Omnidisciplinary Scientist / Live-Action TV

Omnidisciplinary Scientists in live-action TV.

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• Dr. Spaceman (pronounced "Spatchemmen") in 30 Rock performs work of all kinds; he's equally unskilled at all branches of science...
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
  • Subverted. Fitz, Simmons, and Skye are an engineer, a biologist, and a hacker, respectively, and each tends to solve the problems most suited to their domain, though FitzSimmons know enough to understand what each other are talking about when they go off on a tangent. Simmons skirts this trope as she often acts as The Medic, but multiple episodes show her reaching the edge of her knowledge and seeking help from actual doctors.
  • Season 2 plays this painfully straight with Simmons as the most qualified medical practitioner in S.H.I.E.L.D., even going so far as to have her perform surgery for a gunshot wound and check the work of actual medical professionals because "there's no one whose opinion" is more trusted. Compared to the more realistic limits on her medical skills in Season 1, it's a bit jarring.
  • Subverted with Radcliffe. He's a roboticist with a strong interest in transhumanism and cybernetics, so he has broad mechanical, programming, and biological knowledge. He's still not completely omnidisciplinary, though; he needs Fitz's help putting the finishing touch on his prototype LMD (especially her social programming), and when ordered by the Big Bad to fix a nuclear missile, he has absolutely no idea what he's doing. He ends up just grabbing the instruction manual and stalling until he gets a chance to surrender to S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Aliens in the Family: Cookie is a biologist who's also a genius with computers and robots.
• Fred in Angel is presented as a physics student, but by the fifth season she's doing autopsies, examining things under microscopes, and boiling up chemicals. This despite the fact that she never even finished her first physics degree. Like other examples here, she does at least have a team that she works with.
• Arrow: Felicity Smoak was originally introduced as an IT technician. Over the course of the series, she's performed chemical analyses, hacked government satellites, and helped in the construction of a shrinking/regrowth array. Her hacking and computer science abilities are just about believable as it's revealed she's a computer genius who graduated early double-major from MIT and has been taking apart computers since she was seven, but her work outside of that area is a lot less justified. This gets better later in the series as she frequently calls on or mentions getting help from a mechanical engineer (Cisco), forensics expert (Barry), bio engineer (Caitlin), general scientist (Ray) and inventor(Curtis).
• Gaius Baltar in Battlestar Galactica (2003) is possibly a deconstruction. He's a computer scientist who's too arrogant to admit that biochemistry (or whatever other science he's consulted on) is out of his area of expertise. It's even Lampshaded in one episode. After Baltar is left for dead on New Caprica, the job of plotting a course to Earth (previously one of Baltar's many responsibilities) is turned over to Lt. Gaeta, who, as Galactica's tactical officer, has an actual background in astronomy. Admiral Adama and President Roslin comment on the sudden improvement in efficiency.

• Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj from The Big Bang Theory seem well-versed in just about any scientific area, from biology, genetics and robotics to computer science, all while none of them are their official fields (those being experimental physics, theoretical physics, astrophysics and engineering). Most of the show's main characters are geeks. While not absolving them of stereotyping, their nerdy pursuits allow them to have working knowledge of any geeky interest they enjoy, as they would want to know how something from comic books or science fiction would be plausible; indeed, many cold opens are the guys debating the workings of superpowers, Time Travel, or science in general.
  • Howard's being an engineer, not a physicist, is brought up fairly often by other characters disparaging him because he "only" has an M. Eng.
    Howard: I have a master's degree!
    Gablehauser: Who doesn't?
  • At different points Howard claimed that as the engineer he is, he will fix the elevator or a car but after a cursory glance declare it beyond repair, as that would be better suited for a mechanic.
  • Sheldon has a tendency towards being a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, while the most intelligent of the group his arrogance makes him think everything he says is simply true because he said it. This includes a lot of his "fun facts." Most of the characters, when pushed outside their specific field, have to defer to someone better qualified.
• Bones: Initially this was justified by the fact that Temperance Brennan is the foremost scientist in the world in her field, which is how she can excel at forensic, cultural, biological and linguistic anthropology, but it quickly spread to everyone else in the lab; Hodgins has doctorates in geology, botany and entomology, and even the non-scientist Angela, initially a graphic artist, became a computer genius and a forensic accountant; the F.B.I. profiler is also a psychoanalyst and a field agent, etc.
  • Although he's an intern Doctor Oliver wells turns out to be more omnidisciplinary than them all. Besides being the best forensic anthropologist other than Brennan he's notably skilled at everything he puts his mind to. At one point he irritates Brennan enough that she's threatens to fire him if he can't identify the author of a poem. It takes him half an episode to learn enough about handwriting analysis to succeed.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Warren's main area of expertise is technology and robotics, but he's got quite a few other fields down. He knows demonology and magic, and when he resurfaces in Season 8, displays enough knowledge about biology and brain surgery to lobotomize a restrained Willow.
• Averted in Caprica. Dr. Amanda Graystone works at the hospital as a plastic surgeon. Therefore, when she sees a car accident, she does not rush over to offer first aid.
  • Which is odd in itself. Any trained physician can and would be able to administer first aid at least until someone who specializes in emergency medicine is on the scene.
• Reid on Criminal Minds has Ph.D.s in chemistry, mathematics and engineering, BAs in psychology and sociology, and he is working on a bachelor's degree in philosophy. His job is a criminal profiler.
  • From the very first episode:
    Hotchner: This is Special Agent Gideon; Special Agent Morgan, our expert obsessional crime; Special Agent Reid—
    Gideon: Doctor Reid.
    Hotch: —Doctor Reid, our expert on, well, everything.
  • Played for Laughs and softly Lampshaded when he tries to clear himself for duty following an injury. When Hotch calls him out for lying about being cleared by a doctor, Reid points out he has several doctorates, so technically he wasn't lying. As he is Not That Kind of Doctor, it meets a No-Sell.
• On Crossing Jordan Nigel Townsend is a straight example of this. He knows everything about everything and readily admits it. It is even addressed by another character in one of the episodes. 'Dare I ask how he knows these things?' Another character responds, 'It's better not to question it.'
• Dr. Julia Hoffman of Dark Shadows qualifies. When first mentioned (but not yet seen), she's an expert on blood disorders, then turns up at Windcliff Sanitarium where she demonstrates psychiatric/psychological training, and in later episodes turns out to be a qualified surgeon, research scientist (her search for a cure for Barnabas), and electrical engineer.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor, a self-described doctor "of everything". It helps that they're several centuries old, meaning they actually have lived long enough to acquire loads of different skill-sets.
  • In the Second Doctor story, "The Moonbase", the Doctor mentions that he studied human medicine under Joseph Lister, which means his knowledge of human medicine might be just a little bit out of date. (In addition, he gives the wrong time and place to have studied under Lister, suggesting he's misremembering or bluffing.)
  • Then there was Dr. Liz Shaw, described as having degrees in at least a dozen fields. She didn't last long, though, since she was too smart to be The Watson all the damned time.
    "Nonsense; what you need, as Ms. Shaw herself so often remarked, is someone to pass you your test tubes and tell you how brilliant you are. Miss Grant will fulfill that function admirably."
  • When asked in "Colony in Space" if he's "some kind of scientist", the Third Doctor replies that "I'm every kind of scientist."
  • Davros, creator of the Daleks, tends towards this as well. Described by the Doctor as having the finest scientific mind in existence, he uses his mastery of genetic engineering and cybernetics to make his creatures, then subsequently shows enough aptitude for medicine to work for a while as "The Great Healer" and enough knowledge of physics to design a bomb which can cancel out the electrical field holding atoms together and cause "THE DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY! ITSELF!"
  • When the Seventh Doctor is trying to defuse the wires and circuits of a booby-trapped anklet in "Time and the Rani", he turns to his companion, a computer programmer, and said, "Mel, you're the computer expert. How about it?" This led to a running joke in fandom where the Doctor would be depicted as saying things like "Mel, you're the computer expert. What's the ideal baking time for a strawberry tart?" or "Mel, you're the computer expert. What's the air-speed velocity of a fully laden swallow?"
  • Averted wonderfully in "Remembrance of the Daleks" when Allison is examining a soldier. When asked, "Is he all right?" she replies, "No idea, I'm a physicist."
  • In "The Empty Child", the Ninth Doctor performs (with his sonic screwdriver) an autopsy (effectively), listing all the possible reasons for the sci-fi zombie's "deaths".
  • In "The Shakespeare Code", the Tenth Doctor manages to restart one of his hearts through a jury-rigged procedure, so he could have picked it up for real at some point, or he's simply better with Time Lord biology than human.
  • In "The Tsuranga Conundrum", the Thirteenth Doctor ends up on a hospital ship staffed only by nurses, so they need to clarify.
    Mabli: Doctor of medicine?
    The Doctor: Well, medicine. Science. Engineering. Candy floss. LEGO, philosophy. Music. Problems. People. Hope. Mostly hope.
• Topher Brink of Dollhouse is an expert in neuroscience, computers, and electrical engineering. It's somewhat necessary for his job, which is using tech to reprogram brains. He's also been to medical school, though we don't actually know if he's an MD.
  • Echo is a more justified example — she has dozens of different personalities in her head, including a nurse and a few rocket scientists.
• Dr. Jacob Hood, biophysicist and special science advisor to the FBI, from Eleventh Hour. Being an Omnidisciplinarian with an extra helping of awesomesauce is the entire role of his character.
• On Eureka:
  • Henry Deacon manages to be Omnidisciplinarian whenever the plot requires despite living in a town populated by scientific geniuses and which should, in theory, be able to field a team of specialists on whatever virus/natural disaster/temporal anomaly is threatening the town this week. He's also the town's mechanic. Lampshaded whenever he changes the patch he wears on his uniform to reflect whatever job he happens to be doing, as when he pulled a patch reading "Coroner" out of his pocket just as he walked into a morgue. The sheriff's dependence on Henry may be partially justified: given how eccentric most of the people he's met in Eureka appear to be, he might prefer to work with a guy who seems relatively "normal", and isn't going to wander off to play fetch with his robot dog or whatever.
  • Fargo seems to wind up as the assistant to anyone at Global Dynamics who's doing anything interesting, dangerous, or plot-important. It helps him live up to his Butt-Monkey status, though you have to wonder how someone who looks like he's just out of high school could possibly have had the time to learn that much. He also takes over from Henry on several occasions. Later in an AU timeline (but still the same Fargo) he's smart and composed enough to run Global Dynamics and keep track of everything.
  • Interestingly subverted in one episode in which a disease that makes people stupid runs through Eureka. When Carter rounds up the scientists who weren't infected on account of being vegetarians who didn't eat the broken Artificial Meat and ask them to fix it, he quickly finds out that not every scientist is an expert in human immunology, winding up with a "chemist, a botanist, a math theorist, and a...lepipotamus^note  lepidopterist".
• Family Matters has Steve Urkel who's sometimes accused of turning science into magic. Steve was a genius at everything from genetic engineering (creating a serum that turned him into a more suave, less clumsy version of himself) to robotics and cybernetics (creating multiple robots with fully functional artificial intelligence) to quantum physics (creating a teleportation device and a time machine). Steve was also one of the rare omnidisciplinary scientists who averted No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup, as some of his creations had flaws that he corrected in later episodes.
• Farscape:
  • Scorpius specializes in many different fields: originally a researcher in wormhole physics, he's also skilled enough in engineering, cybernetics and neuroscience to invent the Aurora chair and a neurochip containing a replica of his personality. And he's also Wicked Cultured.
  • For that matter, Crichton himself. He holds no doctorates, calls himself a "God damned scientist" and gives his rank as "Commander" when he first encounters Aeryn (indicating he was the commander of the shuttle mission in which he disappeared through a wormhole). He's also a crack pilot proven to at least be on par with Aeryn in space and possibly a superior pilot in atmosphere, an engineer who designed and built the FarScape module (with his friend D.K.'s help) himself, is an accomplished enough technician to assist Gilina with repairing and installing a Peacekeeper defense screen salvaged from Zelbinion aboard Moya, heavily modified his module with Leviathan and Peacekeeper technology, even before having wormhole knowledge implanted in his head by the Ancients was well on his way towards single-handedly cracking wormhole travel (which entire races have attempted and failed), and built a nuclear bomb, among other feats.
• Simon Campos on FlashForward (2009) is a quantum physicist who also reads medical charts and breaks encryption.
• Thanks to his sheer breadth of experience, Forever's Dr. Henry Morgan is a talented forensic scientist on top of being a medical doctor and pathologist, and knows at least the basics of a dozen or more other fields, including botany (plants in his lab), marine biology (he has a tank of Immortal Jellyfish), and grave-digging.
• Natalie on Forever Knight, although she's the medical examiner, is represented as doing a variety of science stuff (although not much is shown onscreen) in attempting to understand vampire Nick Knight's condition and "cure" him.
• Fringe:
  • Walter Bishop's expertise ranges from biology to teleportation technology but at least has the good grace to not build things that work perfectly on his first try. (the teleporter for example does something very nasty, but non-lethal, to you). His son is close enough to this that he can point out when Walter is ignoring the laws of physics and common sense.
  • Fringe has actually been fairly consistent about it — Walter is mostly a trained biochemist, but he is also superintelligent and has spent a lot of time working with other disciplines. His more elaborate inventions were pretty explicitly developed in collaboration with other people. And he has a great deal of trouble with stuff outside his knowledge — when given a stack of books that explain a time machine, he complains that it would take 20 years and a team of expert assistants for him to absorb all the information. But he's smart enough to get the gist of how it works, even if he couldn't build one.
  • The show behaves as if "fringe science" were a single category of scientific endeavor, overlapping physics, biology, biochemistry, and a dozen or so others (Sonoma State University may have once offered a degree in fringe science, but Harvard not so much). Walter Bishop is shown as an expert on teleporters one minute and performing autopsies the next. They even occasionally send patients to his clearly unhygienic lab to have him perform surgeries. Not that the character isn't a hoot. He also knows a lot about LSD.
• Game of Thrones: Maesters wear a chain with each link made of a different metal representing mastery of a different field of study, and they are expected to earn as many as possible, e.g. Maester Luwin.
• The Professor on Gilligan's Island, by virtue of his name. The only discipline he apparently neglected to learn was ship repair, no matter how many other engineering feats he performs.
• For the purposes of the plot (such as it was) Graeme Garden had to be this for the other Goodies.
• Michael Bentine's character in The Goon Show, Dr. Osric Pureheart, was this to the other characters, and his inventions frequently drove the plot. Sadly, the character died with Bentine's leaving the team.
• On Gotham:
  • Jeremiah Valeska seems to be one of these. At the age of twenty or twenty one, he's already been an engineer for at least four years, and seems to be specialize in multiple different types of engineering, including structural and electrical engineering. He creates an extremely advanced clean energy generator that somehow draws energy from vibrations in the air, and then turns those generators into bombs. He is also skilled at using more traditional explosives, and might even have become good enough at chemistry to create his own chemical weapons by season 5, because while he previously got them from Scarecrow, there's no evidence that they were still working together while he was creating a special mixture of chemicals in the Ace Chemical plant.
  • Lucius Fox also qualifies as this. He seems to be the one the protagonists turn to whenever they need any kind of scientific expertise except for medical. During the course of the series, he goes from a Wayne Enterprises executive with unspecified scientific expertise, to a forensic scientist at the GCPD. He designs a computer for Thomas Wayne that is far more advanced than other computers seen on the show, designs bulletproof armor for Bruce, designs a water purifier in season five after Jeremiah poisons the river, and figures out a way to send information to the mainland. Like Jeremiah, he seems to have degrees in multiple types of engineering, along with several other sciences.
• Dr. Mohinder Suresh on Heroes is a reasonably restrained example, for what the series is... he's a professor of genetics who's also often frequently seen practicing medicine, and can sometimes put together a Super Serum or scifi gadget... or teach geology. Whenever the bad guys need a Reluctant Mad Scientist, they can convince the Super Gullible Omnidisciplinary Scientist Dr. Suresh to do just about anything!
• Chase on House apparently spent about 60 years as a resident. While his place on a diagnostic team does indicate he would have a wide knowledge base he has performed actual surgeries in virtually every conceivable surgical discipline.
  • Everyone on House's staff is one, considering they run every test themselves, instead of asking technicians to perform whichever tests are needed. Not only have they done every type of surgery, in between they operate an MRI scanner and do all kinds of microbial cultures. Sheesh.
• Intelligence (2014) has Dr. Shenandoah Cassidy, the designer of the computer chip in Gabriel's head. Neurosurgeon, computer scientist, electronics engineer, pathologist, and that's only the first six episodes.
• Jeremiah: Devon is a brilliant virologist and is also a good radio engineer who sets up communication systems in multiple locations.
• On Lost, Dr. Jack Shephard is a spinal surgeon, but seems to be up to speed on thoracic surgery, optometry, general medicine, and is relatively confident about delivering babies.
  • On the other hand, Juliet was useless beyond her specialty (fertility) and some basic first aid. Bernard the dentist applies medicine in a Closest Thing We Got fashion. Juliet, with Bernard's help, successfully removed Jack's appendix on the island. That doesn't sound like "basic first aid". Jack was coaching her, but Bernard knocked him out before he could give any real instructions.

• Melrose Place: Kimberly started out as a surgeon. Then after committing a myriad of offences which should have sent her to jail for life, as well as cost her her medical license, she effortlessly resumed her medical career... in psychiatry.
• Zigzagged on NCIS:
  • Played realistically with coroner Donald "Ducky" Mallard. Early in the series he's shown studying for his forensic psychology exam, which he later passes. And...that's it. He hasn't gotten any more degrees, but that Master's FP degree comes in handy on several occasions.
  • On the other hand, Abby plays the trope straight. She's a master of every aspect of forensics, from organic chemistry to photo-analysis to ballistics. Real-life police labs need entire staffs to do what Abby does by herself.
• Dr. Morris in Now and Again is a brilliant medical doctor, able to create an artificial human from scratch with superhuman strength and nanotech-based Healing Factor. He also performed the first successful human brain transplant from a victim of a subway accident to the new body. While being a clear case of Open Heart Dentistry, that's not all. First of all, there's the "nanotech" part, which requires one to be a computer engineer as well. One episode also has him demonstrate a prototype anti-missile shield and explain why it's current applications are limited (it requires a highly-ionized atmosphere, such as during a thunderstorm). This also, apparently, makes him an expert on particle physics.
• Charlie Epps from NUMB3RS is a mathematics prodigy. Besides being an Omnidisciplinary Mathematician (he seems to know everything about every algorithm ever made) he also seems to be an expert on chemistry, sociology, computer programming and physics. The only reason that he needs such a wide variety of skills is that the team of FBI agents he works with are all married to idiots.
  • Charlie has the sort of knowledge in the computer and physical sciences that are required support for a mathematics degree at many universities. Really, Amita is the expert programmer and Larry the expert physicist (and Bill Nye the expert chemist).
  • Charlie is omnidisciplinary within mathematics, however (Omnisubdisciplinary?).
• Standard procedure for most soap opera doctors. One on One Life to Live appeared to simultaneously be an internist, surgeon, OB/GYN, neonatologist, and pathologist.
• Our Miss Brooks: Mr. Boynton is supposed to be a biology teacher. However, he's also an expert in chemistry ("Living Statues") and paleontology ("Life Can Be Bones"). Besides that, he was once chosen to grade the final English exams ("Head of the English Department").
• The hero of Quantum Leap, Sam Beckett, had seven doctorates, including Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Medicine, Archaeology, Ancient Languages...and Music. He knows an awful lot but the time-travel process has scrambled his mind a bit, which means that he'll know or not know as the plot demands.
• Quatermass: Bernard Quatermass develops into one of these over the course of three serials. In his first story he describes himself as just an engineer and relies on surgeon Dr. Briscoe for anything relating to biology, but by his third encounter with aliens he's done quite a bit of brushing up on other fields.
• Sanctuary:
  • Dr. Helen Magnus states in the first episode that she is "Any kind [of doctor] my patients need me to be." She has had plenty of time to learn. She seems to be an expert in any type of biological science; Will is brought in specifically to deal with the mental doctoring and Henry is the technical expert.
  • Nikola Tesla was brought in for additional technological and immunological expertise (being a vampire might stimulate one's interest in biology, after all).
• In the Sapphire and Steel story "Assignment Five", Dr. McDee is identified at one point as a physicist, but is doing microbiological experiments. This may explain why he ends up accidentally creating a microbe capable of wiping out all life on Earth.
• Professor Arturo in Sliders, despite supposedly being a cosmologist or sometimes a more general theoretical physicist, successfully creates penicillin in an early episode (in a world where medicine was much less advanced). Later, quite unbelievably, he was capable of performing a Caesarean section on another (male) character, despite having no experience with any form of surgery, let alone such an exotic circumstance as a male pregnancy. And then there was the time he revived a deactivated android... However, each of these cases was lampshaded with dialogue about how hard and/or different from maths he found it.
• Smallville: Emil Hamilton's official role (and actual job) on the show is as the team's doctor. However, he's also everything from Gadgeteer Genius to biologist to coroner when the team needs him to be. If the team needs computer skills, they'll go to Chloe or Tess. If they need anything else, they go to Emil.
• Space: 1999:
  • Professor Bergman, the moonbase's chief scientist, can answer almost any question of a scientific or philosophic nature, even about phenomena not previously encountered by humans. If he can't answer the question outright, he can almost always at least make an educated guess (which usually turns out to be right).
  • In the second season this role is taken over by Maya, though she doesn't usually venture into philosophy. In her case it's justified by her being an alien from an old, advanced civilization with a huge knowledge base, and also by her being much more intelligent than a normal human.
• The Stargate-verse tried to avert this by bringing in guest stars or occasionally even nameless specialists. Also, while each member of the main SG-1 team could be The Smart Guy on any other show, each had his or her own speciality (O'Neill the military man, Carter the physicist, Teal'c who knows alien technology because he lived with it all his life, and Daniel the archaeologist, who knows what's going on on other worlds because he knows the cultures that influenced them or were influenced by them). However, this trope is still played straight several times in the franchise.
  • In Stargate Atlantis, half of the main cast during the final season consists of scientists and medical experts with various specializations, and most of the other recurring guest characters are scientists as well. This would make sense, as it's a scientific expedition they've undertaken. That said, among the main characters Dr. Rodney McKay is the go-to guy for an inordinately wide variety of problems, as he has far exceeded his original field and is now Atlantis' omnidisciplinary expert on alien technology. Not surprising, as at the beginning of the series McKay was the only scientist in his team, while the other three main characters (Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon) were pilots and combat experts. At the same time, McKay is utterly useless in biology and medicine, calling the latter "voodoo science". This doesn't stop him from being good friends with Carson Beckett and joining the Mile High Club with Jennifer Keller, both MDs.
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • Dr. Samantha Carter filled this niche prior to Dr. McKay. Originally a theoretical physicist, in the SG-1 team she was a standard Omnidisciplinary Scientist for everything technological, anything that didn't fit Dr. Daniel Jackson's specialties (archaeology and linguistics). (After the end of the SG-1 series, Carter was transferred to Atlantis, to take over command from Dr. Elizabeth Weir.) One of the few female examples.
    • Was humorously subverted at times, though. One episode opens with the team encountering a woman in labor; all the guys look at Sam, who immediately yells, "What? I don't know what to do!" At one point, O'Neill asks her about a worryingly close active volcano, but she replies that she isn't a volcanologist and can't help. Daniel also had a Not That Kind of Doctor moment to the effect of "You're a doctor." "I'm an archaeologist." "But... you're a doctor." "Of archaeology!" when someone needed patching up.
  • Stargate Universe:
    • Dr. Rush is set up to be this. Admittedly most issues brought up so far deal with ancient technology, which he is supposed to be an expert on, and the basics of other fields, he has a tendency to refuse all other help. Averted in the pilot however, when he needed an MIT dropout to solve a math problem that he'd being working on for 2 years.
    • Eli himself is presented as becoming this when he and the crew (except Rush) got copied/timeslipped into the past, and wrote all the original science textbooks for the civilization the crew founded. Everyone seems to agree on two main points about Eli: He is, by far, the most intelligent and potentially valuable person on the crew, and if he is to ever achieve anything of lasting importance it is vital that he not know this.
• Every version of Star Trek has at least one Omnidisciplinary Scientist and Open Heart Dentist, always justified by some means or another: Star Trek: The Next Generation had Super Prototype android Data, Deep Space Nine had Designer Baby Doctor Bashir. The rest of the time they just called in a Vulcan, whose Hat seems to be "Omnidisciplinary whatever I choose to study", and an extensive amount of Back Story is devoted to justifying this. Vulcan neurochemistry has what would be in humans super-high levels of various hormones that facilitate learning, recall, analysis, and reflexes. They also result in hair-trigger tempers; prior to the coming of Surak, they were even more violent than Klingons. His Message was that all problems were solvable through Awesomeness by Analysis, whereas Don't Think, Feel would only lead to The End of the World as We Know It. He wasn't all that popular until he gained a Foil, T'Pel, who executed the story of Fight Club up to eleven, freaking the entire planet out so badly that they've followed him ever since. The Foil then left Vulcan to found a Planet Of Hats that have been the Vulcans' Foil ever since — the Romulans.
  • This is rather elegantly demonstrated in the J. J. Abrams' Star Trek (2009) during the scene showing the Vulcan "learning pits." The schoolchildren are answering rapid-fire questions from many, many disparate disciplines, showing how Vulcan education is intensely omnidisciplinary from very early on. This scene is actually a Call-Back to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Spock, getting back in mental shape after his recent inconvenience, stands encircled by multiple computers all of which are engaged in separate tests which he has to complete or solve at the same time in various different ways — some require verbal answers, others typed answers, others touch-screen answers and so on. He multitasks effortlessly until one of the computers asks the question "How do you feel?" and Spock is utterly stumped.
  • In Dr. Bashir's case, it was almost averted originally. When Deep Space Nine first started, Dr. Bashir was the medical expert who didn't even know everything about medicine (for example, he once had great difficulty with a dying Cardassian patient due to his (at the time) lack of knowledge of Cardassian physiology). As a result, Bashir was used to play up the "I'm a doctor, not a..." tradition instead. Very late into the show, it was revealed Bashir was in fact a Designer Baby and he was turned into a ridiculously Omnidisciplinary Scientist prone to Ludicrous Precision and capable of Improbable Aiming Skills almost overnight with the handwave that he'd been like this all along, but had simply been keeping it secret.
  • Jadzia Dax was also an example. Her exact specialization was almost impossible to tell because her scientific knowledge accommodated whatever the plot needed her to know. She received the Dax symbiote at the age of 26 and confirmed in the first series that she had obtained all her many degrees and vast scientific knowledge prior to receiving Dax. She was also Dax's first scientist, the closest thing to a scientist Dax had previously hosted had been an engineer. As a result, even Dax's 300 years worth of experience couldn't explain why Jadzia had such a vast knowledge of science by the age of 28 (the Jadzia host's age as of her first appearance). Though it's somewhat justified as the the small number of symbiotes means that the Symbiosis Commission goes out of its way to pick only geniuses as hosts. The Dax symbiote's life experiences were later used to waive the rest of Ezri Dax's training to become a fully qualified psychologist on the grounds that her training couldn't teach her anything her 300+ year old symbiote hadn't already experienced. This was despite Ezri being the first psychologist to have ever hosted Dax and the fact that, as an Trill unprepared for Joining, the Joining seriously messed her up for a while.
  • Curzon had been a diplomat which requires significant knowledge of human (and alien) behavior, so it probably was useful in Ezri's psychology knowledge.
  • Miles O'Brien was a non-com Chief Engineer with broad experience as both a soldier and technician, officially specializing in transporter operations (not theory). As a child, he tested at the very low end for scientific and engineering aptitude, only discovering his skill as an engineer during a combat situation where his life and the life of his squad depended on getting a broken transporter to work in a matter of minutes. That said, whenever Dax isn't around to fill the role of this trope, O'Brien steps in seamlessly; like when he figures out now only how a bit of accidental time travel sent three people (including Dax) into the past, but also how to recreate the effect reliably and precisely in order to send a rescue team to check out the various time-periods they might have ended up in.
  • Doctor Phlox on Enterprise had over a dozen different scientific degrees (but none in warp theory).
  • A minor (never-seen) character, Dr. Vassbinder, is apparently an expert in temporal mechanics, warp propulsion inter-relays, warp particle ionization, physiognomy, and psychology (the last three mentioned in the same sentence, even). Physiognomy is the study of using a person's face to determine their personality. Mixed with warp theory and temporal mechanics is outright bizarre, and still unlikely mixed with psychology.
  • Starfleet captains, but especially Picard and Janeway, tend to be this. They have science officers and engineers to do those jobs on a daily basis, but they know the disciplines well enough to keep up and contribute ideas when a specialist is explaining the latest Techno Babble to them. In a pinch, they can take over any job on the ship. It's vaguely alluded to on-screen what their specialties were before they were captains — Picard used to be a helm officer, Riker was a tactical officer, Sisko was an engineer, and Janeway used to be a science officer. At the same time, Picard manages to be one of the most accomplished archeologists and paleontologists in the Federation (for example, his discoveries include the origin of human life) despite him downplaying them as "hobbies".
  • Janeway served as a Science Officer before switching to Command, Seven of Nine was primarily an Astrometrics expert but her prodigious intellect and Borg knowledge left her highly skilled in many other areas, Harry was an Operations Officer fresh from the Academy who had, or soon gained, Engineering knowledge great enough to rival the actual Chief Engineer B'Elanna, who seemed to specialise in every element of Engineering even though she dropped out of Starfleet Academy. The Doctor was the sum of all Federation medical knowledge, Chakotay was an accomplished archaeologist and anthropologist. Paris was not only a master pilot, but a starship designer as well. Plus he played medic on the side when the Doctor was not around. Tuvok was a Vulcan. Finally, Icheb retained the Borg capacity for information and knowledge, and quickly became a prodigy in Astrometrics, Cybernetics, Genetics, Geology and Engineering. Voyager may have been (unofficially, of course) a warship, but almost the entire command structure was made up of nothing but badass super-scientists that could put Reed Richards to shame.
  • The Science Officer of each ship actually oversees a number of departments, each of which is devoted to a different scientific specialisation. Therefore, each Science Officer needs to be well versed in every field represented aboard the ship and many more besides. It seems that Starfleet churns out omnidisciplinary scientists by the dozens.
  • Necessary on Star Trek: Discovery. Lieutenant Stamets is primarily a mycologist, but his "spore drive" links fungal mycelia with interstellar travel, requiring him to also understand bio-augmentation and astronavigation.
• Super Sentai:
  • Choujuu Sentai Liveman: Great Professor Bias's title isn't just for show, he seems to have a mastery of almost every scientific field. Considering he's been alive for who knows how long he's had plenty of time to learn. His students are slightly downplayed examples of this, as each one is specializes in one broad field of science (Kemp's is genetic engineering, Mazenda's is robotics and Obular's is... genetic engineering as well...)
• Averted on Threshold: fully half of the original red team are scientists, and a fourth is added later. All have different areas of expertise — the fourth is a plant biologist.
• Total Recall 2070: Dr. Olan Chang takes this trope and runs with it. Not only is she the Citizen's Protection Bureau's coroner, but she's also depicted as an expert roboticist, virologist, computer scientist, and neurologist, among other things.
• The X-Files: Dr. Dana Scully sometimes comments on psychological issues despite Mulder having the degree in this area, and both of them going through the same agency training. Even more bizarrely, it is often Mulder himself who asks. More bizarrely still, Mulder's job at the FBI before taking over the X-files was as a criminal profiler.
• Siroc on Young Blades is introduced as a Gadgeteer Genius and a man ahead of his time, but by the end of the series, he is shown as knowledgeable in biology, engineering, forensics, medicine, and whatever other branch of science the plot requires.

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