Small town, big secrets...
A one-hour show on the Sci-Fi Channel about the eponymous town and the trouble its genius residents get into.
Eureka is a quiet, small town in the
Pacific Northwest filled with scientists working on the most advanced technology in the world. All this, in secret for the government, is done under the direction of the Department of Defense. They have just assigned a new sheriff, Former U.S. Marshal Jack Carter.
Driven by a "
Monster Of The Week" science fiction element, the show has featured a
Story Arc involving the ongoing battle over the secrets of the high security Section 5; the current season appears to moving away from this. The strong science fiction plots are complemented by the ignorance of Sheriff Carter. In some sense it is like a twisted version of
The Andy Griffith Show, where Opie is a felonious teenage daughter, Gomer Pyle is a brilliant ex-NASA engineer and Barney Fife is a marine.
Known in the UK as
A Town Called Eureka to avoid confusion with a science programme.
This show provides examples of:
- Arc Words - "You just have to have faith."
- Badass Normal - Borderline; superpowers are generally reserved for antagonists, but Carter, who ends up solving most of the mysteries and taking down most of the bad guys, is an average cop surrounded by supergeniuses, with an Action Girl sidekick who holds the Army Rangers' all-time record for marksmanship.
- Brother Chuck - Matt Frewer's character simply disappeared between seasons, neatly remedying the need to address any emotional baggage Jo might have in her new relationship.
- Buffy Speak - Basically whenever Sheriff Carter is trying to talk about something he doesn't quite understand.
- Butt Monkey - Sheriff Carter is ultimately the one that get his short term memory wiped, coldcocked by his own deputy, is ruled by the memories of another person, etc., and Fargo is treated like crap by just about everyone in town.
- Common Sense - Sheriff Carter is also the source of the blatantly obvious that the brilliant scientists all miss.
- Dangerous Workplace - Eureka boasts 5 times the average death toll for a town its size.
- Dawson Casting - In the episode with the isolation environment. Wound up making the "long distance relationship" going on there really creepy.
- Everybody Is Single - Stark and Blake were married. Then divorced. Then engaged. Then Stark was dead.
- Expy - Nathan's actor is pretty candid about the fact that the character is more or less Tony Stark, sans armor.
- Extranormal Institute - The whole town.
- Fake Nationality - Matt Frewer as an Australian.
- For Science - The entire effing town except Carter. That's why we get, in Episode 2, the Quote
"We have twice the national mortality rate."
Henry, Episode 2 "Many Happy Returns"
- Devil In Plain Sight - Beverly Barlowe, the town's therapist who is also The Mole, before eventually being beamed away by a transporter.
- Hollywood Science
- Hot Amazon - Jo, Sherrif Carter's gun-crazy deputy.
- Love Makes You Crazy - After his girlfriend dies in the Season 1 finale, Henry seems to get slightly more unhinged. Season 3 sees him getting better, though.
- Mad Scientist - Pretty much everyone except Carter and his daughter, and his daughter has been leaving him in the dust since midway through Season 2.
- Magic Countdown
- Magnificent Bastard - Alas, poor Nathan
- Die For Our Ship - Alas, poor Nathan once more
- Monster Of The Week
- Mundane Utility - Even in the show's opening credits. Laser lawnmowers, antigravity baby carriages, virtual baseball, jetpacks used to fix broken streetlights, etc.
- Slightly subverted in that almost none of these are actually seen in use in the series. Most people drive fairly normal cars, live in fairly normal houses, etc. They tend to just have nicer cell phones and sound systems and so on than in the outside world.
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here - Inversion; the unusual is normal. The school science fair would probably be stunned by someone entering a baking soda volcano.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist - What doesn't Henry do in this town?!
- Which leads to Fridge Logic when he goes to prison, who takes over for him?
- Pilot Movie
- Product Placement - While slightly present since the start, became blatant and omnipresent in season 3. They at least attempt to justify it by throwing in a new boss who implements what causes it in an effort to make the research done in the town more profitable, but (as Real Life Comics nicely captures
) it's still painful to watch. Especially given that...
- Reed Richards Is Useless - The entire premise of the show is that a secret city of supergeniuses is constantly working to create fabulous scientific breakthroughs, and their creations often turn into genuinely useful technology that becomes commonplace in the town (like a gel that can instantly extinguish all the fire in a blazing house). None of this is ever extended to the outside world. But then, it is a theoretically secret facility under DOD direction, so maybe the government just sits on the tech.
- It has been stated that there are covert ongoing government missions to the Moon and Mars, indicating that some of the tech is being used...
- It's also been implied that : The Atomic bomb was developed in Eureka in the thirties
- Considering that a lot of the plots of Eureka come from unforeseen side effects in the various new technologies, the DOD is most likely sitting on the tech for a very good reason. Namely, so that the new speakers that were developed in the town don't cause people to turn into berserkers or their heads explode or something, stuff like that.
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old: well, 107 to be exact, but Eva Thorne/Mary Perkins now ages slowly thanks to her own genetic wackiness + lab experiment gone wrong.
- Schizo Tech - Eureka is set in the present, but with next generation technology because they invent all of it.
- The Sheriff - Jack Carter, who used to be a US Marshal.
- Temporal Paradox
- The Umbridge - Season 3 introduces Frances Fisher as "Fixer" Eva Thorne, who's living up to the name in spades.
- Town With A Dark Secret / Quirky Town
- Overprotective Dad - Sheriff Carter. Considering some of Zoe's previous behavior and actions, it's slightly understandable.
Specific Episode Tropes Include:
