"As an stage actor... Dalton certainly had the skills to pulll off being 007.....But even an actor of his caliber can do so much with the scripts he was working with....

This all points back to the mid eighties falling off of Bond and the exiting of Roger Moore ...whom had sucessfully used antics both comedic and ill-dramtic to make Bond work and this was good for Roger Moore tenure ....but bad for the reality check Dalton was trying to convey!!!!

"

"No, no, no way the scripts have nothing to do with it! I love Dalton, a top 3 in my mind, but do not blame anything on the scripts! A good actor can move around the script, or can work with the script.

But hey he was a top 3."

"The two stories during the Dalton era were two of the most *personal* Bond stories -- they were far less about the evil plot he was up against and more about Bond's personal loyalties (to Pushkin, to the murdered British agents, to Felix) and the loyalties of others (notably, Felix and Q), not to mention personal betrayal (Koskov) -- LTK alone is an almost unending series of betrayals and retributions amongst Bond, Sanchez, the CIA, and Sanchez's organization.

Incidentally, Bond's not fighting the war on drugs in these two films -- he's fighting the men themselves, although drugs happen to be the way they finance their operations (as was also the case with Kananga and Kristatos). In both cases, the fact that he upsets a drug empire is incidental -- what he's after is revenge for the killing of 00 agents (TLD) and the personal attack on Felix and Della (LTK).

It's interesting that of the first 16 Bond films, the 3 most personal ones were Lazenby's and Dalton's. The Bonds of Connery and Moore, for all their differences, were both larger than life and emotionally unapproachable. It took Lazenby to give us a vulnerable Bond, and Dalton to give us a wrathful Bond.

Although Tim wasn't my favorite, he did tighten the focus on the character and gave the series a much-needed break from stainless-steel megasets, world-domination schemes, and endless hordes of gun-toting henchmen. It was a transitional period for both Bond and the world in general, and if nothing else, the series got smarter and grittier during Dalton's tenure.u"