It seems that for everyone in stories that are exceedingly good at SOMETHING specific there’s an author who believes that “science” is specific enough. These (often, but not always, villainous) scientists are not just above and beyond the rest of the word in ONE field (i.e. genetic engineering or robotics) but seem to be able to be able to do anything most people think of as remotely scientific. This means they can build robots, program insanely advanced AI, understand chemistry to the most arcane levels, cheat physics and give biology and genetics the finger entirely by engineering and modifying all manners of lifeforms.
In fact, thinking about it it could be a shorter list to list exceptions (like Dr. Eggman in the Sonic games who, while he has a cursory understanding of other things, is squarely a master of robotics). So anyway what’s some good examples of people in games, books and whatnot that rather than specializing in a realistic way seem to be masters of some nebulous field roughly defined as “science”? Or on the other hand, especially notably averted examples.
My first thought was Dexter from Dexter’s Laboratory, who I’m pretty sure could do just about anything he damn well pleased so long as it was science related (and if it wasn’t he could modify himself to get around it anyway).
Dr. Octopus, at least in Spider-Man 2, is a good example. His fusion experiment draws all the press attention, but the extra arms he built to control the reaction required advances in robotics and medicine that are just as, if not more, groundbreaking.
Except we never see him do much of anything with biology, and precious little with chemistry apart from trying to get a substitute for gasoline in the third movie.
Oh, no…the Professor knew exactly how to fix the boat and had many other workable schemes to get them off the island. He just didn’t want them to leave.
The new show Eleventh Hour has Dr. Jacob Hood, who’s supposed to be one of these guys. In one episode, they mention a paper he published on the subject of dark matter, which makes me think he’s a cosmologist/physicist by training. But almost everything he does on the show is biology or medicine, with some occasional chemistry.
