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Eureka
The opening title for EurekaEureka’s intertitle
Created by	Andrew Cosby Jaime Paglia
Starring	Colin Ferguson Salli Richardson-Whitfield Jordan Hinson Joe Morton Ed Quinn Debrah Farentino Matt Frewer Erica Cerra
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	12 (to date) (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	approx. 44 minutes
Original release
Network	Sci Fi Channel
Release	July 18, 2006 – Present

Eureka is an American science fiction television series (filmed in British Columbia, Canada) that premiered July 18, 2006, on the Sci Fi Channel. In the UK and Ireland it first aired on Sky One on August 2, 2006 - where it is titled A Town Called Eureka. Repeats of the first Season have since been broadcast on the British Sci Fi Channel. A second season (starting July 10, 2007) of thirteen episodes was officially confirmed by the Sci Fi Channel on October 4, 2006. The second season will also air in the UK on Sky One starting in August 2007. According to Sci Fi Wire, Eureka was originally going to be an animated series.

• Season One Tagline: Small Town. Big Secret.
• Season Two Tagline: Same Town. Bigger Secrets.

Plot

Eureka takes place in a secret town of that name inhabited entirely by the best minds in the United States. After World War II ended, Albert Einstein realized that the future belonged to science. Given the close call with the deployment of the atomic bomb, the U.S. government decided it could not risk being surpassed by other nations.

With Einstein’s help and that of other trusted advisors, then-President of the United States Harry S. Truman had a top-secret residential town built in a remote area of the Pacific Northwest, one that would serve to protect and nurture the country’s most valuable intellectual resources. There, the nation’s greatest thinkers, the “über-geniuses” working on the next era of scientific achievement, would be able to live and work in a supportive environment. The best architects and planners were hired to make the town a paradise, with the best of everything for all its residents. This town would never appear on any map and be unknown to the public, except those that were authorized to learn of it.

In the fifty years since the town’s founding, its residents are responsible for almost every leap in science known to humanity. However, with experimentation inevitably comes failure, and over fifty years worth of trial and error they have had a number of experiments go awry. Global warming has in passing been mentioned as an example of a Eureka project gone awry.

Though Eureka’s residents suffer many of the same problems that ordinary towns do, having a town full of geniuses and virtually limitless resources tends to make their problems a much larger concern than those of a regular town. It has been noted that its mortality rate is twice the national average.

While transporting a fugitive (who is revealed to be his rebellious teenage daughter, Zoe) back to Los Angeles, Deputy U. S. Marshal Jack Carter gets himself tangled up in the town’s latest mishap, and soon becomes its new sheriff after the old one is injured on the job.

Location setting

Various hints in the show suggest that it is in Oregon, since a map of Oregon and an Oregon state flag are visible in the sheriff’s office. It has also been implied that Eureka is in a state adjacent to Idaho. In one episode, Zoe, trying to run away, attempts to take a bus to Portland (Oregon’s largest city) in a nearby town. When Sheriff Carter asks where the next stop is, the bus attendant replies that it stops in Salem (Oregon’s capital city). When attempting to find Zoe they searched all public transportation within 50 miles (80 km) of Eureka. Zoe was identified as buying two tickets on a bus leaving from Summerville. Also, in the episode “Primal”, Allison Blake’s divorce papers from Nathan Stark are filed in the state of Oregon, in the Circuit Court of the County of Eureka - which would also explain the presence of a sheriff, something normally afforded to counties, not towns. In a December 2005 interview, Eureka co-creator Andrew Cosby described the town’s location being in the “Pacific Northwest”, “tucked away” behind “the redwood wall”. The quirky coastal town of Eureka, California (approximately 90 miles south of the Oregon border) is referred to by locals as behind the “redwood curtain”, but Cosby says the similarity is coincidental. Eureka, CA’s sister city, Arcata, CA, is home to Humboldt State University, and the Schatz Energy Lab.

Cast

Filming locations

• Chilliwack, British Columbia – Downtown Wellington Avenue on April 12, 2006
• Duncan, British Columbia
• Ladysmith, British Columbia – Downtown First Avenue
• Nanaimo, British Columbia – Ney Drive, Biggs & Townsite Roads
• Surrey, British Columbia – (Fraser Heights Secondary School)
• Victoria, British Columbia
• Port Moody, British Columbia – (Heritage Woods Secondary School) Exterior shot of Global Dynamics. The interior of the school has also been used as the school that Brian Perkins attends, on May 3, 2007.
• Ashland, Oregon – (City Hall) Interior and exterior shots of city hall
• Burnaby, British Columbia – Vancouver Film Studios for the majority of the Global Dynamics building interiors, cafe interiors as well as the home of the title character.

Episodes

The episodes were not aired in the order intended by the show’s creators. This is suggested by the episodes’ production numbers which are displayed on the Sci-Fi channel’s Eureka website next to episode titles quite often. There are some small inconsistencies when watched closely, but such inconsistencies are minimal and were intentionally controlled. In podcast commentaries with the show’s creators and star Colin Ferguson, they confirm that the production order is in fact the order they intended the show to air, but the network executives changed the order to try and place stronger episodes earlier in the run as to help attract viewers. As such, the creators were able to make minor changes in editing and sometimes ADR dialogue in later episodes (such as removing the explicit mention of Zoe’s first day at school) to try to eliminate audience confusion.

Ratings and critical reaction

The series’s premiere garnered high ratings, with 4.4 million people tuning in. Eureka was also the top rated cable program for that Tuesday night, and was the highest-rated series launch in Sci Fi’s fourteen-year history.

Critical reaction was mixed, with general praise for the premise, but overall middling reaction to the writing of the pilot.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

It’s all very quirky. Too quirky, maybe, for an audience that is used to spaceships, robots, and explosions. Though every episode promises an “aha!” moment based in quantum physics and obscure scientific laws, this world is relatively flat, conceptually speaking, in comparison to the complexity woven into series such as Stargate SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica. This does not mean Eureka is a complete waste of time. Not at all. The characters are fun, Ferguson is believable and pleasant, the script is solidly constructed, and the visuals are slickly produced. All in all, it’s a sweet series and probably not long for this world.

The New York Post:

3 out of 4 stars

The New York Daily News:

With its playful new series “Eureka,” set in the Pacific Northwest and telling the story of an outsider who comes to explore, and settle in, a remote town full of eccentrics, Sci-Fi Channel isn’t just inviting comparisons to “Twin Peaks” and “Northern Exposure.” It’s demanding them. But co-creators Andrew Cosby and Jaime Paglia hold up to them pretty well. “Eureka” has a premise, a cast and a plot that make it one of the TV treats of the summer. The folks at Sci-Fi Channel clearly intended to reinvent the summer TV series here, and come up with something breezy and fun. And “Eureka” - they’ve done it!

International distribution

Country	Channel	Season 1 Premiere date	Season 2 Premiere date
IRL	Sky One	August 2, 2006	July, 2007
	Sci Fi	January 11, 2007
UK	Sky One	August 2, 2006	July, 2007
	Sci Fi	January 11, 2007
CA	Space	September 3, 2006
TR	DiziMax	October 11, 2006
IL	AXN	November 6, 2006
ES	Cuatro TV	January 6, 2007
	Sci Fi	January 10, 2007
HU	TV2	February 3, 2007
Asia	Star World	May 30, 2007
Croatia	HTV 2	July 4, 2007

DVD release

Universal has announced the North American (Region 1) release of the first season as a 3-DVD set containing all 12 episodes of the first Season, to be released on July 3 2007.

Universal have now also finally released the artwork for the DVD set. It is also said to contain “10 hours of behind-the-scenes extras” including deleted scenes narrated by Colin Ferguson (Jack Carter).

References

1. "SCI FI CHANNEL UNVEILS ITS BIGGEST SUMMER YET WITH NEW ORIGINAL SERIES AND RETURNING HITS". The Futon Critic. 2006-10-04. Retrieved 2007-04-28.
2. "'EUREKA' RENEWED FOR SECOND SEASON ON SCI FI". The Futon Critic. 2006-10-04. Retrieved 2007-04-23.
3. "Sci Fi Wire - Eureka Almost A Toon". Sci Fi Wire. 2006-08-08. Retrieved 2006-08-14.
4. Sims, Hank (2005-12-15). "Mad scientists abound in Eureka - But show creator says any resemblance to reality purely coincidental". North Coast Journal. Retrieved 2006-09-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
5. "Eureka Scores High". The Futon Critic. Retrieved 2006-11-28.
6. "Not a whole lot to discover on 'Eureka'". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 2006-07-18. Retrieved 2006-07-20.
7. "Eureka - Universal announces Season 1". TV Shows on DVD. Retrieved 2007-03-27.
8. "Eureka - Bonus material for season 1 announced along with Menu artwork". TV Shows on DVD. Retrieved 2007-03-27.

External links

• Official Eureka site at Sci Fi.com
• Eureka at SciFipedia
• Eureka on TV Squad

• Eureka
• Science fiction television series
• 2006 television program debuts
• 2000s American television series
• Sci Fi Channel shows
• Space: The Imagination Station network shows
• Television series by NBC Universal Television
• Vancouver television series
• Television shows set in Oregon