Dr Holly Goodhead Fan Discussion

A fan discussion about Dr Holly Goodhead the female astronaut from the James Bond movie Moonraker. Note: Melanie recorded in April 2025 and her references to events are from that time.

Transcript

Marcus

I started to think differently about the character of Dr. Holly Goodhead when I saw that scene again at the end of Moonraker, when she and Bond are both fighting Drax's henchman. There you can see that Holly Goodhead is really swinging punches together with Bond. And I thought, "Huh, that's not something you see very often, really in any movie."

So that got me thinking about the character and wondering how well she was portrayed as an astronaut. So then I did some historical research on who the first women astronauts were and all that kind of stuff. And I put that in a blog post, which anyone can read regarding Bond.com. But it was writing that that made me realize that there's this very slow reveal of all the capabilities that Holly Goodhead has.

Like, when we first see her, she's just holding a clipboard and she could be like a tour guide for the place that Bond is visiting. But then you find out she tells him she is an astronaut and she's fully trained when he presumes that maybe she's still in training. And then the next thing we find out is that she also is an agent like him, but for the CIA. And then later we see her piloting the space shuttle. And then she's fighting with Bond during the showdown. And I hope that's really interesting because it's not something I thought up before.

There are different kinds of Bond girls, you know: the type who, at the end of the movie, either end up having to be rescued by Bond, and then there are those who either fight in some way or even save Bond's life, like Tatiana already does in From Russia with Love, and then Domino when she harpoons Largo. So they actually save James Bond, although they don't do a lot of other stuff, at least not—sort of they're not working on the mission, except as becoming allies, whereas Holly Goodhead is different because she's on the case just like Bond.

So she has maybe more in common with Anya from Spy Who Loved Me, because Anya is also put on the case by her boss and then they work together, and this is similar. But anyway, she's a really interesting character, and if nothing else, it got me to look into the history of female astronauts and realize that the Bond movies were really progressive for their time. Because first of all, you think, oh, you know, Bond's not taking her seriously because he doesn't think she's an astronaut, but then you find out that there'd only been one female astronaut in history and it was 17 years before. The Bond movies, they're actually doing a lot more than you expect. What it looks like on the surface is different to what you find out when you stop to think about it. Well, or at least when you know the history and when you know what the time was like then everything changes.

Melanie

Given your research and findings on sort of the rarity of having women in that role at that time, the one thing that I would like to add is I definitely find it interesting and I think a lot of other women can relate with me when I say we still find this happening sometimes. I know being a female in the Bond community, I've gotten it over the past five years. My account is Berb James Berb on social media, and so a lot of the interaction I do with the Bond community is through my James Bond parody showing pictures with my pet parrot. So often when people will direct message me, the assumption is, "Oh, it's a James Bond fan, must be a male." We still see this in the workplace as well.

When you were talking about how sort of the layers of Dr. Goodhead, she sort of reveals her strengths as the film goes on, I think still to this day—and it's sad that this is still happening—but a lot of times women are underestimated in the workplace. You know, the timing of this is absolutely perfect because there's a DC-based James Bond fan club that I help organize called Capitol Royale, and just a week and a half ago we had a big Moonraker Memorial three-day weekend event. As part of that, we visited two of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museums. They have one on the National Mall and they also have a very large one out near Dulles Airport that just has hangar upon hangar of planes, including the Space Shuttle Discovery.

So it's really appropriate as far as the timing that we're discussing this, because I got to see a lot of galleries and a lot of displays in these two museums featured around the real female pioneers of flight, which is fantastic. These are women who really, I mean, not only like they had to fight to fly, you know. There were women who really wanted to help assist female pilots who wanted to help during wartime and were told that they couldn't. So they ran their own missions delivering supplies and medical aid, and it's really great to see the real-life women behind this and to know that sort of Dr. Goodhead was at the forefront of this before women were able to go into space.

He raised a really good point about how the Bond franchise has been quite progressive. I think a lot of times people look back, especially at these older films, and really see the misogyny that's there. Being a woman in the workplace today, I think there's still a little bit of that that does exist, quite sadly—kind of going back to what I was saying about, you know, sometimes women are underestimated, you know, the whole joke about getting man-splained and spoken down to—or there's still a lot of discrimination in the workplace as well, which is sad.

But Bond has always, I feel, been progressive, and I think it's important to, you know, obviously acknowledge that there are some things that are very difficult to go back and watch in these earlier Bond films. But also I think when we're talking about the actresses and the women of Bond, we have to really talk about how so many of them helped further the sexual revolution. You know, we have women who are serving in, you know, really breakthrough roles. I look at ladies like Rosie Carver and the, you know, interracial scene and how important that was at the time, and Pussy Galore's flying circus—going back to, you know, women in flight—and then of course, obviously talking about Dr. Goodhead, having an astronaut. We are still really trying to make sciences more accessible for young girls because this is something that is still a very male-dominated career path.

Obviously, we have Dr. Goodhead, you know, being an astronaut and extremely capable. I think there's so many other ladies as well who are in the sciences and technologies. We have Stacey Sutton, who was a geologist. We've got Natalia, who was a computer programmer in GoldenEye. Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough—she was a nuclear physicist. I mean, you know, we've seen these capable women, not only in their careers, but also how they help Bond. And yes, Bond still does have to sweep in sometimes to save the day, you know—talking about Stacey Sutton in particular in A View to a Kill.

But, you know, I've got to say a couple of things. One, you know, these are his movies. And so, you know, he's our primary hero and definitely these women hold their own and support him. But I, you know, in Stacey's defense, I would be screaming my head off and would not be anywhere near as capable if I were stuck in an elevator shaft during a fire.

As I was telling you about the Smithsonian museums that we visited, of course, the Smithsonian Institution is a very large collective of museums, you know: American history, art, sciences. They have a botanic gardens. They've got a zoo. But I'm really excited because we had the African American History Museum open up a few years ago. And in the coming years, they will be opening up a women's history museum. So I'm quite excited about that.

Now, I'm not sure that Dr. Goodhead will be in there. It will probably be sticking to the real life of women pioneers. But I'm fairly certain there will be some Barbies in there. I got a kick out of this when you were talking about the timing of real-life astronauts and, you know, how sort of cutting-edge Eon was in having one in their film.

I did a little bit of research because I was curious. I know Mattel's kids' line for little girls, the Barbie dolls, has always been more progressive as well, and I was just kind of curious. It turns out Barbie was an astronaut back in 1965. So, well before Neil Armstrong went into space, Barbie did. I got a big kick out of that.