1 Spanners: There must be something we can do. What would Geordi La Forge do?
2 Quercus: Invent some new field of particle physics and promptly forget about it after saving the ship and crew.
3 Spanners: Hmmm. That sounds a bit difficult. What would Chewbacca do?
4 Quercus: Whack the engines with a giant wrench.
4 Spanners: We can do that!

It's interesting that the two main approaches to depicting engineering in science fiction are the technobabble route, and the Arthur Fonzarelli percussive maintenance route.

Why this false dichotomy? Surely there's room for both!