The 1995 parody that got a “very stern letter” from the makers of James Bond: “Not very flattered”
As the most iconic spy in Hollywood history, James Bond has always been and always will be the most frequently and famously parodied spy in Hollywood history.
It’s been the case since the 1960s, when the star-studded Casino Royale roped in a murderer’s row of famous faces to poke fun at 007’s adventures when Sean Connery was still wearing the tux, and there’s barely an espionage comedy to have been made since that doesn’t poke fun at Bond at least once.
It even affected the franchise itself, with Daniel Craig revealing that he had to rejig a scene from Casino Royale for setting off his Austin Powers alarm, with Mike Myers’ shagadelic creation effectively forcing Eon Productions into a hard reset because there was no way to make a light-hearted movie in a post-Powers landscape.
Unless it’s blatant copyright infringement, there’s nothing that the producers, studios, or stewards of Ian Fleming’s literary creation can do about it. However, they did send a strongly worded letter to a TV show once, which seemed unnecessary when it was more of a loving homage than a potentially litigious spoof.
Of all the things that have parodied and loosely plagiarised the accepted tropes and archetypes of the Bond saga over the years, it was Star Trek, of all things, that made waves. Despite the title clearly being lifted from James Coburn’s 1966 effort Our Man Flint, which was a 007 spoof to begin with, The Next Generation‘s 1995 episode, ‘Our Man Bashir’, raised the ire of MGM.
An inoffensive bottle episode following Alexander Siddig’s Dr Julian Bashir, the Enterprise’s resident physician imagines himself as a 1964-era secret agent, including the obligatory introduction of himself as “Bashir, Julian Bashir.” The inspirations weren’t subtle, nor were they supposed to be, and of all the Bond parodies to have hit screens big or small over the years, this was the one that ruffled feathers.
“MGM sent us a letter,” writer and producer Ronald D Moore admitted. “I don’t recall the Broccolis being on it or having signed it, but I remember after the episode aired, the studio sent us a very stern letter. And it even got back to some of the higher-ups at Paramount. It seems MGM was not very flattered by our ‘homage’, but it wasn’t like we got in serious trouble or anything.”
Until Amazon came along to instantly and dramatically increase the chances of a dreaded ‘shared universe’ emerging, the Broccolis had always been resistant to spinoffs, TV shows, and any other offshoots being made to capitalise on the Bond brand. Spoofs and parodies, they could do fuck all about, but for whatever reason, Austin Powers didn’t get a letter, but The Next Generation did.
It became one of the most popular standalone episodes in the show’s history, and even though it wasn’t the first, fifth, tenth, or even 50th time that the 007 archetypes had been ribbed onscreen, MGM wasn’t happy, which may or may not have had something to do with the episode premiering a little over a week after GoldenEye hit cinemas, not that Star Trek stood much chance of stealing its thunder.
