In War Games, our protagonist is the one tech savvy kid who "gets it" while all the other technology experts are villains who put the world in peril because they are bumbling fools.

In Revenge, the nerds were still rejects who, against all odds, won a talent show. One of them, in the process, literally stalks and eventually rapes his unrequited love interest, though, for the sake of a happy ending, she ended up "liking it." Talk about a huge marketing disaster for making CS attractive to women.

With Houston, the term "rocket science" became synonymous with extreme intelligence. The entire country was lining up to buy those "heroes" beers. Astronaut was something akin to Fireman for children hopes and dreams. There has never been a CS moonshot for all to see, as the last war hero we know of was Alan Turing, who's accomplishments remained classified long after his public humiliation and death.

This is all to say, for better or worse, that CS, STEM, and intellectualism in general, were not lionized. Indeed the opposite was the case.