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This article is about the science-fiction television series, for the Canadian educational science television series see Eureka! (TV series) Eureka, rendered as EUReKA on-screen, is an American science fiction television series (filmed in 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. Season 2 was officially confirmed by Sci Fi Channel on October 4th, 2006. • According to Sci Fi Wire, Eureka was originally going to be an animated series.•
Plot Eureka is about a secret town inhabited entirely by the best minds in the United States. After World War II ended, Albert Einstein realized the future belonged to science. Given the close call with the deployment of the atomic bomb, America agreed it could not risk being surpassed by other nations. With Einstein's help and that of other trusted advisors, then-President 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 America's most valuable intellectual resources. There our 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. This town would never appear on any map and be unknown to the public, except those that were authorized to learn of it. It would harbor the greatest minds in the country, as well as protect the country's most valuable secrets. In this haven, the country's greatest minds could live and work in a safe and supportive environment, allowing them to work on the next scientific achievements with no worries or distractions. The best architects and planners were hired to make the town a paradise, with the best of everything for all its residents. From this, the town of Eureka was created. Its residents are responsible for almost every leap in science known to humanity over the past fifty years. 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 is mentioned as one of these). 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. While transporting a fugitive (who is revealed to be his rebellious teenage daughter, Zoe) back to Los Angeles, Jack Carter gets himself tangled up in the town's latest mishap, and soon ends up 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. 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".• Since redwoods only grow in California and coastal southwest Oregon, this limits the locale to the area in which the only real-world Eureka is: California. The article also explains, "Cosby said that he has never been to Humboldt County, and that the town in his series is not meant to be Eureka, Calif., exactly." Cast Filming locations 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' 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.• However, a trailer for the third season of Sci Fi Channel's hit series Battlestar Galactica aired during the premiere, which several critics attributed the high ratings to. 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 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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