Science Fiction and Specialization

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I've been thinking for a while about the Royal Smart Person trope Chuck observes vs how real science works.

What I'd like to see is specialization in scientists, at least in things with ensemble casts. Comic relief guy is good at programming, dynamic lead character is a biotechnician, the stiff-necked alien is bad with idioms but a whizz at physics (especially for solving the latest Space Anomaly problem). It would lend at least a veneer of realism and might cut back on the ass-pully feeling of magic science.

[LittleRaven]

What I'd like to see is specialization in scientists, at least in things with ensemble casts. Comic relief guy is good at programming, dynamic lead character is a biotechnician, the stiff-necked alien is bad with idioms but a whizz at physics (especially for solving the latest Space Anomaly problem). It would lend at least a veneer of realism and might cut back on the ass-pully feeling of magic science.

You sometimes see this in books, but there's some very good reasons that this is virtually unknown in film or television - it's just too big a cast. In any kind of visual medium, you have to ration your screen time among your characters very carefully. If you have that many people doing 'science,' then either 'science' is all your show is going to do, or each individual 'science' character is only going to get a few minutes of screen time a season.

The problem with just doing 'science' is obvious. If you're only doing science, then you're not fighting dinosaurs, or punching criminals, or battling demons...you know, the stuff that a lot of your audience wants to see. You can, of course, have shows that don't have much action, but even those tend to want drama of some kind...romance triangles, high stake court cases...something. And making science dramatic is almost impossible without making it totally unrealistic, at which point you wonder why you're bothering to make a science show at all. (I mean, just look at Eureka, which is fun as hell, but is also 'science' in name only)

But hey, you say, surely those guys fighting dinosaurs need more than just one science guy, right? I mean, dinosaur species are not all the same, so you'll need at least a COUPLE of biologists...maybe a geneticist, and of course an electrical engineer, maybe a programmer...but now you have 5 or 6 different people competing with the actual dinosaur fighters for screen time. 99 directors out of a hundred are just going to combine ALL those characters into one super omni-proficient 'science guy' because then they can actually include him in the main cast without the audience forgetting who he is because he only shows up once every 5 episodes.

I guess the one other direction you could go would be to lose the drama and the action, and go for comedy instead...kind of a IT Guys approach. But I suspect realism would get jettisoned pretty quickly in that route as well, cause real science isn't usually funny either. Real science is...well, slow and methodical and...kinda dull, really. At least compared to fighting dinosaurs. That's probably why we see so much magic-tech. More fun that way.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, but like...isn't that the advantage of an ensemble cast? They don't need to all be JUST scientists, and if hte episode doesn't call for the specialty then they don't do any sciencing. I'm mainly thinking of series like Star Trek in this context. The doctor isn't always a focal character because not every episode has a disease epidemic, but it's a slot.

[Darth Wedgius]

There is a TV show called The Librarians with shades of this. There's an expert at art and the humanities, an expert in science, an expert thief, and an expert special operations commando. Each expert has an unrealistically broad range of knowledge, but they're supposed to be exceptional people in that regard.

[Fianna]

Another option is to just give your characters a super-advanced computer that can do the scienceing for them as needed.

[clearspira]

I have to disagree with you here because the Enterprise in all its iterations has individual departments with diverse experts in them that do exactly what you say they do. ''Pen Pals'' is an excellent example where Wesley leads a team of specialists with distinct roles. The reason we do not see them often is A) Cost of hiring actors and actresses in speaking roles and B) the department heads such as Data and Spock probably liaise with them off-screen.

[Independent George]

Or you can just write it so that the science guy summarizes the findings of his department heads in in staff meetings, with most of the boring actual work being done off-camera.

[Darth Wedgius]

Star Trek might have toyed with this itself. There's this bit from Where No Man Has Gone Before:
SULU: Astro sciences standing by, Captain.
SCOTT: Engineering division ready, as always.
PIPER: Life sciences ready, sir.

Whatever astro sciences were (astronomy? astrophysics? the Jetsons' dog?), Sulu was doing it before he got to drive the ship.

[Deledrius]

Whatever astro sciences were (astronomy? astrophysics? the Jetsons' dog?), Sulu was doing it before he got to drive the ship.

Wasn't he into Botany, too? That man was truly the Tom Paris of TOS.

[Darth Wedgius]

Whatever astro sciences were (astronomy? astrophysics? the Jetsons' dog?), Sulu was doing it before he got to drive the ship.

Wasn't he into Botany, too? That man was truly the Tom Paris of TOS.

Yes, and fencing, too. It's probably not a coincidence he made captain.