“So once it's launched, it's got its own detection systems, nobody can influence it.”Īccording to Jamie, Anderson delivered his and Barwick’s treatment to Harry Saltzman early one evening and by 11pm were being told by the producer that “it's fantastic. “So the whole idea is, it's mutually assured destruction for real but independently controlled,” he says. Read more: New James Bond book to tackle King's Coronation plot “In this version, Drax is a wheelchair-bound villain with long red hair, enormous mutton chops with a big moustache,” Anderson tells SpyHards, “and he’s developing Moonraker for the UK government.”Īnderson goes on to reveal that this Moonraker (in the book, it’s an upgraded V-2 rocket) is intended to be blasted into orbit around the moon and has been designed to obliterate the planet, should any nation decide to launch nuclear weapons. Lois Chiles and Roger Moore in 1979's Moonraker. Now, Anderson’s son Jamie has shed more light on one of the most fascinating what ifs in Bond history. All we knew was that Anderson’s treatment was never used, but that elements of it had – allegedly – fed into the big screen version of The Spy Who Loved Me around a decade later, a light pilfering for which Anderson received a modest out-of-court settlement from EON, the production company behind the Bond movies. Up to now though, information about Anderson's iteration of Moonraker has always been sketchy. Thunderball was the biggest movie of 1965, while ITV's Thunderbirds (which aired 1965-1966) proved Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were bona-fide TV hitmakers, so this union was a match made in heaven for pop culture fans. In the mid-1960s, Thunderbirds/Captain Scarlet/Stingray supremo Gerry Anderson was approached by James Bond producer Harry Saltzman to pitch a movie version of Fleming’s third 007 novel.īond and Anderson's Thunderbirds were at the heights of their popularities by this stage. Roger Moore's 1979 James Bond movie Moonraker - as it stands - is one of the most divisive 007 adventures yet.Ĭurrently rated at 59% on Rotten Tomatoes, the Bond movie’s goonish gags (the double-take pigeon!) and sci-fi trappings (“Bond does it in space” was one of the movie’s oo-er taglines), mean that it’s all too easily dismissed as a campy, Star Wars-inspired retread of The Spy Who Loved Me, and not one of the franchise’s finest moments.īut in an alternate 007 universe, there’s another version of Moonraker, made in the late 1960s, with either Sean Connery or George Lazenby as James Bond, and with a very different take on Ian Fleming’s 1955 novel. Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds were at the height of their popularity when James Bond came calling.

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