Moonraker, the novel and the films

This Saturday on BBC Radio 4 the latest adaptation of Ian Fleming Bond novels starring Toby Stephens as 007.  Those who only familiar with the film being the tale of megalomaniac Hugo Drax's attempt to commit global genocide may be surprised to find Drax (being played on radio by Samuel West) as a vengeful Nazi out to destroy London with a nuclear missile. That is not say that elements of the novel have not made it to the films. Please be aware there are SPOILERS.


The Spy Who Loved me (1977)

Bad guy Stromberg (as played by Curt Jurgens) plans to start WW III by having hijacked nuclear submarines launch ballistic missiles at both New York and Moscow. Bond foils this by changing the submarines to target themselves. In the novel Moonraker Bond redirects the missile to Target the submarine Drax is making his getaway


A View to a Kill (1985)

Tycoon Max (Christopher Walken) Zorin passes himself as an anti communist East European refugee when he really is a KGB agent. The novel Drax is seen by the public as a British war hero injured when he really was a disguised Nazi commando injured in a failed operation.


GoldenEye (1995)

Like Drax MI6 traitor Alec (Sean Bean) Trevelyan has a motive that dates back to the Second World War. The son of Cossacks whose group worked with the Nazis only at the end of the conflict sent back for execution by Stalin. His plan involves London being hit with a space based EMP weapon.


Die Another Day (2002)

Having spent an year in a North Korean jail following a mission supposedly killing Colonel (Will Yun Lee) Moon and being betrayed by a double agent Bond finds himself on the trail supposedly respectable business man Gustav (played by none other than Toby Stephens) Graves who is in fact Moon after a surgical procedure to change his identity. In early drafts the Moonraker character Gala Brand appeared however after rewrites she was changed to the traitorous Miranda Frost as played Rosumnd Pike who would later go on to play Pussy Galore opposite Stephens in the radio version of Goldfinger in 2010.