Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Eureka: A new season

Pragmatically placed to soften the blow of losing SG-1, last night season two of Eureka premiered on SciFi. Last season's cliff-hanger involved sheriff Jack Carter (makes me laugh every time, Jack O'Neill/Sam Carter) and Henry, a scientist devastated by the death of Kim in a shocking radiation accident at Global Dynamics. Henry traveled back to the incident, saved Kim, and changed history resulting in an alternate time line. Four years later the city of Eureka is suffering from a series of anomalies caused by a rift in the space time continuum.

"Henry can help Carter make a dangerous journey back in time to set things right. But if Carter succeeds in erasing the second timeline - essentially resetting the clock to 2006 - the family he's built with Allison will vanish and Kim's death will ravage Henry all over again. As the temporal anomalies grow more destructive, Carter, Henry, Kim, and Allison must choose between clinging a few moments longer to happiness - or saving the world." (Eureka, Once in a Lifetime, Episode synopsis)

Season two opens with Jack and Henry having saved Eureka, but with consequences to both of them as they alone remember the four years passed. Kim is dead, Jack and Ally's life together no longer exists, and citizens of Eureka who were working on the Section 5 project that caused the anomaly are spontaneously combusting. Henry and Jack work together to solve the mystery, but their friendship becomes strained as each remember how things were in the other reality. The closing scene of episode one, Phoenix Rising, is as unsettling as it is effective when Henry finds a way to resolve their long term memory problems.

Eureka is a great series combining science fiction, mystery, humor, and charmingly human and quirky characters in one big package. Where else will you find the town sheriff living in a transformed bunker, fully computerized, and named Sara?

Below is an excerpt from the Town History:

"Thus, the town of Eureka was born. But for all its familiar, small-town trappings, things in this secret hamlet are anything but ordinary. The stereotype of the absent-minded professor exists for a reason, and most of the quantum leaps in science and technology during the past 50 years were produced by Eureka's elite researchers. Unfortunately, scientific exploration is rarely what one expects, and years of experiments gone awry have yielded some peculiar by-products.From unrequited love to professional jealousy, from addiction to depression, the problems of Eureka's townsfolk stem from life's myriad of everyday challenges. But with the population's unique talents, troubled psyches and limitless resources, these small-town concerns have a way of becoming big-time problems. It is at that intersection, where human frailty and super-science collide, that Eureka begins.." (SciFi, About Eureka)

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