Which TV or Movie Engineer is your favourite and why?

Great Friday question Lisa :)


I agree there's been a rise in engineers in TV and movies, though perhaps that's due to the type of shows/movies that are being made at the moment??


Couple of my faves include:

Cisco on The Flash - can make anything and everything Team Flash need to trap the latest Meta of the week (plus comes up with the awesome nicknames for the heroes and villains!)

Kaylee on Firefly - had a sixth sense with their ship Serenity and almost always knew how to fix it.


Special mentions

Kate McKinnon's character in the new Ghostbusters (Jillian Holtzmann a quick Google search tells me) - a left field choice but I watched the movie recently and thought her character was great (and because of working of the IET I understood a few more of the words she used!!)

Howard from Big Bang Theory - this is a bit of a marmite show, but you can't deny that it's one of the biggest TV shows at the moment. I think some of the amazing things his character has gotten to do has really helped exposure of engineering as a career.

All a bit old I'm afraid (unless I get any inspirations while I'm writing this):

Brains from Thunderbirds, not the best role model perhaps, but certainly influenced me and - big point - was proudly introduced in the opening titles of every episode as "Engineer: Brains"


McGyver

Barney from Mission Impossible (TV series)

Ash from Hustle (not really an engineer, but could crack into anything)

The 'A' team
(oh dear, as a PRA and having a day job of assessing excellence on following standards and guidance and not "bodging" solutions, I'm not setting a good example here with this group...)


The engineers in Apollo 13 - real (if fictionalised) people, and the example I often give school children of excellent real world problem solving


I need to keep thinking...


Cheers,


Andy

Wallace, and indeed Gromit: Their inventions didn't always work first time, but were they down hearted? No, they (mostly) learned from their mistakes.

Ha! Beat me to it Andy Millar‍! 

Good old Wallace tried his hand at most things, although I think Gromit was the real brains...

Ah...well...it's Belbin team roles you see: Wallace was the "Plant" and the "Resource Investigator" and Gromit was all the other roles! http://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/

I really want to present a paper at an IET conference now: "Wallace and Gromit: Lessons in excellence in engineering team structure and management"

I'd sign up for that Andy Millar‍  

Andy,

That is one I would also come and see.

On the engineers, I thought of three but didn't get round to posting them, but you included them all in your first post of four (I missed out the A-Team). However I think that Wallace could be ahead of the rest - particularly if you watch the short ones called "Cracking Contraptions".

Alasdair

What? no Scotty from Star Trek? (or have I gone blind?) Granted, fitting seat belts in the deck of the USS Enterprise seemed beyond the ken of 22nd / 23rd century Earth, Klingon and Vulcan technology, but they had warp drive and transporters, damn it Jim.

Absolutely - I particularly liked "The Voyage Home": "Damage control is easy. Reading Klingon, that's hard."


I'm trying to think of other sci-fi engineers and struggling? That's odd, isn't it?