The Spies Who Loved Science

Espionage narratives and science fiction are two genres which explore the potential consequences of today’s actions and developments.Their overlap forms a sub-genre of both categories, best represented in film and television drama, sometimes known as Spy-Fi. Here I take a look at this sub-genre and what it can tell us about the changing relationship between science and society.

Spy-Fi on Film and Television

In 1962, a British secret agent known as James Bond first appeared on big screens, combatting the eponymous Dr No in the film of the same name (Dr No, 1962; dir. Young). This introduced many of the concepts which would come to define the Spy-Fi genre, including a suave secret agent as hero, a range of gadgets, an organised conspiracy of scientists and villains, and an attempt to acquire or interfere with cutting edge scientific progress with military implications. In the case of Dr No, the organisation in question is SPECTRE and their master plan involves taking over the launch of a US moonshot from Cape Canaveral.

Over the following couple of decades, a long series of James Bond films was joined on both the big screen and the small by a range of television series which explored similar concepts. Recurring tropes include chemical innovations for brainwashing, poisons, agriculture, sensory-enhancement or knock-out drops, biological threats, duplication of people by plastic surgery or even robots, killer robots themselves, earthquake and tidal wave machines, sonic weapons, suspended animation, secret aircraft in the form of UFOs, mind-reading devices, lasers (space-based or otherwise) and the development of new nuclear secrets. These all extended well beyond the capabilities of the day, yet extrapolated logically from extant technologies, placing such plots firmly within the definition of science fiction. All of this is mixed in with more conventional business and military espionage, combating dictators and defeating or supporting military coups, and dealing with megalomaniac business tycoons.

In the United States, a flagship series for the genre was The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV series, 1964-8). This followed secret agent Napoleon Solo and his partner Illya Kurayakin as they dealt with assignments for the United Network Command fo Law and Enforcement, an international body of troubleshooters operating out of New York. Many of U.N.C.L.E.’s assignments involved combatting the machinations of THRUSH - an organisation described as a syndicate of criminals, business people, geniuses and scientists bent on world domination. To do so, both THRUSH and U.N.C.L.E. agents were routinely equipped with high-tech gadgets ranging from eavesdropping devices to explosives. As the series progressed, a range of inventors and eccentric scientists (many but not all of them working for THRUSH) came to the fore as antagonists, or as individuals in need of protection. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. spun out a partner series, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (TV series, 1966-7) and a number of comics and books, as well as seeing several of its episodes reformatted for release as feature-films.

In the United Kingdom, a key example of the genre had actually first appeared a little earlier, in 1961. The Avengers (TV series, 1961-9, along with The New Avengers, TV, 1976-7) followed a British secret agent called John Steed as he worked with a range of partners, many of them attractive women. While the first couple of seasons were primarily dealing with conventional street crime, organised crime, smuggling and the like, elements of Spy-Fi crept in with early stories such as “Propellant 23” (which involved recovering a flask of the eponymous fuel), “Dragonsfield” (featuring an attempt to interfere with a spacesuit development programme), “The Radioactive Man” (in which an innocent man becomes possessed of a dangerous radioactive compound) and “A Surfeit of H20” (which involves weather control). In the later series, the combatting of mad scientists and eccentrics employing them, and the protection of new technologies from “the other side” (usually portrayed as undefined eastern europeans or asians), became the norm, together with a more comedic approach and an increasing focus on the (attractive, athletic) female co-lead [1]. While this series relied less on gadgetry, it nonetheless abounded in the equipment of both sides.

Alongside The Avengers, another example can be found in The Champions (TV, 1968-9) which described the activities of three agents, Craig Stirling, Richard Barrett and Sharon Macready, who worked for an international troubleshooting organisation called Nemesis, based in Geneva. Crucially, following a plane crash in the Himalayas, the three agents have been secretly treated by the super-science of an advanced Tibetan civilisation to give them preternaturally sensitive senses, agility and strength, as well as limited telepathy and extra-sensory perception. This aids them in their missions, which involve the usual mixture of espionage, crime prevention and protection or acquisition of new technologies.

At the same time, and also in the UK, spy-fi made an appearance in aspects of the Anderson science fiction television series - appearing in the form of secret agent Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds (TV, 1965-6, e.g. episode “The Man from M.I.5” or “Danger at Ocean Deep”), in the role of child-spy with the implanted mind of an adult Joe 90 (TV, 1968-9) and in the minitarised espionage agent carried in a suitcase in The Secret Service (TV, 1969) amongst others [2]. At the same time the themes of the genre appears amidst crime fighting, adventure and spy shenanigans in episodes of series such as The Saint (1962-1969), Department S (TV, 1969-70) and its spin-off Jason King (TV, 1971-2), The Persuaders! (TV, 1971-2), The Adventurer (TV, 1972-3) and The Protectors (TV, 1972-4) [3]. It was also echoed in the themes of the (usually) more conventional espionage series Mission: Impossible (TV, 1966-1973).

After the mid-1970s the popularity of the subgenre more or less burnt itself out, although reappearing in occasional examples such as Knight Rider (TV, 1983-1986) and Bugs (TV, 1995-1999), and merging in many respects with crime dramas or super-hero fiction, from early examples such as The Champions and The Greatest American Hero (TV, 1981-1983) to the more recent Marvel Cinematic Universe (films and television, 2008-date).

 The Arrogance of Science

 A recurrent theme throughout the narratives mentioned above is the presentation of scientific advances and scientists themselves in the role of antagonists. These fall into several categories.

The first category are the scientists who want to derive personal profit, in the form of fame or finance, from their ground-breaking discoveries. These often appear in spy-fi as individuals on the run or selling their services to a range of agencies, and the lawful agents must track these down. Whether the scientists in question are rightful owners of the discovery or have stolen it, they often allow their own interests to blind them to the consequences of their actions. An interesting example of a scientist well aware of that their discovery is useless, but nonetheless determined to profit it can be found in the Department S episode "The Pied Piper of Hambledown", where a biochemist tricks a retired army officer into believing he can create a better world and spending vast amounts on development money... while knowing the plan will never work.

A second category is the type of scientist who isn’t unaware of the consequences of their discoveries, but feel they have the right to decide on those consequences. These scientists often believe their discoveries have the potential to improve life for others (regardless of warnings to the contrary) or for the planet (for example by wiping out those they consider unworthy or unnecessary) or that revealing it can act as a warning to mankind. While occasionally motivated by a personal desire for power, these examples are more often sincere in their belief that they will create a better world. (e.g. “The Neptune Affair” or “The Deadly Games Affair” in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Protectors episode “Balance of Terror”). In many their decision concerning their discovery includes withholding it from both sides in a conflict (e.g. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Suburbia Affair"; The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. episode “The High and Deadly Affair”).

Third, we find the scientists portrayed as naive, helpless or incompetent. Often these scientists don’t realise the implications of their research, or do so but nonetheless make catastrophic mistakes through carelesslessness or simple human error. Alternatively they act under duress, usually a threat to their families (e.g. The Champions episode “The Search”, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode “The Minus-X Affair”). In such stories the role of the agents is either to secure the research or to negate its effects, sometimes against the efforts of the scientists in question who are trying to cover their own backs.

Perhaps most strikingly amongst the antagonists in spy-fi we find the scientific cabals such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s THRUSH or James Bond’s Spectre. These are collections of scientists, criminals and others, united by their desire for self-enrichment and belief in their self-assessed intelligence and superiority [4]. Such organisations typically believe that they should be ruling the world, either for their own profit or for the benefit of the world itself. In many cases, they take actions to try to ensure this outcome - typically through mass extinction or chemical control of humanity and selection of a small group of survivors (e.g. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode “The Seven Wonders of the World Affair”).

An important trait shared by all these categories of scientists is their arrogance. Scientists in spy-fi are almost universally shown as arrogant - either in their presumed superiority over other humans or in their assumed indifference to the consequences of their actions. Where a scientist is not arrogant, they are often naive and isolated from reality. This shared trait both echoed and helped shape a common popular perception of scientists in this period as divorced from the realities of the rest of the world, and as arrogant in their assumption of superiority. In part this reflected the class and social imbalances in academia at the time, which certainly did lead some individual scientists to believe they were from a superior stock than the masses. The concern over scientific arrogance also reflected concerns arising in the aftermath of the Manhattan Project and other military science projects of the first half of the twentieth century, which (for arguably the first time) placed the fate of humanity as a species (not just individuals) in the hands of scientists in a very real way.

More concerningly, such representations give evidence for a growing mistrust from the general public of the time for scientists as a body. At this period, work at the cutting edge of the sciences began to require an increasing degree of specialisation and training to understand, typically passing beyond the knowledge of informed amateurs or the scope of simple explanations. In a number of areas of science, the dominant paradigm required for advances moved into areas that lie outside the scope of experience which most people consider common sense. As we have seen in recent times, many people are suspicious of things they do not understand and struggle to accept the expertise of experts when it appears counter to their own beliefs or experience.

The Universality of Science

A feature of both the criminal cabals and the forces of law and order in Spy-Fi is their internationality and, in some ways, their progressiveness. 

While the goals of organisations such as THRUSH and SPECTRE were evil, and often included members of unfriendly nations, they were described as supranational - indifferent to political borders not typically inspired by straight-forward national interests. Despite the stereotypes, examples of leading female scientist academics in Spy Fi are surprisingly numerous (e.g. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode “The Love Affair”, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. episode “The High and Deadly Affair”, The Avengers episode “The White Dwarf”, The Champions episode “Get Me Out of Here!”, The Protectors episode “The Last Frontier”). The scientists and innovators in Spy-Fi are still more likely to be white and male, but a substantial fraction of both are female or of other ethnic origins.

The United Network Command for Law and Enforcement in The Man and Girl from U.N.C.L.E. was similarly international. Strikingly for a series filmed at the height of the Cold War, the co-leads were an American agent and a Soviet agent working in close cooperation, under the direction of a British commander, in an organisation which worked with the authorities on both sides of the Iron Curtain. U.N.C.L.E. is shown to have offices and agents around the world, and technicians and agents from a range of ethnic backgrounds, including men and women of colour. The spin-off series makes it clear that women can occupy front-line roles [5].

Nemesis in The Champions is also described as an international organisation, and its leader, Tremayne is seen working in liaison with or at the request of military and politicians for other nations, but is not answerable to them. His team is also multinational, pairing American Craig, British Richard and Sharon, whose origin was unclear but who speaks with a slight European accent [6]. Again, many of the scientists in the show were white and male (as was commonly true of casting at the time) but the series includes examples who were not. Just as U.N.C.L.E. headquarters was in the shadow of the United Nations tower in New York, so Nemesis’s location in Geneva (also home to a United Nations headquarters) is not accidental. However while the adversaries in the series are rarely named, and tend towards Asian rather than eastern European ethnicities, there is occasional mention of NATO and other treaty organisations, and Nemesis appears to lack Russian or Eastern bloc participation.

Other Spy-Fis such as The Avengers or James Bond were more firmly based within a single country’s intelligence infrastructure (the UK’s in both cases), but nonetheless feature examples of collaboration with other countries (for example James Bond’s CIA ally Felix Leitner), and with stories often taking on an international flavour.

Through examples like these, and by their very nature at the intersection between science fiction and espionage, Spy-Fi series made clear the very real international nature of the scientific community. The Cold War and other political divides did (and still does) impose barriers between scientists of different races. However the scientific literature has been international since its origin, with first letters and then copies of journals exchanged across political and language borders. Nowadays, of course, the internet has made international cooperation far easier and its more uncommon not to have international collaborators than the reverse. In addition, the increasingly global impact of scientific discoveries - whether nuclear, agricultural, impacting the environment or impacting society - means that even developments within a single country could be of global concern.

The Champions provides an interesting example of this in its episode “Get Me Out of Here”. In this story, American-based medical research scientist Dr Martes visits the small Caribbean dictatorship she defected from some time earlier to follow up on an interesting medical case. When the government there (and dictator El Jefe) refuses to recognise her American citizenship and divorce, keeping her in the country, Nemesis sends its three operatives to extract her. They recognise that while the island may provide research expenses and equipment, it cannot or will not provide the team and international research connections which are vital for the successful continuation of the vital research. As Sharon points out: "She can't work in a vacuum, Tremayne! She may be brilliant, but without her Team, El Jefe's selfish little game is going to put back her project by years."

On the whole, Spy-Fi presents the internationality of science (and indeed law and order) as a positive feature, with collaboration benefiting all and international experts often called upon to solve problems. However it also positioned the internationality of science as a potential risk factor for both national and international security, requiring international organisations such as Nemesis or U.N.C.L.E. to mitigate it.

The Imminence of Science

One aspect of science that is shown clearly in Spy-Fi is the extent to which it intersected, or had the potential to intersect, with the lives of society as a whole. In an early entry in this blog, I discussed The Avengers and the Imminence of Science in 1960s Britain. The Champions and other series presented the same encroachment of scientific innovation and gadgetry into the lives of ordinary people (e.g. in The Champions episode “The Invisible Man,” in which a powerful two-way radio is used to drive a bank manager to the edge of insanity.). Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the internationality described above, the same analysis can be made of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and of society in the United States.

The military science of the 1960s had the potential to end human existence on Earth. The agricultural and industrial sciences of the time were already changing everyday life, with technology appearing in the home and in workplaces. Global telecommunications were beginning to shorten the effective distance between different parts of the world, and were beginning to to include satellite relays. The race for space brought cutting edge science to prominence as an aspect of world politics and national esteem, and the first electronic computers were being produced. Unlike today, technology was something to be understood rather than just used. Cars, televisions and household equipment was designed to be maintained by its purchasers. Boys magazines of the time gave instructions on how to construct everything from radios to spectrographs, and mixed detailed scientific descriptions and technical specifications with comic strips. Science (or technology at the very least), in other words, was part of the life of ordinary people.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. perhaps presented slightly fewer examples of eccentric at-home scientists than The Avengers, and better recognised the need for finance and infrastructure behind major advancements. It nonetheless showed villages being devastated or destroyed, the lives of individuals being disrupted and various scientific or technical plots involving schools, shops, salons and suburban homes. This in addition, of course, to the various larger scale schemes aiming at mass destruction. The relevance of events to individuals is further emphasised by the production decision in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to feature “innocents” in every episode - people often unaware of the espionage or scientific intrigues whose lives are nonetheless caught up in them.

Spy-Fi, on both sides of the Atlantic, represents scientific discovery and its consequences as something that can affect anyone, or everyone, at any time.

The Spies Who Loved Science?

During this brief period in the 1960s and 70s then, science was both omni-present and rather frightening. Scientists shaped everyone’s lives through their actions, but were perceived as arrogant and disconnected. The increasing interconnectedness of the global community was enabled by scientific breakthroughs, and presented both a threatening potential for scientific conspiracy and an opportunity for further scientific and law enforcement collaboration.

It might have been a response to the more frightening aspects of this balance that led to an increasingly prominent association between Spy-Fi and comedy. The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and the later series of The Avengers were overt in their use of exaggeratedly eccentric antagonists and comic scenarios interspersed with more serious drama. James Bond and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. tended to employ comedy more circumspectly, but nonetheless frequently. The sub-genre also attracted straightforwardly comic representations in the form of affectionate parodies such as Get Smart (TV, 1965-70), Casino Royale (film, 1967), The Greatest American Hero and later Austin Powers (film, 1997 and sequels) and Johnny English (film, 2003 and sequels). These all embraced the use of gadgetry and the science fictional themes which underlay the villainous plots. Such comedy might be interpreted as a form of defence against the very real sense of existential threat which the sub-genre in its more serious form both reflected and reinforced.

In such circumstances, it’s perhaps surprising that Spy-Fi series nonetheless present an ambiguous but largely positive representation of science as a whole. The devices and gadgets that allow the secret agents to communicate, surveil, escape or otherwise control their environments are embraced whole-heartedly by both the agents and their audiences. While a large number of scientists are shown as ruthless and self-centred, others are shown as well-meaning (if not always worldly) and a substantial number work for the organisations featured in Spy-Fi series - including one of the co-leads of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., agent Illya Kuryakin, who canonically has a doctorate in quantum physics ( as discussed in “The Her Master’s Voice Affair”). For all the potential disasters confronted in these narratives, there is also a recognition that scientific innovations were changing aspects of the world for the better at the time (and had the potential to do so further in the right hands), particularly in the areas of medical and agricultural science. Despite its fears, Spy-Fi fundamentally shares the fundamental optimism for the future reflected in contemporary science fictions such as Star Trek, Lost in Space and Thunderbirds.

The overriding theme of Spy-Fi is not that scientific progress is itself a bad thing, but rather that it presents challenges and threats that must be understood, recognised and handled responsibly. In this respect it is reflective of its parent genre of Science Fiction - much of which echoes the same warning.

The fading out of Spy-Fi (except in its more comedic and nostalgic form) was partly a result of its own success, which quickly established cliches and exhausted many key plot points. However shifts in the factors which initially led to the sub-genre’s success also contributed. The shifting politics of the Cold War gradually rendered plausible espionage narratives less dramatic and more detail oriented. The continuing failure of nuclear war to end humanity, commercial space travel to be attained, and technology to produce automated houses, immortality or mind control had something of a numbing effect on both the sense of immediacy and the impression of imminent threat. At the same time, it’s arguable that increasing literacy, university admissions and general levels of scientific education has reduced (although far from removed) the perceived gulf between scientists and the wider community. Although the products of science (e.g. computer devices, phones, medical technologies and household assistants) are more than ever a part of everyday life, they typically operate as black-boxes, not serviceable or comprehensible in their workings by most people. The technology has, in many respects, become separated from the science underpinning it.

It’s notable that where examples of the Spy-Fi genre have been revived in the twenty-first century, as for example in the more recent James Bond films (featuring Daniel Craig) or film adaptation of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015; dir. Richey), they have tended more towards traditional espionage plots and grittier depictions of the violent realities behind it, minimising the science fictional elements. Espionage now appears to be as much (or more) about digital technologies and remote surveillance, rather than the traditional man-on-the-ground. More recent espionage films such as the Mission Impossible or Bourne Identity franchises have used technology as a tool but rarely as a central theme or plot driver in the way it was treated by more traditional Spy-Fi.

The era of peak Spy-Fi has passed, as the combination of pressures that brought it into existence has passed. It nonetheless preserves an interesting record of the relationship between science and society in the 1960s. The attitudes towards science and scientists it both echoed and fostered informed the adolescence and early adulthood of today’s elder generation, including leading politicians and decision makers. Through repeats and rebroadcasts, as well as the advent of digital streaming, the representation of science and scientists in these series has (and will) influenced further generations - albeit through the lens of nostalgia, bygone geopolitical considerations, problematic attitudes, dated storytelling techniques and mannered performances.

The charm, excitement and entertainment of Spy-Fi provides an abiding memory for many. Its representation of science as a discipline was simplistic in many ways, but nuanced in others. Either way, the sub-genre serves as a reminder that the popular perception of science is both complex and malleable. While today’s representations of scientists in the media are less overtly stereotyped than many in the Spy-Fi cannon, this remains as true now as it ever was. It is important that both audiences and those working in science themselves recognise that fact.