Eureka (2006)/Pilot

Pilot
Season 1, Episode 1
Airdate	July 18, 2006
Production Number	101
Written by	Andrew Cosby & Jaime Paglia
Directed by	Peter O'Fallon
Stream
— N/A	1x02 → Many Happy Returns
Eureka (2006) — Season One

Pilot is the first episode of the first season of Eureka.

U.S. Marshal Jack Carter gets into a car wreck and finds himself, and his daughter, in a strange town inhabited by geniuses. In the town, Carter discovers that it's not quite what it seems and winds up aiding in the town in solving a series of space-time disturbances.

Starring: Colin Ferguson (Jack Carter), Salli Richardson-Whitfield (Allison Blake), Greg Germann (Warren King), Jordan Hinson (Zoe Carter), Joe Morton (Henry Deacon), Erica Cerra (Jo Lupo), Neil Grayston (Douglas Fargo), Meshach Peters (Kevin Blake)

With: Matt Frewer (Jim Taggart)

And: Debrah Farentino (Beverly Barlowe)

Guest Starring: Maury Chaykin (Sheriff Bill Cobb), Rob LaBelle (Walter Perkins), Garry Chalk (Col. Briggs)

Co-Starring: Jennifer Clement (Susan Perkins), Shayn Solberg (Spencer), Zak Ludwig (Brian Perkins), Christopher Gauthier (Vincent), Benjamin Smith (Oppenheimer Boy), Ian Carter (Special Agent), Kwesi Ameyaw (Special Agent Hicks), Leanne Merrett (Special Agent Miller), Chris Burns (Soldier #1), Tyler McClendon (Young Corporal), Norm Sherry (), Kevin Murray (Charley), Keith Wilson (Baker Twin #1), Bryan Wilson (Baker Twin #2)

Plot Overview

Jack Carter, a deputy U.S. Marshal, has been transporting a prisoner back to her home after finding her in a large city in California. But, when he becomes distracted by her insistence that they were just passed in the opposite direction by themselves, Jack nearly hits a dog. He swerves to miss the animal, but crashes the car, leaving them without transportation. The two are forced to walk to the nearest town where a kid with a theoretical physics book in the basket on his bicycle directs them to the sheriff's department. They take the prisoner, Zoe, off Jack's hands and point him towards the town mechanic, Henry. However, Henry turns out to be less of a mechanic than he is an experimental engineer who invented a floating magnetic contraption that explodes shortly after he gets it running.

Meanwhile, a family is nervously attempting to leave town. Walter and his wife converse briefly about an "opportunity" that they have and vaguely refer to their trip. While they argue in the gas station, their son watches a blue substance expand in the back of the mobile home. When Walter and Susan get back in the RV, they find the back of the trailer destroyed and their son missing. On the other side of town, Henry tows Jack's car out of the ditch and brings him and the car back to his station where he finds a frenzy of attention. The sheriff organizes several search teams to sweep towards the tree line. Jack attempts to take over, but the sheriff brushes him off. While they're off searching, he investigates the crime scene and discovers that the "missing boy' was actually just hiding in the RV. The police, on the other hand, find the missing section of the RV in the woods. Now that the crisis has been averted, the Department of Defense agent who discovered Jack rifling through the crime scene takes him to a bed & breakfast where he can stay until his car is repaired.

At the crime scene, investigators attempt to figure out what caused the blue field in the first place. A lab technician tells his boss that something was stolen from "Section 5" and may have caused the incident. The superior attempts to get right to covering it up, but runs into a problem when the sheriff demands results immediately. Back at the house, Jack borrows Beverly's solar powered car and drives back into town where he witnesses a great number of unusual things like clones playing chess. He comes back to the sheriff's department to pick up Zoe, who was impersonating a flight attendant. They get into an argument and he leaves her in the jail cell before heading to Henry's gas station. Jack finds something unusual at the station and follows a dog into the woods and finds a field of mutilated cows, where he's shot with a tranquilizer dart by Taggart, the city's animal control agent. Jack comes to in the back of Taggart's jeep, but escapes when Taggart chases after Lowjack, a stray dog. Jack bursts into the police department, demanding answers.

Allison, the defense agent, calls the sheriff, but in the middle of the call, the same destructive field that destroyed the RV outside of Henry's place consumes a large section of the sheriff's house, as well as his legs. With the sheriff out of commission, Allison takes Jack to the facility that was alluded to earlier in the forest. He travels into the bowels of the advances research facilities with the government liaison. She takes him to meet Professor Warren King, an astrophysicist who is in charge of the facilities. He explains that the incident with the RV was caused by a section of it being sent to another time stream and depositing the affected materials at a distance relative to the speed of the Earth's rotation. While on his way back to his temporary home, Jack finds Zoe at the town diner. They get into another argument that ends badly, but Jack manages to find a map with all of the disturbance locations marked on it. He takes the map to Allison, who calls in King to apply his pattern recognition software to trace the origin of the incidents. While he's at Allison's house, another incident occurs at the diner which kills someone.

The next day, Jo and Allison alert Jack to the fatality and the King may have found the source of the incidents. The three travel to Walter's house where they are forced to break into the basement lab to bring Walter out. In the lab, they find a machine that is breaking apart the space-time continuum. The military take control of the machine and put the town into indefinite lockdown which prevents the Jack from getting his daughter.

King and several other scientists explain to the military that Walter created a machine that attempts to accelerate tacion particles beyond the speed of light, which would cause time to lose all meaning and destroy reality. Henry and King make a hypothesis that if they can rebuilt the machine and calibrate it so that another collision occurs, the incidents will cancel each other out. However, because part of Walter's equation was lost in the blast, they don't know how to recalibrate it. Jack escapes from the locked down area to bring Zoe and Allison's son, Kevin, back to the area. Kevin completes the missing pieces of the equation, which allows them to restart the machine. Once the machine has become active, it creates a ball of energy that explodes in the sky, sending waves in all directions.

The following day, the military leaves town and Allison lets Professor King know that she's aware of the section 5 child being the cause of the problem. They transport the machine back into section 5 for analysis and Jack gets his car back in better than new condition. Jack leaves with Zoe, but finds that he's been promoted and relocated to Eureka permanently. But, unbeknownst to Jack, Beverly was in on Walter's corporate espionage. She poisons Susan in order to cover her tracks.

Arc Advancement

Characters

• Jack: Jack is promoted to the Department of Defense and is given both a raise in security clearance and pay. However, the promotion requires him to relocate to Eureka.

Trivia

Behind the Scenes

• Two Parter: This episode was originally broadcast as a two-hour special. In reruns, the episode is sometimes broken up into two episodes.
• Ratings: The series premiere was watched by 4 million viewers, which broke Sci Fi Channel's record for highest rated single episode of an original program. In the key 18-49 demographic, there were 1.7 million viewers. A large portion of the remaining viewers (1.9 million) were in the 25-54 demographic.

Allusions and References

• The Fugitive: In The Fugitive, Sam Kimble (Harrison Ford) is framed for the murder of his wife and is forced to elude U.S. Marshall Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) while searches his wife's true killer. The scene where Jack attempts to set up a perimeter is reminiscent of the film.

Jo: We've all seen The Fugitive, Marshall.

• Deliverance: In the 1972 film Deliverance, four Atlanta businessmen go on a canoe trip in the remote Georgia wilderness. Their trip is interrupted when several grizzled mountain men hunt and brutalize the businessmen, forcing them to fight for survival at all costs.

Zoe: Have you seen Deliverance?

• The Bridges of Madison County: Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the 1995 film adaption of Robert James Waller's novel about a National Geographic photographer who finds himself embroiled in an affair with an Italian war widow in Madison County, Iowa.

Allison: This isn't Madison County, and you're definitely not Clint Eastwood.

• Spice Girls: The Spice Girls were a pop group that gained popularity in the mid-1990s. Each member was identifiable under a nickname and the personality adopted from that nickname. For instance, "Sporty Spice" was overtly athletic.

Jo: He's out on police business, which is where I should be, instead of babysitting Felon Spice here.

• The Twilight Zone: When Jack first discovers some of the strange things happening in Eureka, he comments that he feels like he is in the twilight zone. The Twilight Zone is a science fiction anthology television series created in the late 1950s by Rod Serling. Each episode featured a look into a situation that occurred in "The Twilight Zone" because of the severity of the unusual conditions that the situation occurred under.