Although the governance and hierarchy of James Bond’s primary arch nemesis SPECTRE is made abundantly clear in the novels with them and their leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld making their debut in Thunderball before the latter appears in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, the films have muddied the waters somewhat. By the time of No Time To Die, they or Blofeld, had featured in nine films. That is including the brief cameo of a man bearing a familiarity with Blofeld in For Your Eyes Only (an attempt to discredit the impending competing Warner Bros ‘Never Say Never Again’) but excludes the three Daniel Craig era films where enemies were not explicitly referenced as SPECTRE but later linked to them in ‘Spectre’. Before Craig’s fourth Bond film, we knew these enemies as the organization Quantum, involving Mr White and Dominic Green. It was also explicitly but ridiculously suggested that the lone wolf antagonist of Skyfall (Silva) was somehow linked to either group. There was no link to or even mention of SPECTRE until the fourth movie, yet we are expected to believe or swallow that they are all interconnected and that Quantum were a sub-division of SPECTRE.
So, for many fans, SPECTRE or Blofeld are in nine films but the makers would have us think it is twelve. You decide.
There exists a thick divide between the novels and the films. SPECTRE or Blofeld were shoehorned into several entries in the cinematic series that they were not in for the books. This includes Diamonds Are Forever and, more pertinently for this discussion, Dr No.
In Dr No the movie we get to know very little about the titular character until his first full encounter with Bond at the dinner table after 007 and Honey Ryder have been captured by his own private army. His heritage and background are swiftly revealed as is his membership of SPECTRE. He even suggests recruiting Bond to SPECTRE.
He makes the mistake of not doing away with Bond and is soon hunted down by the hero who foils his scheme and kills him.
In the next movie From Russia With Love, an unidentified cat stroking villain (presumably Blofeld) oversees his agents in a plan to extract a decoding machine while killing and murdering James Bond in the process. Blofeld refers to Dr No’s death as being the reason for the latter as an act of revenge. He calls Dr No “our agent”. That would initially suggest that Dr No was merely an agent of SPECTRE like Largo would be as No 2 in Thunderball. Not the founder of the organization.
However, Dr No has quite the lavish and big scale set-up on Crab Key and his operation is high stakes and globally significant. During his chat with Bond over the dinner table, he is statesman like, having more in common with Bond villains like Blofeld, Auric Goldfinger or Hugo Drax rather than an Emile Largo or an Osato in You Only Live Twice, subservient agents beneath Blofeld.
Considering that the novel Thunderball denotes that the ranking in SPECTRE is not necessarily numerically ordered, (presumably to confuse their enemies and stop the top man being identified and becoming a target for assassination) Dr No could well be, at this point in the series, the head of the organization with Blofeld succeeding him and looking to avenge him in From Russia With Love. Indeed, Dr No feels like a higher stakes scheme than the follow-up. From Russia With Love is multi-layered and complicated but the ultimate objective doesn’t have the same significance as the first film. Is From Russia From Love a movie partly about SPECTRE trying to reassert themselves and get back on the ladder after the death of their leader?
The compelling thing is that in Dr No, those who he employs like Professor Dent and the so-called three blind mice are, by later SPECTRE standards, amateurish. Compare them to the professional and extremely dangerous Fiona Volpe or Donald Grant! But perhaps this first iteration of SPECTRE is the organization in its infancy? Dr No is the head of it and then leaves behind a legacy which Blofeld inherits.
As mentioned, during dinner with 007, Dr No talks about recruiting Bond, something which surely only a senior or founding member of SPECTRE would feel disposed to do. He mentions no hierarchy in that he is in some way reporting to anybody else.
In From Russia With Love, Blofeld runs SPECTRE like a company or consortium. There is an operations analyst in the shape of Kronsteen, the executioner that is Grant and the field operative that is Klebb. This is a corporate structure which is repeated in Thunderball as Blofeld, in Paris, expunges the cheats and failures before giving his trusted second in command Largo the floor to explain his scheme. Like a salesman doing a powerpoint presentation.
Dr No feels like a prototype of this approach with a leader who informally runs the organisation prior to Blofeld taking charge and making it more ruthless and structured. This explains why the SPECTRE of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice are far more professional and disciplined, on a par with a small nation in terms of reach and influence.
The origins of SPECTRE or rather, the motivations, are confusing. SPECTRE is short for the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. Yet they don’t always demonstrate these attributes. They extort in You Only Live Twice when Blofeld increases the amount to be paid out to SPECTRE by a shadowy unnamed state mid-way through the operation. They seek revenge not only regarding Bond but against their own agents who embezzle or are unsuccessful. The sixties version of SPECTRE are not so guilty of terrorism but the re-boot in the Craig era they seem to revel in it. However, one is never very sure why the original Blofeld (and this means the one in the Connery and Lazenby films) actually does what he does. Money would perhaps be the main factor as he does demand a ransom in Thunderball and expect to make financial gains in Diamonds Are Forever.
Of course, the rebooted Blofeld (played by Christoph Waltz) apparently has a personal preoccupation with Bond and making his life a misery due to childhood resentments, but the original figure played by a whole host of actors had no such beef with Bond. He simply didn’t like him because he was a fly in the ointment.
But Blofeld in the early part of the series just doesn’t have many motivations explained other than financing the continuation of SPECTRE and liking power.
There is a clearer explanation maybe why Dr Julius No wanted to found SPECTRE. He embezzled money from the Tong organization plus he ended up with metal prosthetic hands because of exposure to radiation. Essentially, he is on the run and required some insurance so why not combine his scientific knowledge with criminality to not only protect himself but to build a network?
Athon 