For me personally, two shows/movies made a big impact on me as an early teen:
Star Trek (TNG at the time)
Jurassic Park
The reason being that most of the characters in those two shows/movies weren’t superheroes/cops/etc. They were geeks and nerds.
Star Trek, the geeks and nerds are prized in society, and their purpose is to explore, to learn. They were scientists. They didn’t accomplish their thing by conquest, but by diplomacy and science. There, of course, were battles/warriors/etc, but those are shown as the exception.
In Jurassic Park, every character is a nerd (the Dino obsessed boy, the Unix hacking girl, the Paleontologist/Paelobotanist, the Geneticist, Mathematician, etc). The good guys AND the bad guys were nerds. No strong-man was needed to save the day.
I was a nerdy kid, and those spoke to me. I now work in a science research lab, and love it. I’m still a nerd.