<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">The Lethal Luthors: A Deceptive Brilliance
by Dennis Power
Austin Powers, Rene Amal (Dr. Evil)
1933-
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Around
1932, Kimball O'Hara came to
They wed
in a quick ceremony and had a tumultuous, tempestuous, passionate love affair
that lasted six months, ending with a secretly pregnant Deirdre on a luxury
liner heading back to
Shortly
after giving birth she married a military man named Nigel Powers who had been
one of her previous beaus. He adopted the boys;
When the
boys were about one year old Nigel took the family on a vacation to
Austin
Powers was raised by a series of nannies and governesses, most of whom also
served as his father's live-in mistresses. Nigel Powers was frequently gone on
business, often for months at a stretch. When Nigel was not away on business,
he usually spent most of his time with a long series of mistresses. On the few
instances when he went on outings with
The many
absences caused
The film Goldmember
depicts
The film is a parody of spy films and so much of what transpires should be taken with a good deal of salt. However, even in all of the ridiculousness and juvenile humor that permeates the Austin Powers films there is some truth hidden behind the laughter.
In The Spy Who Shagged Me Austin mentions having become infected with a social disease in November 1964 during shore leave in the Dutch East Indies. This reference was likely dated incorrectly in the film. The Dutch East Indies became Indonesia in 1949; while people may have still been calling it the Dutch East Indies by as late as 1954, by 1964 they probably would have referred to it as Indonesia. Austin's naval service may also be where he became so skilled a photographer that he could maintain a cover identity as a fashion photographer. It was probably after exhibiting this skill that he was assigned to military intelligence, where his performance in such places in Korea, Kenya, and Cyrpus brought him commendations for bravery. It was his naval career and his relationship with Nigel Powers that got him pegged to go into the Intelligence Branch.
Nigel Powers was one of the last of his kind and yet also the first of kind. He was the last of the type of club-land hero, the gentleman of leisure such as Richard Hannay[4] who devoted his time to fighting the enemies of the British Empire. Nigel Powers was also the first of the modern spies who used sex as a weapon and seduction as a tool.
Austin lived a life of privilege with the exception of his stint in the Navy. We know his father owned a yacht, Austin had a private jumbo jet, a custom made Jaguar sports car, and he owned a building in London that was a combination of living quarters, nightclub, and photo studio.[5]
Conversely, his twin brother lived through a childhood of poverty, despair, and madness.
Douglas and Austin Powers are fraternal twins; Douglas has blue eyes and Austin has brown, Douglas fell victim to the baldness gene, while Austin did not, although it is possible he wears a toupee.[6]
Douglas and Austin were in the back seat of the car when it was blown up. Their mother was killed instantly. Austin was blown clear of the accident and landed without injury not too far from his father. Douglas was blown into the lake nearby and was found by a Belgian and his fifteen-year-old love slave, who raised the boy.
According to Douglas' personal testimony, he had a standard upbringing.
My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15 year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy - the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds.[7]
If Douglas thinks this was a standard upbringing, he was sadly misinformed by his "parents," the world traveling boulangerie owner and his love slave, who seemingly just happened to be at the scene of the car explosion.
It was not happenstance. They were the ones who had planted the car bomb.
In one of the many raids of various Dr. Evil lairs, one of the items left behind by Evil and his cohorts was a photograph. The photograph was of Dr. Evil in his youth standing next to a rather dour looking man carrying a bundle of reeds. A set of fingerprints was lifted from the photograph. The fingerprints were traced to a Belgian national named Alain Kurtz. Kurtz had come from a wealthy family of ivory merchants.[8] As a young man Alain Kurtz had fought for Belgium in The Great War in the African campaigns; he was disciplined several times for getting into fights with fellow soldiers Remy Baudouin and Henri Defense.[9]
A fairly wealthy man, Alain Kurtz dabbled in many businesses but had a hair trigger temper and was prone to violence, especially when he had been drinking. In the twenties, Alain Kurtz became an agent of the new organization THRUSH.[10] How he was approached by the new organization of THRUSH remains unknown, but Kurtz became a contract killer for THRUSH and other organizations. The money from the contracts kept him affluent between his yearly stipend from his estates.
A fan of the Doc Savage novels, although he was more interested in the supervillains that Doc fought, Alain Kurtz had the idea of raising the foundling child as the antithesis of Doc Savage, a child devoted to evil. Since he knew that this child was the son of Nigel Powers, Britain's top spy, this made the task even more enjoyable. He named the child Rene Amal, or Reborn in Evil. He spent considerable time and much of his fortune corrupting and warping the child. The child believed himself destined for greatness, but unfortunately he was one of those people who believe themselves to be natural leaders but have absolutely no charisma.
An odd lonely boy, even away from his family Rene found his life a torment. In college, desiring to "belong" he attempted to join several fraternities. He underwent several humiliating and often painful hazings, but none of the fraternities accepted him as a member.
In an almost pathetic attempt to make friends, he broke into the offices of several professors and stole the answers to examinations. He gave the answers to any who wanted them. On exam day however the test questions were all different. Rene passed all of the exams because he had done the reading, however quite a few of his classmates did not.
Thinking that he had set them up, they cornered him, and using some of the stories that he had told them of his youth, they stripped him naked, threw him in a burlap sack, beat him with reeds, shaved his scrotum, lathered ground beef onto his scalp, and hung him upon a flag pole outside a women's college.
A hundred screams woke him from his faint, as the girls who had lined for their morning calisthenics spotted him.
This was a defining moment in Rene Amal's life. After graduating college at 17, he entered medical school.[11] After finishing De Rais Medical School, he ingratiated himself with the British Intelligence service by providing valuable information on illegal drug trafficking and the connection between it and Russian espionage efforts.
His efforts were well received and top agent Nigel Powers saw great potential in the rather serious and dour Dr. Rene Amal. Nigel Powers recommended that Dr. Amal attend the Intelligence Operative training center. Dr. Amal and his adoptive father were pleased; in this way they could infiltrate the Ministry of Defense from within. Nigel Powers arranged for Dr. Amal to be his son Austin's roommate, believing that Austin's wild nature would loosen up the Doctor and that the Doctor's serious nature would help ground Austin. However, the roommates for the most part ignored each other.
The incident in the film Goldmember in which Austin was chosen International Man of Mystery over Dr. Evil was not a true incident but rather a fictional episode illustrative of Austin's and Evil's relationship at the Intelligence Academy. While Dr. Evil had better grades in the technical aspects of espionage, he lacked insight into other people and had trouble interrelating with his peers, whereas Austin excelled in these areas but fell behind in the technical aspects.
After graduation Dr. Rene Amal was given access to some very sensitive subject matter. After a few weeks he was caught attempting to sell it to THRUSH agents. This had actually been his final test, and he failed it. The information he had been given access to was as fictional as were the THRUSH agents who contacted him. Not only was he blacklisted from intelligence work, he was arrested and sentenced to prison for three years. To make matters worse, Austin Powers’ final test had been to discover a leak inside the Ministry of Defense and seal the leak. Austin had discovered Dr. Amal was the leak and did not hesitate to take him into custody.
Dr. Amal's one friend at the intelligence academy had also washed out of the program. Dr. Amal's friend was the second son of a minor aristocrat, Lord Nombre who lavished all of his attention on his first son and heir. He named his second son Due Nombre as a clever joke so that when his son went to school he would be referred to as Nombre, Due or Number Two. Due Nombre failed to become a Ministry of Defense agent because despite his outwardly calm and implacable manner he cracked under pressure. It was decided that his skills were bureaucratic and organizational in nature, tasks that did not appeal to him at the time.
After leaving the Intelligence service Due Nombre became something of a wheeler and dealer, having many business ventures of varying legitimacy. In 1961 he learned that exiled Princess Dala and the famed Lugashi jewel “The Pink Panther” would be in Switzerland at a resort often frequented by his uncle, Sir Charles Litton. Due Nombre intended to charm Princess Dala so he could obtain the jewel or else steal it so he could sell it to the current government of Lughashi. Posing as George Litton, he was unable to obtain the jewel because of the efforts of a jewel thief called The Phantom and the dogged Inspector Clouseau of the Surete.[12]
Dr. Amal escaped from jail in 1959. His father wished him to join THRUSH. While Dr. Amal agreed with some of the goals of the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and Subjugation of Humanity, THRUSH was too ideological for Dr. Amal's liking; he wished to also profit from evil in addition to perpetuating it. So instead of joining THRUSH, he joined SPECTRE. The Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. The SPECTRE organization that Dr. Amal joined was one that had been formed by Ernst Blofeld in the aftermath of the Thunderball Incident.[13]
Dr. Amal was known as Sub Operative 165. Dr. Amal assisted Blofeld in creating a hypno-therapy technique. Using this this hypno-therapy technique Blofeld created a special, exclusive sanitarium on Piri Gloria in the Swiss Alps. Ostensibly the hypno-therapy was used to cure some young women from the farming areas of England who had been sent to Blofeld’s Sanitarium. These young women had severe allergies to poultry and grain, which were tragic considering that they lived in the heart of England grain and poultry producing region. The girls were actually made into sleeper agents by Blofeld with the mission to contaminate the poultry and grain of their homeland. [14]
Dr. Amal assisted in running the hypno-therapy sessions. Because of this, some confusion about Blofeld's appearance began and Blofeld was in fact depicted as a bald-headed man in the film version of the clinic in On Her Majesty's Service.[15]
During James Bond's and the Union Corse‘s assault on Blofeld's Swiss Alps-based clinic, Dr. Amal had his face slashed by a shattered window. This injury nearly put his eye out and caused permanent damage to his eyelid. He would have a droopy eye and facial scar for the rest of his life.
Dr. Amal was one of the few people who stayed a part of Blofeld's operation after the virtual destruction of SPECTRE by the Union Corse in 1961. He was with Blofeld during the Japanese incident portrayed in the novel You Only Live Twice. After Blofeld was killed and Irma Blunt taken into custody by the Japanese, Dr. Amal seized a good portion of the remnants of Blofeld's organization and formed his own organization. The new organization had two branches; an illegal one that carried on the same SPECTRE-type criminal activity for money, and a legitimate cover organization that could be used to launder the ill-gotten gains. He placed Due Nombre in charge of the legitimate part of the organization. Dr. Amal collected several henchmen from various criminal organizations and deliberately cultivated the myth that Blofeld was still alive and that he was Blofeld.
Dr. Amal’s subterfuge was aided by a rival organization, which had also taken over part of Blofeld's organization. This other organization, Scorpia, was led by Dr. Amal's uncle, William Luthor. Scorpia had seized the chance to add part of SPECTRE to Scorpia. Constant attacks by the likes of Nick Fury of CIALD and other similar organizations in recent years had eroded many of Scorpia's personnel and resources.
Between 1963 and 1967 Dr. Amal built his organization and made his initial forays into the theater of super-villainy.
Although his organization actively promoted the idea that Blofeld was still alive, Dr. Amal began to spearhead various operations under his own name. These operations were in the nature of feints, as well as operations gathering materials and personnel related to the planned operations of Dr. Amal's version of SPECTRE but operations that Dr. Amal did not want directly tied to SPECTRE. Dr. Amal's name began to be bandied about in the intelligence community, often being mangled by the English speaking press. He also thought that the English translation of his name which was Evil rolled off the tongue better than Amal, and so began to refer to himself as Dr. Evil. Because of his short stature, petulant child-like behavior, and his often bizarre and easily defeated plots for world domination, world leaders tended to dismiss Dr. Evil as a joke. While he was considered a threat, he was not considered that much of a threat, certainly not one to warrant the assignment of one of the intelligence community’s top agents such as Bond, Smiley, Carter, or Helm.[16] Yet he was not to be entirely dismissed for he had shown a capacity for ruthlessness and a willingness to hold entire cities or nations for ransom.
Although countless murders can be attributed to his organization, some traced to his very hand, he was either too inept to carry out his grander schemes or he had been effectively thwarted by the agents in charge of his case.
The agent chosen to lead the fight against Dr. Evil was the agent who accidentally stumbled onto his organization, code name—Danger Powers.[17]
Dr. Evil hated Austin Powers from their days at the intelligence school. Although many of the operations that Evil's organization implemented were designed to fail since they were actually diversions from other operations, many of those which were supposed to succeed did not. It was because Danger Powers successfully, if accidentally, thwarted some of the operations that were supposed to succeed that Dr. Evil regarded him as his "nemesis." As we will see, another more high profile agent of British Intelligence also defeated a couple of Dr. Evil's big plans, and so ended up on his short list of main enemies.
After years of preparation Dr. Evil launched his first mega operation as part of the "New" SPECTRE. He based his operation in an extinct volcano on the island of Matsu, part of the Japanese island group. He secured a large monetary contract from Red China to start a war between Russia and the United States by hijacking their manned space exploration vehicles. Since this was a SPECTRE operation, Dr. Evil claimed to be Dr. Shatterhand or Ernst Stravo Blofeld.
James Bond entered the case with a vengeance.[18] Bond strove to discover if the man who had killed his wife was indeed still alive. Although Bond was certain he had strangled Blofeld, directly after that event Bond had also suffered brain damage that caused amnesia. It took several years before Bond recovered most of his memories. James Bond was the same person who had scarred Dr. Evil's face, although Bond did not know this. Dr. Evil's perfect plan was eventually depicted in the film You Never Live Twice. [19]
Much of Dr. Evil's SPECTRE organization was shattered by James Bond and the Japanese Intelligence Ministry, it would take him years to rebuild it. [20]
Needing a quick infusion of capital, he allowed Due Nombre carte blanche to set up legitimate operations. Due Nombre had an ongoing business relationship with billionaire Howard Hughes and so set up a legitimate headquarters in the United States. Dr. Evil made his main base of operations in Europe and some of his top aides set about carrying out various criminal activities that would replenish the coffers of his Evil organization, among these operations were infiltrating the Marseilles drug connection. Their foray into this was stopped by New York detective Foxy Cleopatra and Austin Powers. Dr. Evil dispatched several of his assassins to kill Austin Powers but they failed.
Dr. Evil was impatient to get on with the business of world domination. His next plan was a complicated one with several steps towards its ultimate completion. It involved infiltrating and taking over diamond smuggling operations begun by the Spang brothers and taken over and expanded by surviving members of the Spangled Mob.[21] The diamonds were ends to a means, they would pay for and also be part of a weapon that would allow Dr. Evil to rule the world. He called it the LSD project, Laser Shooting Diamonds, those who worked on it, nicked named the satellite Lucy from the Beatles song.
While Dr. Evil might have been a micro-manager in many instances he was not a detail man, that is why he had Number 2 on his staff. Dr. Evil planned to lure Austin Powers and his partner into a death trap, cryogenically freeze himself and be shot into space. He would then return to the Earth in a couple of years when the diamond operation was close to completion.
In 1967, Danger Powers was lured by Dr. Evil to the Electric Psychedelic Pussy Cat Swinger's Club, but Dr. Evil’s assassins once again failed to kill Powers. Dr. Evil tried his hand at killing Powers but also missed, hitting his own man. Dr. Evil decided he would deal with Austin Powers in a couple of years, after he had been thawed from his cryogenic sleep and fled towards the cryogenic chamber.
Austin Powers chased Dr. Evil to his lair above the Electric Psychedelic Pussy Cat Swinger's Club, but Dr. Evil had entered his cryogenic chamber by then. His entire lair, which was inside a Big Boy statue above the club, blasted off into space.
There were several design flaws in the cryogenic process and in the Big Boy rocket. The cryogenic process caused all of the hair to fall out Dr. Evil's cat, Mr. Bigglesworth. The rocket also failed to respond to recall signals and so did not return to Earth in a couple of years as planned. It took thirty years before the Big Boy rocket once again responded to a recall signal and returned to the Earth.
However not one to let his enemy escape, Austin Powers had himself frozen until Dr. Evil returned. Both Dr. Evil and Austin Powers of the 1960's stayed frozen for “thirty fricking years” [22]
When Dr. Evil was unfrozen he was enraged. His cat was completely hairless and his great diamond plan, which had been carried out without him, had been thwarted again by James Bond.[23] To rub salt in the wounds, Virtucon, the dummy corporation created to cover the activities of his evil activities, had been guided by Number Two into a multinational conglomerate worth ninety billion dollars. He also had a twenty-three year old son, named Scott Evil. Dr. Evil’s female companion Frau Farbissina claimed that he was a test tube baby created from Dr. Evil's frozen sperm.[24]
At least he was comforted knowing that Powers was by this time an old man, but he was informed that Powers had disappeared when he had. Despite having more wealth than he could have ever hoped for, Dr. Evil, like Blofeld before him, would be satisfied with nothing less than global domination, to have people fear and respect him. He came up with a couple of plans to do this, creating a scandal with the English Royal family or creating a hole in the ozone layer, but these two plans had been made moot by having already occurred. So Dr. Evil decided to hijack a nuclear bomb and used it for extortion. His plan was to detonate the nuclear weapon underground and cause all of the volcanoes in the world to erupt. Either he was bluffing or very ignorant about vulcanology. He might have made one or two volcanoes erupt if he had placed the bomb on the right fault line but just sending an atomic bomb into the center of the Earth would have had little effect.
Dr. Evil made an attempt to form a bond with his test-tube grown son, Scott, even going to the length of attending father-son group therapy. Because Dr. Evil let slip some telling traumas from his past, he eventually had the group and its therapist liquidated. He told Scott it was because the therapy was just not working and the group was insolent.
Austin Powers and his partner, Vanessa Kensington, defeated Dr. Evil but he once again escaped into an orbiting cryogenic chamber.[25]
Three months after defeating Dr. Evil, Austin Powers and Vanessa Kensington were wed. On his honeymoon Austin Powers discovered that Vanessa Kensington was a kamikaze fembot sent to kill Austin Powers by Dr. Evil. However Vanessa was previously shown to have a mother who was Austin's former partner. So a switch had to have taken place. Previously we speculated that Vanessa had been killed and the switch had taken place during this time. However there are two pieces of evidence that seem to negate this theory, after Austin discovered that Vanessa was a fembot and that he was single, he danced for joy. Another clue was that Basil Exposition knew all along that the Vanessa Kensington that Austin had married was a fembot. However Basil had believed that Austin was being canny and only married the fembot as part of a plan to track down the rest of Dr. Evil's organization.
Vanessa Kensington had indeed begun a monogamous relationship with Austin Powers after the defeat of Dr. Evil but had soon realized that monogamy was not in his nature, despite his avowed acceptance of the practice. Believing that Austin was sufficiently acclimated to the nineties, she requested a transfer and told Austin that she was leaving him. A day later the fembot showed up at Austin's door telling him that she had made a mistake; she could never love anyone as much as she loved him. Austin was clueless that this was a fembot. He agreed to getting married at her insistence, regretting it almost as soon as he had done so.
When Vanessa turned out to be a fembot, his first thought was not to celebrate being a bachelor again despite the depiction in the film. He called Basil, who was dumbfounded that Austin had not known that this Vanessa was a fembot and informed Austin that Vanessa was alive and well. Austin then celebrated being a bachelor.
Although the film The Spy Who Shagged Me makes it appear as though the events of this film transpired only moments after the first film, this is not the case upon. The earliest section of The Spy Who Shagged Me which depicts Austin on his honeymoon took place three months after the defeat of Dr. Evil's Las Vegas operation as portrayed in Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. However main bulk of The Spy Who Shagged Me compressed the events of two years into what appears to be a few weeks.
Between 1997 and 1999 Austin once again returned to his cover identity as a fashion photographer, becoming a top photographer for such models as Rebecca Romin and Elizabeth Hurley. Dr. Evil's rocket and cryogenic capsule returned to Earth in 1997, Austin and Vanessa saw it from their hotel bedroom, seeing it as a falling star. Shortly after the capsule had landed is when the killing program in the fembot Vanessa was initiated.
Dr. Evil spent the better part of 1997 building a time machine. Considering the design of his time machine, he probably acquired some of the schematics from the Time Tunnel project.[26]
His first part of the plan was to send back a test subject, who, if he survived the process, would carry out a very important mission for Dr. Evil. He chose an extremely hefty individual so that he could also test the weight limits of the time travel device. He sent the agent codenamed Fat Bastard from back through time from 1998 to 1968. If Fat Bastard survived the time trip he was to leave a message to be delivered to Doctor Evil on a certain day in 1998 to prove that the trip had been successful. Fat Bastard's other mission was to infiltrate the Highland Guard unit which had been chosen to guard the Ministry of Defense's cryogenic chambers. When he received a signal from the future, Fat Bastard was to steal Austin Power's “mojo.”
When Fat Bastard's note arrived from the past, the Dr. Evil living in 1998 contacted Number Two in 1967. Dr. Evil made certain to contact the 1967 Number Two in the time period shortly after the 1967 version of Dr. Evil had left the Earth in the cryogenic rocket. Number Two carried out the instructions from the Dr. Evil of the future, building a time portal in 1967 and creating a moon base with 1990’s technology sent back through the portal by Dr. Evil. This was modern NASA technology that was slated to be used to build a space station on the moon.
Dr. Evil announced his presence back on Earth in 1999 by appearing as a surprise guest on The Jerry Springer show. While the theme of the show was the children and fathers of evil organizations, Dr. Evil had actually come on the show to announce his return to earth and his intention to begin his quest for world domination. Clues that Dr. Evil had spent more time in the nineties than portrayed in the film’s storyline are his familiarity with the slang used on various talk shows, his knowledge of the film Jerry Maguire, and familiarity with the rap/hip hop style of music and with the music of Joan Osborne. Dr. Evil apparently watched a lot of television and listened to modern music while building his time machine. His familiarity with these is shown by his choice of music to play on the piano (Joan Osborne's "If God Was One of Us") and his anachronistic dialogue with the United States President of 1969. He may have suffered from the condition known as time lag, where a person traveling through time will become confused and unable to adapt rapidly to changing cultural slang.
When Dr. Evil ended his two-year sabbatical and contacted his evil organization in 1999 to bring about the culmination of his time travel/giant laser plan,[27] he was once again showered with surprises. In addition to communications, Virtucon had been on the ground floor of the coffee café boom and were secret owners of the Starbucks chain. Their evil lair in 1999 was in the Starbucks-owned Space Needle in Seattle. Frau Farbissina revealed that she had become a lesbian. In an attempt to top Frau Farbissina's earlier revelation of Dr. Evil's son, Number Two revealed that he had made a child closer to Dr. Evil's heart, a clone of Dr. Evil. The clone was, however, one eighth Dr. Evil's size, had a tendency to bite, and did not speak much. The fact of the matter was that Dr. Evil's genetic tissue had been damaged, so they had used the only other available DNA material in the lab, cells from Dr. Evil's beloved Sphinx cat, Mr. Bigglesworth. The clone, called Mini-Me, was not exactly a true clone but rather an ad hoc copy of Dr. Evil.
In 1969 Fat Bastard received the signal to steal Austin's mojo. Fat Bastard drilled into the cryogenic chamber and stole a DNA sampling from the frozen Austin Powers body. They used this to isolate the chemical component that comprised Austin Power's charisma, which were the pheromones that many men from the Wold Newton family seem to radiate in greater amounts than most men.
In the film The Spy Who Shagged Me it appears as though the Austin Powers in 1999, while in the midst of a tryst with Ivana Humpalot, suddenly became aware that someone had stolen his mojo, as if he were some how experiencing this event at the same moment Fat Bastard stole the mojo from his frozen body in 1969. This does not make sense since if there was a correlation between the taking of sample of mojo and Austin's sexual ability, then Austin would not have had his mojo when he was unfrozen in 1997 and would have been unable to perform with Lotta Fagina or Vanessa Kensington. So the taking of the DNA sample in 1969 actually had little to do with Austin's sexual problems in 1999.
The explanation for his loss of mojo or sexual prowess in 1999 is actually quite simple. As part of his coordinated plan, Dr. Evil had one of his female agents seduce Austin Powers. She had already infiltrated the fashion model world. At the end of their date, Ivana Humpalot admitted to Austin Powers that she was sent by Dr. Evil to kill him but she thought he was too sexy. However when it came time for him to show his appreciation for her not killing him, he was unable to perform. He realized that someone had stolen his mojo! However the simpler explanation is that Ivana slipped something into his drink that made him impotent. Yes, Dr. Evil wanted to kill Austin, but he did not mind having him suffer first. Then again, Ivana Humpalot could have very well been a MOD (Ministry of Defense) agent who had used a drug to make Austin temporarily impotent.
Shortly after Austin’s incident with Ivana Humpalot, The Ministry of Defense "suddenly" in 1999 discovered that someone had broken into their cryogenic chamber in 1969 and stole Austin's mojo.
Actually Basil Exposition would have had to have known of these events and those that followed in 1969, but even Basil’s 1969 self knew that he risked messing with the timeline if he revealed certain information to Austin too early.
The 1999 Basil supposedly gave Austin a way to regain his mojo by traveling back to 1969. Austin traveled back to the past in an automobile. The Ministry of Defense’s time travel devices were apparently based on the Emmett Brown time machines[28] while Dr. Evil's were based on those from the Time Tunnel Project.
Dr. Evil and his minute clone traveled from 1999 to 1969 to take personal charge of the 1969 space project. Dr. Evil drank a charisma drink derived from the DNA material taken from Austin Powers. Although they were twins, they were fraternal twins, and so Dr. Evil was probably missing this attribute. Having drunk the charisma drink, he almost immediately consummated an intimate relationship with Frau Farbissina. This was the actual conception of Scott Evil.
Shortly after this intimate encounter between Frau Farbissina and Dr. Evil, the adult Scott Evil appeared in 1969, having traveled from 1999 to be with his father.
Still in 1969, Dr. Evil and Mini-Me left for the moon in a rocket. This rocket also probably contained the components for time travel portal that was set up on the moon. Once Dr. Evil was on the moon, he was able to bring his staff to the moon through the portal. Dr. Evil’s time travel portals could also double as instantaneous transportation devices, allowing those who enter them to exit in a different time and location as long as there was a receiving portal. One clue to this ability is that Dr. Evil traveled from Seattle of 1999 to a hidden lair in a hollowed out volcano in 1969 by the use of the portals. Later in the film Dr. Evil revealed that there was a time portal on the moon, so if a time travel portal had already been on the moon Dr. Evil and Mini-Me would have not had to travel by rocket.
Dr. Evil’s 1969 staff entered the Earth-based 1969 time portal, traveled one second into the future, and exited through the moon-based portal.
Once Austin Powers arrived in 1969 he worked with American agent Felicity Shagwell to discover what Dr. Evil had up the sleeve of his Nehru jacket this time. Their only lead was the rather vile and disgusting Fat Bastard. They trailed him to Doctor Evil's 1969 volcano lair. Austin and Felicity were placed in an easily escapable death trap while Dr. Evil and his staff traveled to the moon.
By the time that Austin and Felicity had escaped from the secret lair and returned to England, Dr. Evil had called the President of the United States and told him that the US had to pay 100 billion dollars or Washington D.C would be destroyed. They had six hours to pay up.
Austin and Felicity traveled to the moon to stop Dr. Evil. In 1969 a rocket could not travel to the moon in six hours nor could a rocket travel to the moon in six hours in 1999. Yet Austin and Felicity are shown arriving on the moon wearing space suits. How did they get there? Oddly enough as it seems, they drove.
You will recall that Austin had left 1999 by driving across a car equipped with a time travel device across a Ministry of Defense Hanger and he had arrived in 1969 in his own pad, traveling through time and space in an instant. Although it was extremely risky, Felicity and Austin drove his car five hours into the future with coordinates on the moon near where Dr. Evil's moon base was supposed to be located. They arrived safely but Austin's driving skills once they arrived left much to be desired, and they were forced to jump out of the time car as it fell into a deep crater. They walked to Dr. Evil's moon base.
Once inside Dr. Evil's moon base, Austin was attacked and nearly defeated by Mini-Me. In the film Austin is shown ejecting Mini-Me sans space suit from a lavatory out onto the moon. Mini-Me was shown floating off into space as if the moon did not have any gravity. Later Dr. Evil would retrieve the still living Mini-Me from space. This was a comedy bit written for the film. Austin just knocked Mini-Me out and locked him in the john.
Dr. Evil captured Felicity. He forced Austin to make a decision. He could save Felicity from poison gas or save Washington DC from incineration. Austin saved DC by disabling the laser. Dr. Evil pressed a self-destruct mechanism and fled. Austin chased him and shot him. To stall for time Dr. Evil claimed to be Austin's father. This stopped Austin for a second, since he apparently had wondered if Nigel Powers was his real father or not. Since Dr. Evil had the ability to travel through time at will and since there was a great resemblance between them, he wondered if because of some time paradox Dr. Evil was his true father. When Austin forced Dr. Evil to admit he could not back his claims up, Dr. Evil used another tactic. If Austin was smart he would let Dr. Evil go and then run back to the main room and use the time travel device to save Felicity by going back in time ten minutes.
Austin did as Dr. Evil suggested. By traveling back in time ten minutes Austin time twinned himself and in doing so caused a short temporal paradox, which is what Dr. Evil had wished to happen. One Austin saved Felicity and the other saved Washington DC from the giant laser. Although one would have thought that once ten minutes had gone by there would only be one Austin with the other having disappeared, this did not happen. This is because by changing those ten minutes so drastically, the timeline diverged and so Austin from ten minutes ago became Austin from a parallel time line.
Felicity and the Austins escaped the exploding moon base by using the time portal and returning to Dr. Evil's 1999 Seattle based time portal. Fat Bastard followed them.
Austin convinced Felicity to stay in the future with him. Austin would later walk in on Felicity who was lying in bed with… Austin Powers. This was the time twinned “Austin Powers From Ten Minutes Ago” whom for some reason Felicity preferred.[29]
The opening scenes of Goldmember show Austin Powers sitting in on the making of the film Austinpussy, which is purported to be a cinematic version of the events of Goldmember, therefore the opening sequence of Goldmember takes place after the main sequence of the storyline.
The first sequence in the film, which actually depicts the chronological start of the Goldmember incident, is when Dr. Evil is seen at his secret Hollywood lair, located behind the Hollywood sign.
In the film he was asked how space was by Frau Farbissina. This is a bit odd if one considers that according to The Spy Who Shagged Me, Frau Farissina had been on the moon with him and had apparently been left behind when the moon base exploded, so she should have died in 1969; but here she was apparently alive in 1999 or 2000.
Although the film The Spy Who Shagged Me showed Dr. Evil escaping in a rocket, the rocket seems to have been a diversion. After pressing the self-destruct mechanism for the moon base, Dr. Evil scoured the base searching for Mini-Me. Austin and Felicity used the time portal to escape the exploding moon base and exited in Dr. Evil's 1999 lair in Seattle. They were followed by Scott Evil and Fat Bastard, who also exited at the 1999 Seattle lair. Frau Farbissina waited patiently for Dr. Evil to return. When Dr. Evil did return with Mini-Me he sent the 1969 Frau Farbissina to 1974 telling her to secure the Las Vegas time portal that had been created in 1967 and await further instructions.[30] Dr. Evil then used the time portal to travel to 2000, exiting in the by-then abandoned Seattle lair.
Once in 2000, Dr. Evil traveled to his Hollywood lair and met up with his staff. He outlined his plan to contact Van de Smut in 1975 and use Smut's tractor beam to bring a gold meteorite to Earth. Before the plan could be enacted, however, Dr. Evil and his staff were surrounded by Austin Powers and US military forces. Powers had wisely placed surveillance devices at the Seattle-based time portal should Dr. Evil ever use it. Once he did, Dr. Evil was tracked to his new lair and the whole crew was arrested.
Dr. Evil was tried before the World Court and sentenced to life without parole in solitary confinement. He had, however, taken this possibility into account and so made plans for this contingency. Although Goldmember makes it seem as though events progressed rapidly—as if only a few days or weeks transpired from the Dr. Evil’s arrest at the Seattle Lair to when Austin Powers traveled to Geneva to visit Dr. Evil—actually several months to a year had transpired.
In Goldmember, Austin Powers was knighted for saving the world from Dr. Evil and the ceremony was ruined for Austin by the absence of his father.
Instead of a knighthood Austin probably received another, much lesser award from the Queen. Not once in any of the films is he ever referred to as Sir Austin. This ceremony probably took place several months after the capture of Dr. Evil and his conviction by the World Court. Whatever the award may have been it is true that Nigel Powers did not attend the ceremony. Depressed by this, Austin threw himself into his photographic work and his party life. Basil Exposition visited Austin to tell him that his father had been kidnapped from his yacht. All of the sailor/guards had had their genitalia painted gold.
Austin visited Dr. Evil at his prison cell in Geneva. Dr. Evil promised to help him if Austin would use his influence to get Dr. Evil sentenced to the same maximum security prison in the United States as had Mini-Me. Austin promised to do as Dr. Evil asked. Dr. Evil revealed that Nigel Powers had been kidnapped by an insane Dutch metallurgist named Van der Smut, a.k.a Goldmember, and taken to the year 1975.
Once at the maximum security prison, Dr. Evil plotted his escape so he could bring together all the elements of his insidious plan. Interestingly the film's jail sequences have a hidden clue in it that hints that Mike Myers was aware of Dr. Evil's true father. Dr. Evil and Mini-Me sing a version of "It's a Hard Knocks Life," One of the songs from the musical Annie. The musical Annie was, of course, based on the Little Orphan Annie comic strip, which in turn was based on the life and adventures of Anne Luthor and her guardian D.D. Warburton. D.D. Warburton was the biological father of Austin Powers and Dr. Evil.
Austin Powers once again traveled back in time using the Emmett Brown method of a time-travel device inside an automobile.
In 1975 Austin visited Studio 69 and met up with undercover FBI agent Foxxy Cleopatra, whom he had worked on a case with in 1969, a few months prior to his being cryogenically frozen. Foxxy was investigating Van der Smut because she believed Van der Smut had killed her partner. Cleopatra and Austin discovered where his father was being hidden and nearly rescued him, but they were both captured by Van der Smut. Foxxy knocked Van der Smut’s gun from his hand before he could shoot Austin. As Austin and Foxxy tangled with some of Van Der Smut’s henchmen, Van der Smut escaped with Nigel Powers as his hostage and traveled via the time tunnel to 2002.
Returning to 2002 with Foxxy in tow, Austin was informed that Dr. Evil and his clone had escaped from the Georgia state prison where they had been held. A mole inside Dr. Evil's organization relayed the information that Dr. Evil had a secret hideout near Japan.[31]
Austin and Foxxy Cleopatra traveled to Japan. They were informed that one of Dr. Evil's agents was spotted at the Ashai Sumo wrestling arena. The agent was Fat Bastard, who was working as a sumo wrestler. They saw Fat Bastard give a payoff to a Japanese man. After intense questioning, Fat Bastard revealed that the man was the head of Roboto Industries.
Visiting Roboto Industries, Austin and Foxxy learned that Roboto was manufacturing a tractor beam for Dr. Evil. They discovered that Nigel Powers was being held captive on the premises of Roboto Industries. Snooping around, they spotted Van der Smut as he was picking up the tractor-beam device. Van der Smut created a diversion to cover his escape from Roboto by tying Nigel Powers to conveyor belt slowly moving towards a smelter. As Austin rescued his father, Van der Smut made his escape. Although they gave chase to Van der Smut all the way to the harbor, Van Der Smut’s car drove onto loading ramp and entered Dr. Evil's submarine lair.
Austin and Nigel Powers had a disagreement about the best way to proceed with the case and went their separate ways.
Scott Evil had lost most of his hair in the last year as he embraced his evil heritage. To cement his bond with his father, he gave Dr. Evil some sharks with lasers attached to their foreheads. Scott suddenly became the favored son and Mini-Me was out. Dejected, Mini-Me defected to the British Ministry of Defense
Austin, Foxxy, and Mini-Me infiltrated Dr. Evil's submarine. They succeeded in thwarting Dr. Evil's plan. Austin Powers was about to finish off Dr. Evil once and for all by shooting him dead, but Nigel Powers stopped him and then revealed that Austin and Dr. Evil were brothers.
Discovering that he had a real family, Dr. Evil had a change of heart and no longer wished to destroy the Earth. After Dr. Evil had his change of heart, Scott Evil ran from the room upset that his new bond with his father would be severed.[32] Van der Smut however did want to destroy the Earth and tried to go ahead with the plan, but he was stopped by Foxxy Cleopatra.
[1] David Douglas Warburton was more popularly known as Daddy Warbucks. His natal name, however, was David Luthor and he was the brother of several of the worst criminals of the twentieth century. For more information, please see the David Luthor article.
[2].
The other, according to Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, is
nuclear war.
[3].
This date is derived from Austin Power's first recorded case in 1967 minus the
age of the actor who played him.
[4] Richard Hannay was a mining engineer who became a master spy in the years prior to and just after the Great War. Accounts of Hannay’s exploits were written by John Buchan and were published under the titles The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, The Three Hostages, and The Island of Sheep.
[5].
Austin was apparently wealthy enough to keep a party going continuously for two
years or more. He was cryogenically frozen in 1967. He later returned to 1969
via time travel and a party was still going on in his pad.
[6] Certainly his portrayal by Mike Myers in the Austin Powers films indicates that he does.
[7] Quoted from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
[8].
Alain Kurtz was the nephew of the man depicted in Joseph Conrad's Heart of
Darkness.
[9].
Henri Defense was the nome de guerre of Henry Jones Jr., a.k.a. Indiana Jones.
Indiana Jones experiences as a Belgian solider in World War One were documented
in various episodes of The Young Indiania Jones Chronicles (Lucasarts 1992-93)
starting with the episode entitled May, 1916
[10] THRUSH stands for Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, which was the criminal organization, opposed by the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement as depicted in The Man from UNCLE television series. THRUSH grew out of Professor Moriarty’s organization Krafthaus. Coincidentally Douglas and Austin’s grandfather, Paul Finglemore, had been an agent of Krafthaus.
[11]. Despite his claims years later that he attended "evil" medical school, De Rais was a fully accredited medical school in France named after Gilles de Rais, the boon companion of Jeanne d'Arc and the hero of the Hundred Years War. However Gilles De Rais was also one of the worst serial killers in the history of the world, purportedly killing over 200 hundred children over a ten year period. He was burned at the stake for his crimes in 1440. According to Image of the Beast (Essex House, 1968) and Blown (Essex House 1969) the accounts of Herald Childe , as edited by Philip Jose Farmer, Gilles De Rais and Jeanne d’Arc were both members of an alien race named the Og. The Og were energy beings who used the energy humans gave off from sex and violence to take on physical forms. For more about the Tocs and Ogs See Aliens Among Us. Tocs and Ogs.
[12] However when Due Nombre became a power broker in America and influential in the film industries, he exerted great influence to make Inspector Clouseau out to be a fumbling idiot, a portrait that has unfortunately endured.
[13] See the Ian Fleming novel Thunderball.
[14] This operation was revealed in the James Bond novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In the novel some of the girls carried out their missions but many were intercepted as they returned home. James Bond was sent “unofficially” to destroy Blofeld’s operation before he could expand it and cause further damage to British and European farming. In the film version On Her Majesty’s Secret Service however Bond successfully stopped Blofeld before he could send the girls on their missions. As will be shown in greater detail in the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service section of Unblended Bonds: How the James Bond films fit into the WNU, both versions are true to some extent. Blofeld first tested his process on English girls some of whom carried out their missions successfully as reflected in the novel. Blofeld was in the process of brainwashing an multinational group of women when Bond investigated the Piri Gloria Sanitarium as reflected in the film.
[15] In this case Blofeld was portrayed by Telly Savalas who would become world renown for his portrayal of New York Police Detective Theo Kojak, who was oddly enough Dr. Amal’s distant cousin.
[16] These refer of course to James Bond and George Smiley of British Intelligence and Nick Carter and Matt Helm of United States Intelligence.
[17] Although Austin Powers was kept busy during this time tracking down Dr. Evil's operations, he was also a fixture of "Swinging London" due to his parties, his fashion sense, his charisma, and his photographic career. He was also a well regarded author, having penned at least two books, Swedish Made Penis Enlarger Pumps and Me (This sort of thing is my bag, baby) and Austin Power's Kama Sutra. Despite the title, the first book seems to have been a collection of Austin's art photos with some sixties psychedelic prose, poetry, and philosophy. The second was also a photo book based on the kama sutra with Austin adding a few new positions of his own.
[18] Bond believed that this was indeed an operation by Blofeld, the man who had killed his wife. Although Bond believed that he had killed Blofeld in the spring of 1963, Bond had suffered a blow on the head immediately after killing Blofeld and so was persuaded that perhaps Blofeld had avoided death.
[19] If you think that it is a stretch that Dr. Evil was the "Blofeld" of this film, one of the current James Bond novel authors, Raymond F. Benson wrote in his review of the film in his 1984 non-fiction work, The James Bond Bedside Companion, "Although Blofeld's features alter from novel to novel, he always remains a physically large and mentally methodical” In the film Blofeld is a small man, who Benson states acts like a hyperactive Frankenstein," an ugly scar runs down the right side of his face and his characterization suggests "an ugly, spoiled child who throws a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way" (p.192)
[20] Bond was both relieved and disappointed that the criminal in charge of this operation was not Blofeld. The film omitted a portion of the actual dialogue between "Blofeld" and Bond:
"Allow me to introduce myself, I am Ernst Stravo Blofeld."
Bond laughed and replied, "No, you aren't. You are a deluded, lazy-eyed psychopath."
[21] The Spang brothers and the Spangled Mob are the main villains of the novel, Diamonds Are Forever, which is substantially different from the film version
[22] As seen in the opening sequence of Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery (New Line Cinema, 1997)
[23]
Being the good administrator that he was when all the segments for Dr. Evil's
diamond plan came to fruition, Number Two went ahead and let the plan be
carried out. In 1971 as Dr. Evil had wished this was a "SPECTRE"
operation. In a uncharacteristic display of fiendish humor, Number Two chose as
the Blofeld figurehead of this operation, a brainwashed Dikko Henderson.
[24] The reason for this subterfuge on Frau Farbissina’s part was due to time travel. In Dr. Evil’s personal timeline he had yet to utilize time travel. Scott’s conception and birth were inexorably tied to time travel. Frau Farbissina did not want to take the chance of somehow disrupting the course of time and so possibly negating Scott’s existence.
[25] As seen at the close of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (New Line Cinema, 1997)
[26] This top secret time traveling device was created by Dr. Tony Newman and Dr. Doug Phillips in 1964. Dr. Evil seems to have overcome the flaw in their design that did not allow for pinpoint accuracy or retrieval. To offset rumors that the project was real, a schlock science fiction series was created by schlockmeister Irwin Allen in 1966. See The Time Tunnel
[27] One wonders if the giant laser was his attempt to once more attempt the giant laser plan using diamonds that had been thwarted in 1970. From the perspective of the future Dr. Evil, of course, in 1969 that plan had yet to be defeated. Doesn't time travel make your head hurt?
[28] Dr. Emmett Brown was a genius who created a time traveling device built into a Delorean; he has been spotted in various epochs since leaving his home time period of 1985. For more information see the Back to the Future film trilogy,
[29] Felicity would return to 1969 accompanied by Austin From Ten Minutes Ago. Before allowing them to return to 1969 the Ministry of Defense used a neutralizer borrowed from one of the American Intelligence agencies to make them forget all of their future knowledge. This information was taken from recently declassified documents from the Ministry of Defense files. They should not have been declassified since they pertained to events that took place in 1999 but due to a clerical error, file Powers-II-456 was mislabeled as pertaining to 1969.
[30] Frau Farbissina gave birth to Scott in 1974. This explains how he could be conceived in 1969 and yet still be in his early twenties in 1997. Frau Farbissina was Dr. Evil's contact person in 1974 who made the arrangements with Johan Van de Smut
[31]
He probably acquired this when he took control of
[32] It remains to be seen if this was an actual change of heart or if the clever doctor merely seized upon the opportunity to prevent Austin Powers from killing him. Given his upbringing, even if his change of heart was genuine after a short period of elation following the discovery of a sibling and father, he would have come to resent them for having left him in the hellhole of his childhood.
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