Eureka (2006)/Dr. Nobel

Dr. Nobel
Season 1, Episode 6
Airdate	August 22, 2006
Production Number	105
Written by	Dan E. Fesman & Harry Victor
Directed by	Jeff Woolnough
Stream
← 1x05 Invincible	1x07 → Blink
Eureka (2006) — Season One

Dr. Nobel is the sixth episode of the first season of Eureka.

Fargo accidentally activates a control panel for a death ray that promises to destroy a series of cold war era targets unless the machine's senile inventor can tell them how to shut it down.

Starring: Colin Ferguson (Sheriff Jack Carter), Salli Richardson-Whitfield (Allison Blake), Joe Morton (Henry Deacon), Jordan Hinson (Zoe Carter), Ed Quinn (Nathan Stark)

Also Starring: Erica Cerra (Deputy Jo Lupo), Neil Grayston (Douglas Fargo)

Guest Starring: Antony Holland (Dr. Irvin Thatcher), Chris Gauthier (Vincent), Donna White (Eugenia)

Co-Starring: Shayn Solberg (Spencer Martin), Colin Foo (Scientist Teaching Zoe #1), John Burnside (Scientist Teaching Zoe #2), Mark Burgess (), Jocelyne Loewen (Doris Stokes), Bryan Wilson (Baker Twin #1), Keith Wilson (Baker Twin #2), Matthew McInnis (Young Thatcher), Tyla Gagnon (Young Eugenia), Aaron Rota ()

Plot Overview

Fargo has been promoted to a new office in section four. Although Stark claims that this is a promotion, in actuality Fargo's office is a dank dungeon that looks like it hasn't been touched in 30 years. While cleaning out the junk in his room with Henry and Spencer, Fargo activates a control panel that activates a long forgotten invention in the middle of town. A timer appears and a voice explains that the firing sequence will activate in 24 hours.

While the city teeters on the brink of destruction, Zoe is forced into volunteer work at the town's nursing home because of her rampant delinquentism. She is assigned to work with a wheelchair bound curmudgeon named Eugenia. Back at Global Dynamics, Henry has discovered that the weapons that are appearing all over town are Cold War era ion beam firing turrets, which Jack refers to as "death rays." Henry and Jack retreat to Henry's garage where he stashed all of the boxes of paper work from Fargo's office to look through countless records, hoping to find some reference of the death ray. The find pictures of mirrors on the moon, which tells Henry that they weaponized the moon for global death ray targeting and that the IT initials at the bottom of each page is the name of the inventor, Irvin Thatcher.

Jack goes to the nursing home to retrieve Thatcher and bring him to Global, but discovers that Thatcher is clearly in a state of dementia. Thatcher's mind is so lost that he's unable to help with their problem. He does give some clues, like "reverse the hex" but not enough to give correct launch suspension codes. Henry makes an assumption that because the blue wires are "cold," they're safe to cut without firing the weapon. He cuts the blue, but it just manages to cut their time down to 7 hours.

Alison comes up with a plan to hook Jack and Dr. Thatcher up to a machine that will allow Jack to probe Berlin's mind. The only thought that he manages to come away with is images of nuclear holocaust, Stockholm and a woman named Eugenia. They go to the nursing home in search of Eugenia, but Jack and Zoe wind up finding her in Copernicus Park where she first met Irvin. She explains that Irvin had a mental break when he lost the Nobel Prize in 1962. Meanwhile, in Global Dynamics, Henry tries to make several last ditch approaches at gaining access to the power supply but fail to get to it before time out runs their attempts. Jack comes up with a plan to stage Thatcher being awarded the Nobel Prize in order to reverse his condition. The plan succeeds, and Thatcher puts his "crew" back together to stop the machine. They manage to perform the sequence, but the machine doesn't stop until Thatcher kicks it.

However, although they have successfully disarmed the death ray, they learn that the second strike weapon cannot be stopped because Henry cut the blue wire. However, with only a few seconds left, Jack takes his jeep and rams it into the second strike death ray. The laser misses its target on the moon, but accidentally destroys a Jupiter space probe.

Trivia

The Show

• Music: The song that plays after Irvin reassembles his crew is "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire. The song appears on the album of the same name by McGuire, released in 1965. The song was written by songwriter P.F. Sloan and peaked at #1 on the Billboard charts.

Allusions and References

• Cuban Missile Crisis: The Cuban Missile Crisis was a key moment during Cold War in which the Soviet Union began to arm Cuba with missiles that were cable of hitting American targets. Through diplomacy, President John F. Kennedy was able to diffuse the conflict, but it remains as one of the moments in which the Cold War nearly became an actual war.

Jack: Which one of your scientists is responsible for the Cuban Missile Crisis popping up all over town?

• Mutual Assured Destruction: The concept of mutual assured destruction, or MAD, was a Cold War theory which posited that the best way to prevent a World War (between American and Soviet powers) was to build increasingly destructive weapons. This, as the theory speculates, would discourage either power from using the weapons because doing so would assure their own destruction.

• Vulcan Mind Meld: The Vulcan Mind Meld is a technique used by Spock in Star Trek to interface with another person's mind and glean thoughts and memories from the experience. It was a far less erratic version of what Jack experience in the episode with Dr. Thatcher.

Jack: So, this is basically a Vulcan Mind Meld.