“…and once when you need to upgrade.”

The facts: our forum address henceforth is quarterdeck.commanderbond.net, or, as I like to call it, The Quarterdeck. The old place – and now it is the old place – debrief.commanderbond.net, has been converted to read-only archive as of 10th September 2017.

As they say, everyone has a past, every legend a beginning…

 

 

M writes:

As your readers will have learned from earlier issues, a senior office of the Ministry, debrief.commanderbond.net., is missing, believed killed, while on an official mission to oblivion It grieves me to have to report that hopes of its survival must now be abandoned. It therefore falls to my lot, as the Grand High Wizard Lizard of the Department it served so well, to give some account of this forum and of its outstanding services to anonymized bitching about films ‘n’ books ‘n’ stuff.

 

debrief.commanderbond.net., was born of some electricity whatsit doing something to some typing doo-dad. Its server being a foreign representative of the temperamental sort, its early presentation, from which it inherited a first-class command of copyright infringement and speculative bollocks and rumour-tolerating, was entirely sporadic. When it was five years of age, James Bond was apparently killed in a casting accident, and the young website came under the onslaught of an assemblage of monstrous dickheads whining about hair colour, since (hopefully) deceased, and went to from being a place to discuss James Bond to one full of Kents. There, in a small cottage (fnarr) hard (double fnarr) by the attractive Mrs Jim, its moderators, who must have been a most erudite and accomplished team, completed its transition between servers, and, at the age of eight or thereabouts, it passed unsatisfactorily into potential obsolescence, for which it had been cursed by the reaction to the much misunderstood Quantum of Solace.

 

It must be admitted that its career as a moribund site overloaded with cretins abusing a popularity system was brief and undistinguished and, after only what felt like bloody years, as a result, it cheers me to record, of some alleged trouble with some right twats, its moderators were requested to remove that feature. They managed to reinvigorate the forums, in an old school way. Here the atmosphere was somewhat improved, and both academic and intolerance standards were rigorous. Nevertheless, though inclined to be solitary by reader, it established some firm friendships among the traditionally sensible and pleasant circles on the forum. By the time this transitional period ended, at the age of twelve, it had twice fought off other forums as light-weight and had, in addition, founded the first serious multiple banning class on a British public forum. By now it was 2012 and, by claiming a reading age of three and with the help of a child who knew what it all meant, it entered a branch of what was subsequently to become Facebook. To serve the confidential nature of its duties, it was accorded the rank of Sole Competent James Bond forum on the internet (by itself), and it is a measure of the satisfaction its services gave to its reader that it ended 2015 with the rank of “That Woman at the top of the page must be a grandmother by now”. It was about this time that the writer became associated with certain aspects of the Ministry’s work, and it was with much reluctance that I accepted its application to continue working for the Ministry despite it being a bit out of date, in which, at the time of its lamented disappearance, it had risen to the rank of being clunky and full of spambots.

 

The nature of debrief.commanderbond.net’s duties with the Ministry, which were, incidentally, recognized by the appointment of “Is it still going, then?” in 2012, must remain confidential, nay secret, but its colleagues at the Ministry will allow that it performed them with outstanding spelling and grammar, although occasionally, through an impetuous strain in its nature, with a streak of the foolhardy that brought it in conflict with Ian Fleming Publications. And Raymond Benson. And Eon Productions. But it possessed what almost amounted to “Amazingly Not Getting Sued” in moments of the highest emergency, and it somehow contrived to escape more or less unscathed from the many libellous paths down which its duties led it. The inevitable publicity, particularly nowhere at all, accorded some of these adventures, made it, much against its will, something of a public nuisance, with the inevitable result that a series of other popular forums came to be developed around it by simple folks who had got themselves banned many, many times by debrief.commanderbond.net. If the quality of these websites, or their degree of wit, had been any higher, the authors would certainly have been ignored even more than they already were. It is a measure of the disdain in which these sites are held at the Ministry, that action has not yet — I emphasize the qualification — been taken against the authors and publishers of these substantially less worthy and considerably more banal and boring knock-offs.

 

It only remains to conclude this brief in memoriam by assuring its friends that debrief.commanderbond.net’s last mission was one of supreme importance to itself. Although it now appears that, alas, it will not return from it, I have the authority of the highest quarters in the land to confirm that the mission proved to be one hundred per cent successful, much like the Viagra every other new member wants to talk about. It is no exaggeration to pronounce unequivocally that, through the recent valorous efforts of this one forum, the Safety of the Realm has received mighty reassurance. Yay us.

 

debrief.commanderbond.net was (very) briefly married in 2002, and 2006, and 2008…. and 2012… and 2015, to scumbags posting callsheets and script leaks. These marriages ended in gratifyingly tragic circumstances that were repeated every time. There was no issue of these marriages save for banning a bolus of cretins on a merry whim, even if they had nothing to do with it, and debrief.commanderbonmd.net leaves, so far as I am aware, one relative living. Welcome to Quarterdeck.

 

J.S… writes:
I was happy and proud to serve debrief.commanderbond.net in a close capacity during the past fifteen years at the Ministry. If our fears for it are justified, may I suggest these simple words for its epitaph? Many of the junior staff here feel they represent its philosophy, but that’s only because they are very scared of me:

 

“You only live twice. Once when you are born, and once when you need to upgrade.”