NIGHT VERSIONS

I watched the movie “INCPETION” for the first time last week, and it reminded me what funny things dreams are. Everyone knows two things about dreams, namely that: 1) other people's dreams are dull, 2) how much Steven Moffat ripped it off for last years "DOCTOR WHO" Christmas special, and 3) how everyone who has unusual ones are going to tell you about them anyway.

And as they burble on and on about how they dreamt they were trying to build a windmill with Chuck Norris, but his hands were made of biscuits, or the time you and Superman had a fight on a space station, it's hard not to fall asleep and start dreaming yourself: dreaming of a future in which the anecdote has finished and their face has stopped talking and their body's gone away …

But maybe in future they won't have to tell you about it at all. They'll just play it to you on their iPhone. Surely it will soon be possible to create a device or an app that records our dreams and plays them back later at your own leisure.

Obviously, the reality is 99% less exciting than it initially appears. It certainly won't be a magic pipe you stick in your ear that etches your wildest imaginings directly onto a Blu-Ray disc for you to enjoy boring your friends with later.

First, there’s the business of capturing them, which all boils down to neurons. After studying the brains of people with electronic implants buried deep in their noggins, a group of boffins at New York University** discovered that certain groups of neurons 'lit up' when he asked his subjects to think about specific things, such as Marilyn Monroe or the Eiffel Tower.

Therefore, by studying the patterns generated, it should be possible to work out whether they were dreaming about 1950's movie starlets or global landmarks. In other words, the stuff that dreams are made of.

And it probably turns out to be a few blips on a chart.

So the 'dream recordings' will probably come in the form of an underwhelming visual transcript - a graph with a bunch of squiggly lines on it. Brilliant if, like James May from "TOP GEAR", you dream about nothing but graphs - but hardly "Avatar II", not that I actually want to see that film ever get made, by the way.

Mind you, real dreams wouldn’t make great movies anyway. For one thing, the continuity is all over the shop. One minute you're helping the cast of "21 JUMP STREET" battle a giant robotic Charlton Heston in a barn with an old CB radio, the next you're trying to impress a half-naked Jenna Coleman by climbing Everest using nothing but your teeth.

Even the weirdest episode of "DOCTOR WHO" makes more sense than that.

And most of the time, dreams are not even that interesting. The majority of my dreams are unbelievably, boringly pedestrian. Samuel Coleridge famously dreamt the epic poem "KUBLA KHAN" in its entirety, and upon awakening, immediately began scribbling it down line by line, only to be interrupted by a man from the nearby village of Porlock, who detained him with some mundane, petty chore for an hour, after which he could no longer remember the words.

That one might have been worth recording. But right now the best we'd probably get is an ITV pay-per-view channel on which Peter Andre dreams about his favourite sandwich fillings, Kerry Katona re-records all her old Atomic Kitten songs in G-minor, or Jedward take turns to sneeze inside a terrifying, hairy-walled cave.

Perhaps more worryingly, it would only be a matter of time until Simon Cowell hooked up the dream recorder to Twitter or Facebook, making it possible to enjoy live dream-tweets from Olly Miurs in which he makes approximately 50% less sense than he does while he's awake.

And from there, it's surely only a short step to some kind of reverse-engineering system via which ideas and suggestions can be planted inside your dreams while you're still asleep, which probably means in-dream product placement. So next time you try to climb Everest with your teeth, you'll have the great minty taste of Colgate in your mouth as you do so. And Jenna Coleman will be fully clothed with the latest knitwear line from NEXT.

Or maybe the advertising won't even be that subtle. Maybe all your future dreams will simply consist of a gigantic mouth shouting the words DIET COKE over and over until you wake up in a cold sweat with tears streaming down your face, and you immediately find yourself buying a can of Diet Coke from the shop in your slippers and dressing gown, hands quivering and trembling, without really understanding why.

In fact, yes.

That's PRECISELY what's going to happen.

MY WORD IS MY [JAMES] BOND

[DISCLAIMER: This article has been written under the influence of whisky and emotional stress. Also "SKYFALL" was being shown on ITV2 for about the ten millionth time tonight ...]

Timothy Dalton is the best actor to have ever played James Bond.

There, I said it. I'm not ashamed. Although I suppose I'll have to back that statement up with a pretty compelling argument. So why do I think Timothy Dalton was the best Bond? Because when The Living Daylights came out in 1987, it was a revelation.

Compelling enough for you? Don't worry, it's not as weird as it sounds.

I was raised on James Bond, perhaps as much as Doctor Who, if not more. I can't remember which film I saw first, but it was probably an old Connery one on TV, perhaps Goldfinger or Dr. No. I wasn't allowed to watch R-rated movies at the time, so I had to get my fill of sex and violence from pre-PG13 PG films. And the Bond films were an excellent source.

Somehow, they were titillating yet family friendly at the same time. There was an excitement to them, but you didn't get that flush of embarrassment while watching them with your parents. (It helped that I really didn't grasp the subversiveness of calling a film Octopussy at the time.)

Even though my first Bond was a Connery, I remember my formative favourite incarnation of the spy being Roger Moore. And I have to say, when they retired his licence to kill, along with his wig, I was highly sceptical that anyone could fill his orthopaedic shoes.

Enter Timothy Dalton.

For me, The Living Daylights was a jolt of adrenaline; it made me appreciate film as a visceral thrill. This was a more adult Bond, and it made me feel like a grownup movie-watcher.

Daylights wasn't so much a re-imagining of the series as it was a re-writing. It had all the hallmarks of a classic Bond film: amazing stunts (Skydiving! Skiing!), a tricked out Aston Martin, cool gadgets, an over-the-top villain (but not TOO over-the-top), and a creepy henchman who doesn't say much. It also managed to incorporate an element of humour without crossing over into parody (although, in retrospect, the cello case sled scene is pretty silly).

But these elements felt fresh when combined with a more serious tone and an infusion of Dalton blood. After the geriatric antics of A View To A Kill, it brought some respect back to Bond.

People have made such a big deal about Daniel Craig's gritty, more realistic portrayal of the spy who loved me in Casino Royale, but those people also forget - Timothy Dalton did it first. Dalton's Bond, at the time, was considered the most similar to Ian Fleming's creation, and thankfully moved the series away from the high level camp of the Moore films. This was something that wasn't lost on 7 year-old me.

His Bond's reaction to the death of a fellow MI6 agent is spectacular. In the other films, a minor character being killed would result in Connery or Moore arching an eyebrow and then moving on. Here though, it’s enough to enrage the man (I pity that balloon), especially since he’s figured out the villains are playing him and MI6 for suckers and they basically wasted a good agent to try and sucker him some more.

In Licence to Kill, in the wake of Bond finding his best friend's new wife murdered, the film hinges entirely on Bond being affected enough to quit MI6 and go on a revenge spree. Again, the arched brow approach wouldn’t have worked here. Coupled with the knowledge that Bond is basically seeing his own wedding day replayed before his eyes with a different cast of characters (Good friends, no less) and you’ve really got an emotional powderkeg in Bond.

Nothing could satify him but revenge on the man who hurt his mates. With the exception of Craig, I cannot see Connery, Moore or Brosnan carrying out the role of a psychologically damaged rouge agent bent on killing for the sole purpose of killing.

To me, Licence to Kill is the film Diamonds are Forever should have been. Connery seems largely disinterested throughout, and there’s no tension at all and no reference to his wife's death in the previous film, the largely forgettable On Her Majesty's Secret Service. When he meets face-to-face with Charles Gray’s Blofeld, you'd have thought the writers would have put in a line like, "Hey, James, you do remember that this is the guy who machine-gunned your wife to death in the film before, right?"

Nope, but Dalton did. When Della throws her garter at Bond, teasing him, "the one who catches this is the next one to..." Bond looks visibly pained; when Della asks Felix about it, Felix makes a short, sad reference to Bond once having been married, "but that was a long time ago." Dalton just nails it. In a brief but compelling moment you see Bond's anguish pierce his happiness for his friend, and it sets up the rest of the film perfectly.

As Judi Dench's 'M' herself puts it in Quantum of Solace; "It'd be a pretty cold bastard who didn't want revenge for the death of someone he loved ..."

I for one, certainly would.

Dalton was, and still is, criminally underrated as Bond. It’s a bit annoying to me that when polls are done of the best Bond, Dalton is always ranked low, sometimes under Lazenby. Really? Lazenby wasn’t terrible, but there’s no universe where Dalton shouldn’t be at least in 4th place.

Hopefully Craig’s Dalton-like interpretation of Bond allows for re-evaluation of Dalton’s tenure, and those critical of him can take a step back and see that he had it right, but audiences at the time just weren’t ready.

Those who were used to Moore’s comic interpretation were horrified at the dark menace Dalton brought to Bond. It's not that other Bonds have not exhibited brutal acts before, (Sean Connery shooting a defenceless man in Dr. No or Roger Moore pushing a car over a cliff with a killer trapped inside in For Your Eyes Only, where Moore dumps a wheel chair “Blofeld” in a large hole but it was so comically done, that you feel no sense of violence, just hilarity).

But in Dalton, you see the darkness, the violence, and you are hit with the realisation that Dalton’s Bond is no different from the people he killed. They are all the same ruthless murderers who just found themselves on different sides of the coin.

Unfortunately, people weren't ready for it, as evidenced by the return to a lighter tone with successive films. Dalton was replaced by that Irish bloke from Remington Steele and we wouldn't see another hard-edged Bond until Daniel Craig in 2006.

Sure, there are better Bond movies, but Dalton is the best Bond. He wasn't as lecherous as Connery, as smug as Moore, or as lethargic as Lazenby. He made the character more human, elevating him above a persona, a fantasy aspired to by boys (and, to be honest, a lot of men as well). His charm was less of an affectation, less of a put-on. He was the most human. Even at 7 years-old, I could sense this.

And that's why nobody does it better.

For those of you who feel Dalton is just a slightly larger blip on the Bond radar than George Lazenby, have I convinced you to give him another shot? Or was I just exposed to these films at a critical time in my cinematic development, and therefore biased?

No, I can unequivocally say that they stand up for me, at least as well as any of the Bond films. If you look past the late 80's trappings, you're left with two very strong entries in the James Bond canon, as well as the most successful on-screen portrayal of the literary character ever.

I look forward with baited breath for SPECTRE, though …