The idea proposed boiled down to: in reality, in a crisis, the best people to have on your team are the cool-headed, pragmatic ones. How do you write someone like that in a way that they don’t come off as dull and uninteresting?
I love those sorts of characters, and often find them way more interesting than more emotive characters. The entire cast of the TV series Flashpoint (about a Canadian SWAT team) is like that. It's by far the most realistic series I've ever seen about police (and also about therapists, sort of), and doesn't lack for drama. The civilians may be hysterical, but the cops are calm.
Also see: virtually every character ever played by Tom Hanks, once he started doing drama. Also, to a large degree, Denzel Washington.
To me, those characters are interesting in all sorts of ways: there's the pleasure of seeing how they'll figure things out, there's seeing them keep cool under pressure with the suspense of wondering if they'll ever crack, and there's wondering what lies beneath the cool exterior.
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I love those sorts of characters, and often find them way more interesting than more emotive characters. The entire cast of the TV series Flashpoint (about a Canadian SWAT team) is like that. It's by far the most realistic series I've ever seen about police (and also about therapists, sort of), and doesn't lack for drama. The civilians may be hysterical, but the cops are calm.
Also see: virtually every character ever played by Tom Hanks, once he started doing drama. Also, to a large degree, Denzel Washington.
To me, those characters are interesting in all sorts of ways: there's the pleasure of seeing how they'll figure things out, there's seeing them keep cool under pressure with the suspense of wondering if they'll ever crack, and there's wondering what lies beneath the cool exterior.