From The Motion Picture

"If the keynote of the sexual climate during the Seventies was women's liberation, the keynote of the Eighties was AIDS.

During the first half of the decade films seemed to shrink away from sexual tension. After Roger Moore left the role of Bond, the movies had to adapt to the political landscape. Sex was no longer scandalous; it was potentially deadly.

A new crop of Bond Girls was the result of this shift in tone. They were more conservative and in some ways naive, such as Melina Havelock in For Your Eyes Only, Stacey Sutton in A View to a Kill and my character, Kara Milovy, in The Living Daylights. It was a strange time of shifting roles for women. The new icons of the Eighties had to find a balance; Madonna seemed to know how to mix her sexuality with her power, but much of popular culture was rebelling against the morals of the Sixties.

The women in the Bond films were right for the times, reflecting ordinary women in extraordinary situations. Melina Havelock was out to avenge the murder of her family. Stacey Sutton sought to protect her family's oil business. Through 007's strange spyglass, family values were alive and well.

This is not to say that the Bond women of the era were demure. They were willing to deceive, seduce and even kill alongside 007. Larger than life characters like Octopussy and May Day (in A View to a Kill) kept Bond's adventures fun.

The films underwent a tremendous shift when Roger Moore left the role after 1985's A View to a Kill. Timothy Dalton and the filmmakers felt it was time to return to Ian Fleming's original concept of the character of James Bond. Throughout the Eighties, the leading roles for Bond women were more human, more real and less iconic."