless, when the subject is 007, these little objects have garnered a surprisingly large amount of attention. "Oh yeah?" says skeptical you. "Read on," say I.

In today's "bottom line" world, companies spend their money carefully. So you can be sure that it is not without good reason that some of the world's finest watchmakers (among them such heavyweights as Rolex, Omega, and Seiko) have sought to link their products to the excitement, elegance and cachet that the public has learned to associate with James Bond, the gentleman secret agent with a licence to kill. Most recently it's been Omega that has been peppering magazines and newspapers around the world with images of James Bond wearing their "Seamaster Professional" model with the legend "Selected by James Bond." Note that this is not an endorsement by Pierce Brosnan, but rather by James Bond. Despite what 007 told Fatima Blush in NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, James Bond does indeed do endorsements.

Naturally, it was Ian Fleming who started it all. He knew that a gentleman's choice of timepiece says as much about him as does his Saville Row suit. He took the time to specify Bond's choice. According to Fleming, and he should know, Bond wears a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Chronometer on an expanding metal bracelet. He tells us so in chapter 15 of On Her Majesty's Secret Service .

The good people at Rolex would surely have been surprised by Bond's jury-rigged use of his Oyster Perpetual as a knuckle-duster. In chapter 16 of OHMSS Bond switches his watch to his right hand and loops the band around his fist so that the heavy metal and crystal watchcase sits atop his middle knuckles. The metal watch bracelet is clutched in his palm. Just minutes later Bond makes use of this improvised "Q" device when he kills a guard by punching him so hard that the Rolex's crystal shatters against his jaw.

But Bond seldom needs to exercise his creativity. "Q" always crafts a deathray or miniaturized howitzer, or some such, into an ostensibly innocuous object. That is never truer than when the subject is a wristwatch. They have frequently been the means by which some incredible device has been concealed.

Unfortunately, The British Secret Service doesn't hold a monopoly on the idea, and Bond has occasionally found himself on the wrong end of a tricky timepiece's treachery.

In fact, it was S.P.E.C.T.R.E. that showed the movie going public the very first two-timing timepiece. Übermensch Red Grant was seen in the pre-credits sequence of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, dealing an untimely death to a Bond look-a-like by means of a wristwatch that featured a garrote wire coiled inside.
When unspooled to full length by pulling on the stem, it could be looped around the hapless victim's throat. It worked fine in rehearsal, but when Grant tried it on the real James Bond it was Grant who wound up wearing the garrote.

After this rather promising start, the opposition's creativity with clocks waned somewhat. GOLDFINGER was the first "gadget intensive" double-oh seven film, though certainly not the last or least. But the best trick timepiece the opposition could muster was just a wall clock with a peephole that allowed Mai Ling to keep tabs on Bond aboard Goldfinger s private jet. It didn't fool Bond who easily thwarted it by the simple expedient of hanging his coat over it. Score: Bond 1, Goldfinger 0.

GOLDFINGER was the third film in the series, and although Bond had been shown to wear a Rolex, there had been no special gadgets associated with it yet. In fact, the use of Bond's wristwatches, used so creatively later in the film series, stumbled badly coming out of the starting block. On the very first day of filming DR.NO it was discovered the Sean Connery hadn't been given a Rolex watch to wear. The scene required it, so nothing more could be done until one could be procured. Director Terence Young, himself a former real-life "James Bond", stepped in to save the day by lending Connery his own Rolex. Filming proceeded and the rest, as they say, is cinema history!

Bond's first real chance to show what tricks the good guys had up their sleeve, both metaphorically and literally, didn't come until THUNDERBALL.

"Q" leaves his workshop to outfit Bond with his latest gear "in the field". Only "Q" could manage to complain about a free trip to the Bahamas. He brings with him a watch he describes as a Rolex, but which doesn't look like any model I ve been able to track down.

The trick to this watch is that it functions as a Geiger counter. If you compare this to the Geiger counter issued to 007 in DR.NO you'll see how far Q-branch have come. Not only does this Geiger counter fit on Bond's wrist, it also tells time!

With the arrival of Roger Moore came the arrival of the really far out wristwatch gadgets. One of the wildest was an ordinary looking Rolex in Moore's debut Bond film, LIVE AND LET DIE.

This film is one of only two Bond films in which Desmond Llewelyn ("Q") fails to appear. Instead it is Miss Moneypenny who brings Moore his gadget watch. The film begins with Moore wearing a Pulsar digital watch.

This was the very first digital watch on the market. You had to press a button to activate the glowing red digits. Otherwise you couldn't tell the time. It was groundbreaking technology at the time and the watch is worth more to collectors today than it cost new back then.

(A brief aside: The film editor was really on the ball here. When we see Moore check the time on his Pulsar it reads "5:48". When we get a close up of a Rolex four minutes later, the time is "5:52". Four minutes has passed in James Bond's world, and four minutes has passed in the audience's world, too. They match up. When you think of all the separately filmed elements that are edited together to form the final print of the film you can appreciate that this is the sort of thing that is done wrong 99.9% of the time. This is that remaining 0.01%. Someone at EON was paying attention and took the trouble to get this very little detail right!)

The Pulsar Moore wears is replaced just ten minutes into the film by a Rolex with a couple of way out features: Moore explains to "M" that pulling the stem on this ordinary looking Rolex wristwatch, activates a "Hyper intensified magnetic field" "powerful enough to even deflect the path of a bullet at long range." But of course Moore uses it, instead, to whisk a spoon off of "M"s coffee saucer, and later, to unzip a damsel's dress. Perhaps just as well, after all, that "Q" wasn't in this film to witness these uses of his hard work!

As a visual cue that the magnetic field is engaged the otherwise white number markings on the watch turn to red. Given the demonstrated power of this watch later in the film, a more obvious visual would be the fact that every metal object within 50ft should be flying though the air and attaching itself to our hero's wrist! But this doesn't happen, and only the objects Bond wants to be attracted ever seem to be.

One has to wonder why this "bullet deflecting watch" isn't issued to Bond on every mission from here on out. There's certainly no shortage of baddies taking pot shots at our hero. Yet after LIVE AND LET DIE, this estimable feature is never seen again!

There's an inexplicable continuity error involving this watch. Having given the audience a visual and verbal description of how to activate the magnetic field by pulling on the watch stem, the filmmakers proceed through out the rest of the film to use a completely different method. On two separate occasions we see Moore, in close up, activating the magnetic field by turning the watch bezel instead of pulling the stem. Go figure.

You've got to admit, a Hyper intensified Magnetic Field built into a wristwatch is impressive enough, but the good folks at EON aren't done with this watch yet. Not by half. The top of this watch can be set spinning so the serrated edge of the bezel acts like a miniature buzz saw!

I quite like this gimmick. It's not too complicated and might actually work. It's certainly a feature that stands Moore in good stead near the end of the film when he uses it to cut the ropes that secure him to an "unnecessarily slow dipping mechanism" (as described by Dr.Evil in a parody of this scene from AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY).

In THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, Moore's Rolex has been retired in favour of a Seiko that has no defensive capabilities, but is, instead, a communications device. It displays messages and is seen to print a ticker-tape message from "M".

This watch is rather passive compared with the previous Rolex, but in MOONRAKER the Seiko issued to Moore gets things going again with a bang. Literally!

When Moore faces imminent death in the blast pit below a Moonraker Space Shuttle about to depart, he pops open the rear of the watchcase to reveal a tiny coil of explosive plastique.

He affixes the explosive to the exit hatch lock, and then, going back to his watch, pulls out the upper right control button from the watchcase to produce a long detonator wire.

This he plugs this into the explosive, which he detonates by pushing on the right side of the watchcase.

All these tiny pieces are very nicely made, and are crafted with excellent detail. The explosive coil even has a tiny metal receptacle at the center where the detonator wire plugs in. It's a nice looking piece of work by the Effects crew.

There are redeeming touches in MOONRAKER despite the fact that it is often at the bottom of people's list of favorite Bond films. This scene in the blast pit is one of them because it's a carry- over from Fleming's novel. The situation above is a somewhat morphed, but still recognizable version of the situation that Bond and the heroine (in the novel it's Gala Brand) find themselves in. They are left to die in a room that is open onto the blast pit of the Moonraker missile. In the novel, their means of escape is different, but the initial situation is the same. It is always a pleasure to see some of Fleming's material translated to film and so it deserves a mention here.