Extreme Geekiness at Work!

My boss wants me to learn to program in Python. Which is not something I have any objection to at all. I mean, any programming language that takes its name from Monty Python is A-OK in my book. So I've been studying Python programming a bit off and on, but I'm getting a little tired of working through the exercises in the book. So I wrote a (to me) more interesting program: one that takes a big list of SF TV characters and randomly picks five people from five different shows to consitute my crack team of world-saving heroes. This is as frivolous as it gets, and it's not even a very complicated program, but, hey, I can actually claim it as work-related!

(What can I say? Like Homer Simpson, I like stories. I'll take a word problem over a meaningless exercise at least 99% of the time. I remember coping with the tedium of freshman chemistry class by adding embellishments to the textbook examples. You know, it'd give us a word problem that'd start with something like "A student adds 6 ml of hydrochloric acid to a beaker...", and I'd amuse myself by giving the student a name and a backstory and some sort of motivation...)

Anyway, the first time I tried this, it came up with the following list:

Captain Archer of Enterprise
Jool from Farscape
Scotty from the original Star Trek
Gan from Blake's 7
and Riker from ST:TNG

OK, I suppose as world-saving teams of heroes go, you could do a lot worse. If nothing else, all that Starfleetish competence in one place has got to count for something. But, man, I'm not sure I could have come up with a more boring combination of characters if I'd tried. Well, OK, maybe Jool adds a certain element of, er, non-blandness, but only by virtue of being really, really annoying. Could be fun to watch her get on Scotty's nerves, maybe, but otherwise, feh.

So I ran it through a second time and got:

Gan from Blake's 7 (again!)
Dylan Hunt of Andromeda
Stanley Tweedle from Lexx
T'Pol of Enterprise
and Captin Crais from Farscape

Hmm. That wouldn't exactly be my first choice of world-saving heroes. I mean, face it, Stanley'd hardly be anybody's first choice for anything, and Crais doesn't tend to do things from out of the goodness of his heart. But they'd sure as hell be a lot more interesting to watch, just for the personality clashes alone.

Oh, and I then figured these guys'd need some villains to fight, so I randomly picked bad guys for each of them. Group #1 got Davros, who I imagine they could probably deal with OK, even if he is a Really Cool Bad Guy. Maybe Scotty could sabotage his life-support chair or something. Group #2 got the Cybermen. Actually, you know, Gan, Dylan, Stanley, T'Pol and Crais vs. the Cybermen is something I might actually pay to see...