Get out the book! Oops!
The outfit I work for is very much oriented towards the idea of one or two very clever guys writing procedures for the rest of us to just read and do... no brainwork required.
So, guess what! We caught a problem that just wasn't in the book, a systems failure with the air turbine starter control valve, albeit a relatively benign one, that no one had thought of. That old ability to 'think outside the box' came in very useful. But it's exactly this ability that is being increasingly suppressed by operating sophisticated, highly automated aircraft designed by geniuses who have thought of every possibility. Except for the unthought of one....
After this incident I am sure they have changed the checklists and SOPs but not that underlying philosophy of discouraging much independent thought and healthy skepticism when faced with an anomaly. I don't want us to go all the way back to grizzled, open-cockpit heroes in baggy flight suits with a pint bottle of cheap booze in the hip pocket but I feel sometimes that the boffins are in charge.
I missed this program but the ones I have seen usually present us as either dullards or else cowboys. Then comes lots of out-of-focus stuff with the controls vibrating and a close-up of a smoking hole. The man in the street sure can learn a lot about flying from watching this sort of drivel.