Nice write-up, cp, much there that I agree with.
The Third Man vibe you picked up on is of course deliberate, since a few Bond alumni worked on that film (Bernard Lee, Guy Hamilton, Geoffrey Keen (who's in both films) and most importantly in this context John Glen).
Gardner's 4th Bond was Role Of Honour which has a war-room scene, and the airborne fight between Bond and Necros resembles that between Bond and Caber in his Licence Renewed. With Role Of Honour also having a climax onboard an airship and Licence Renewed having an early sequence at Ascot I have this mental image of John Gardner watching AVTAK then TLD and thinking "Wait a minute... 
"- if Silhouette Man hasn't written a piece on this already I think he should!
I find Barry's score better than OP's but less interesting than immediate predecessor AVTAK's.
Agree that Caroline Bliss was the least effectual Moneypenny we've had- ditto with John Terry as Felix, just as you say.
"Better make that two" is Dalton's first quip as 007, though not his first line ("I need to use your phone" is) and it comes after he gets to say THE line which I think he does rather well.
In addition to Kara, there's the PTS lady
with whom he no doubt discussed playboys, tennis pros, etc....
I do disagree that Dalton is "unrecognisable as any Bond we once knew"- IMHO he's the literary Bond almost exactly, or as close as we're reasonably likely to get, and much more so than any of the other actors.