| “ | The successful criminal brain is always superior. It has to be. | „ |
| ~ Dr. No's most famous quote |
Dr. Julius No is the antagonist in the sixth 007 book, Doctor No, and he is the antagonist in the first James Bond cinematographic series, being the titular main antagonist in the 1962 film Dr. No and a posthumous antagonist in the 1963 film From Russia with Love.
He is an agent of the notorious criminal organization SPECTRE, who profited off of playing the United States and the USSR against each other. Dr. No's radiation experiments for SPECTRE led to loss of his hands, which No replaced with steel prosthetic hands capable of crushing metal objects.
He was portrayed by the late Joseph Wiseman.
Biography
Early life
Julius No was born in China to the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family and a German missionary. Such half-breed status precluded him from many activities, but his skill with numbers gained him the position of accountant for a local Triad, or crime family. He stole a large sum of money from them, which forced Dr. No to leave China. It was about this time that SPECTRE picked him up to work for their espionage department.
Crab Key
After working on various projects for SPECTRE around the world, Dr. No was sent by his superiors to Crab Key, an island they had bought off Jamaica. Here he was to orchestrate a project using radioactive beams to interfere with US space program in Cape Canaveral, funded with Soviet money. He had a local British official murdered when he got too close to the truth. This caused Britain's MI-6 to send James Bond, agent 007, to investigate.
Showdown with Bond
Upon Bond's arrival in Jamaica, Dr. No made several attempts to assassinate him. When all of these attempts failed, Dr. No let Bond come to him. When Bond finally arrived on Crab Key, Dr. No had him captured and brought to him, where he offered him a position in SPECTRE.
Dr. No moments before his death
When Bond wittily refused, No had him locked up in a cell while he went to work on the project's latest phase, to bring one of NASA's gemini rockets. Bond escaped from his cell and tampered with Dr. No's machinery, which began to self destruct. Bond and No ended up fighting over his boiling reactor coolant as his nuclear reactor overheated. He fell into the coolant and was boiled alive, unable to get a firm grip on anything with his slick, metallic hands.
James Bond Jr.
It should be noted that Dr. No is shown to have survived this fate in the TV series James Bond Jr., with the coolant mutating him by giving him green skin.
Gallery
Add a photo to this galleryTrivia
- Ian Fleming had wanted his friend Noel Coward to portray No, who refused the offer when it was given to him. Fleming also considered his step-cousin Christopher Lee for the role, but by the time he had suggested him to the producers they had already decided to cast Joseph Wiseman as Dr. No. Lee would later go on to star as Francisco Scaramanga, the main antagonist of The Man with the Golden Gun.
- In fashion typical for the spy parody, Get Smart's Agents 86 and 99 once faced off against a villain called Dr. Yes, as well as a villain called The Claw (Ethnically mispronounced 'The Craw') who had an artificial metallic appendage in place of one of his hands.
- Although he is the main villain, he only makes a personal appearance in the climax. His voice could be first heard at the start of the second half of the film.
