#bill tanner

[teddybarebones]

Anyone done this one yet?

[mi6-cafe]

Our Week 2 LDWS Drabbles are here!

Prompt: an image prompt of a red train travelling over a stone bridge in a tree-filled Scottish landscape:

Word count: 150

You can read their drabbles HERE and vote for your top three favorites using THIS FORM!

Thank you so much not just to our writers, but also to our readers and voters—we couldn’t have this competition without any of your valuable contributions. <3

We’ll release voting results on Monday. Good luck with week two, writers!

And join us in discord Saturday night at 9pm eastern to read the drabbles aloud!

[dontcxckitup]

Spectre

[headcanonthings]

Moneypenny: Hey, what are you doing? Q: I have taken a venture into the fascinating world of bad coping skills. Moneypenny: Really? What bad coping skills did you do? Q: Oh, not me. Tanner: He is observing 007. James: Can't you just let me down my whiskey in peace???? Q, looking at James: Q: *starts scribbling* James: THE FUCK ARE YOU WRITING DOWN-

[double-0h-no]

Zero to Hero

Prompt fill for "infected" and 200 words.

Listen, I have... thoughts and opinions on Heracles as a project, but they shall not matter for this. For this, it only matters that Heracles exists, Mallory knows about it rather well, and it's stil in its experimental phase.

on ao3

A disagreement has gotten out of hand.

"How could this happen?"

James stood in front of the glass paneling of Q's office that was now under strict lockdown. A medical tent was being erected directly in front of it, and nurse Midgen was getting dressed in what looked to Bond like a full on hazmat suit, no bit of skin exposed.

"He had a disagreement with M," Tanner explained quietly, deep in thought, and James sputtered.

"He what?"

A sardonic smile tugged at the corner of Tanner's lips, lacking any joy. "Our quartermaster found something M rather had him not find, if you know what I mean. Q was opposing this project greatly, on moral grounds. He... managed to get some of the stuff here. I don't see how it could have been difficult, with his access and knowledge.

"When confronted, M immediately told Q he was fired."

Only years of acting prevented his surprise being written all over James’ face, but apparently there was enough for Tanner to tell, because he snorted and nodded in agreement. "Yes. After that, I still have to find out what exactly happened. All I know right now is that Q is injected with something called Heracles, and is being quarantined.”

[caribbean1989]

Ben Wishaw as Q in Skyfall (2012)

[luminiferocity]

Part-time badass, full-time girl dad Bill Tanner

Some Tanner appreciation and headcanons for Tanner Tuesday

Bill Tanner is a bit of a shit

He chewed the ear off Bond while he pushed through his evaluations montage in Skyfall with butter-wouldn't-melt relentlessness. He ain't afraid of no double-ohs

Thinks nothing of loitering for the spectacle of Q and Bond almost weaponising UST

Not forgetting "I believe I said 'bring it back in one piece', not 'bring back one piece'" - Q, you are delightful, yes, but Tanner's smirk

Bill Tanner is a bit of a BAMF

Happily joins in with illicit mayhem. Multiple times. Spectre ending: squad goals

Look at those cuffs: precise; military, even. Tenuous, but do I like to think maybe Tanner had a highly classified investigative/diplomatic field role for the Foreign Office before becoming Chief of Staff? Yes I do

Bill Tanner is a family man

I read a headcanon forever ago that Tanner is a girl dad and immediately accepted it as truth

Drives a brightly coloured SUV, with a roof box for their family camping holidays. 100% unbothered when the double-ohs take the mick

He's a karaoke legend (entirely based on Rory Kinnear in Bank of Dave). Belts out a mean Bat Out of Hell

[pommedepersephone]

A Dreadful Shipwreck

Chapter 1/3 | Words: 1k | Rating: General

Relationships: Eve Moneypenny & Q, Eve Moneypenny & Bill Tanner, Eve Moneypenny & James Bond

Tags: BAMF Eve Moneypenny, BAMF Q, Raoul Silva is dead but not forgotten, Lots of references to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Summary: Eve wasn’t one to begrudge anyone their vices - best to let my brother go to the devil in his own way, as her Uncle Gabe used to say. What she couldn’t allow was the youngest Quartermaster in MI6 history, who was about to find himself at the centre of the ongoing inquiry Mansfield had taken a gut shot to escape, to drown in his own misery before Whitehall even had the chance to try and tear him apart.  Eve knew Q better than anyone, she had seen him enraged, she had seen him morose. Never had she seen him in what appeared to be an existential crisis. 

Part of The Marvelous Miss Moneypenny Series!

[hecticwinter]

Bond: Last night I found out Q is a sleep talker.

Tanner: Oh, really?

Bond: "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell." Right. In. My. Ear. At 3am.

[nerds-yearbook]

Appendix: Bill Tanner on Film

Michael Goodliffe - Man With a Golden Gun (1974)

James Villiers - For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Michael Kitchen - GoldenEye (1995), The World is Not Enough (1999)

Rory Kinnear - Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015), No Time to Die (2021)

[laurelins-light]

Its Tanner Tuesday!

Here, have some headcanons specifically about Bill Tanner!

1. Tanner is a big fan of the classics, and he loves watching them on his couch or on his laptop (thanks to a secured server Q setup for him and also uses from time to time) whenever he has any downtime. There isn’t a lot, which is why he tends to go for his favorites and not new movies or shows.

2. Tanner is the go-to person for anyone in MI6 to take care of their animals whenever they are off on long missions or can’t make it home. It’s become such a thing that there’s now a waitlist for his services and Q is regularly solicited to put names at the top of the list.

3. Tanner knows everything. Even if you think he doesn’t know, he does. He decides (along with Moneypenny) what is M’s purview and what is just something to be taken care of with a good bit of blackmail.

4. Q, Tanner, and Moneypenny all like to sync together at least once a week (on the pretext of knowing what's happening in all the departments but really to just bitch about their colleagues). Tanner keeps a running list of material just in case he needs to blackmail Eve or Q into doing him favors later.

5. Tanner used to be a field agent, one step down from double-oh, and no one- barring the old M-knows this until he has to showcase his skills during an attempted MI6 break in one day. No one believes Q when Q tries to tell them all that Tanner really is a badass.

6. In a Q!Holmes verse Tanner is Mycroft’s partner, but he refuses to give Mycroft any dirt on his sibling and Q only discovers Tanner and Mycroft are together by accident and gets very upset until he finds out that Tanner never tells Mycroft anything and it genuinely annoys Mycroft to no end. Then, Q helps Tanner get around Mycroft’s surveillance, just because he can.

7. Tanner’s favorite food is hand pies, because he can eat them whenever and he can make them ahead of time and not have to worry about food during the week. He often brings Q and Moneypenny some since they all work about the same amount and he knows they aren’t eating well enough.

[dontcxckitup]

Gareth Mallory. Charming man.

[samanthahirr]

007 Fest Scavenger Hunt #25 - Bill Tanner's Bedding Set

Scavenger Hunt #25: Show us the bedding set of any Bond character you choose.

Mallory seems to be a good boss. Not as tactically ruthless as Olivia Mansfield, but more politically savvy. And he certainly seems to put more stock in staff morale than Mansfield ever did. Case in point: 

A week into Mallory’s tenure, Bill Tanner’s new boss noted the fresh bouquet of primroses and gentians he’d picked up on his way into the office. When Mallory inquired about them, Tanner explained they were for his wife on their 12-year anniversary. Mallory got a pinched look on his face and promptly excused himself for an urgent errand. Before Tanner left that evening, Mallory presented him with a celebratory present for he and his wife—and Mallory’d clearly taken the time to look at Tanner’s personnel file, because he suddenly knew Claribel’s name, though Tanner hadn’t mentioned it.

Clare was impressed with Mallory’s thoughtfulness—and so was Tanner, though he wasn’t convinced it was entirely appropriate. And then they unwrapped the glittering silver package together after dinner. A super-king duvet set (when all they had was a double), in an aggressively quaint floral pattern which nearly matched the bouquet Tanner had picked out as an inside joke about their disastrous trip to the Swiss Alps on their previous anniversary.

“Well,” Tanner said, dismayed. “Bollocks.”

“It’s from Harrods,” Clare fretted.

“Is there a gift receipt?”

“No. No receipt at all.” 

“I suppose we can make room in the linen closet,” Tanner said, already working out how to convincingly express gratitude for such a poorly chosen gift.

Clare fussed with her phone for a moment and then yelled, “A thousand quid?!”

And Tanner spit Cabernet all over the chocolate gateau, thankfully missing the duvet.

Which is how Tanner and his wife ended up with an aggressively pastoral duvet draped like so much untrimmed fondant over their too-small mattress, even though it clashed horribly with the rest of the house’s modern aesthetic.

[wipbigbang]

WIP Big Bang 2023 Round Starting April 1st!

What is the WIP Big Bang? Good question! This is a Big Bang with one goal in mind: to clean out your fanfic drafts folder. These are stories that were unfinished for whatever reason, that authors returned to and completed, and the art that goes with them!

Please read our FAQ/check out our schedule for more details.

[luminiferocity]

Here be headcanons

It's happening! Kicking off the first day of 007 Fest 2023 with some MI6 worldbuilding headcanons for Headcanons Day (AKA the HCs crammed into my WIP to make sense of film-world MI6)

Q Branch is just a small part of Six (and everyone else thinks the double-oh programme is more trouble than it's worth)

Q Branch makes no sense. As film!Q is a shorthand for the mission support teams for narrative ease, Q Branch seems to run independently and Q himself is a polymath taking on all the roles.

Eh, I'm okay with genius Q because I love him 🤷 Other Q Branchers are all wildly smart and eccentric in their own ways. That's Q's hiring policy

Most analysis, missions, etc. are run through logical departments with hundreds of staff, which the problem children doubles-ohs and Q Branch build on for their specialist missions

Lots of Six staff don't like the double-ohs and Q Branch by extension – they burn through the budget, cause havoc and get away with multitudes, and a little more secrecy and intelligence in the SIS would be much preferred

Maybe it's for the best that Q Branch is away from HQ up-river at Millbank Pier (based on this excellent post)

Essentially, Mallory has hundreds, maybe thousands, of staff and assets globally, yet it's 1% of his staff that causes 99.9% of his headaches

Heracles isn't the first off-book project and it won't be the last

Mallory was used as a character to hang the Heracles plot on, but it leaves a lot of questions. Why was he even involved? Why isn't it the responsibility of the Defence Science and Technology Lab?

I figure all the UK's intelligence agencies have joint off-book operations like the Heracles research, some farmed out to private contractors, etc. So, Heracles isn't special, it's just that this secret got found out and had big consequences

Maybe Mallory had a hand in Obruchev defecting, so those consequences were extra personal

Also, imagine being Mallory: was Chair of the committee looking into MI6 shadiness, only to get hired as M and get tangled into all this shadiness

Q & Moneypenny besties: great; Q & Moneypenny & Tanner: even better

After Spectre, they didn't know who to trust, except one another. They keep Six running and they're each other's rocks and best bitching buddies

Q, despite what he says, is the most dramatic of the three. Moneypenny, of course, delights in winding Q up. Tanner isn't as catty as those two, except for when the mood strikes and he's the worst

Tanner gets swept up in various antics, often Bond's, along with Q and Moneypenny. However, he's perfected bland-faced innocence and Mallory never gives him grief for it. Q and Moneypenny find this very annoying

[silveragelovechild]

Bill Tanner is M’s chief of staff in the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). He was occasionally in Ian Fleming original James Bond novels. Tanner appeared more frequently in the followup novels by John Gardner.

Tanner has appeared in eight of the films:

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) - Michael Goodliffe plays Tanner in one scene but is unnamed until the end credits

For Your Eyes Only (1981) - Bernard Lee who had played M in Al previous Bond films died before his scenes could be filmed. Out of respect, M was not recast and the character Tanner gave Bond his instructions. Tanner was played by James Villiers.

GoldenEye (1995) & The World Is Not Enough (1999) - Michael Kitchen played Tanner opposite Judi Dench as M.

Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012), Spectre (2015), & No Time to Die (2021) - Rory Kinnear played Tanner in four of the five films with Daniel Craig.