TVSquad

It's been a long time (almost a year at this point) since Sci Fi's surprise hit Eureka has been on the air. The show, a casualty of last year's writers strike and this year's recession woes, returns next Friday, July 10 at 9 PM with the final 10 episodes of season 3.

Series star Colin Ferguson and co-creator Jamie Paglia spoke to reporters on a media call and dished a little dirt on all the mid-season drama that's coming up. After the jump we'll get into Sheriff Carter finally having a "real honest love interest," the possibility of two well-liked characters making a re-appearance on the show, and, sadly, the one face that we won't be seeing (at all) around Eureka. Just a heads up to serious spoiler-phobes, there's an answer to at least one question you may want to avoid.

(S02E13) Will is off this week, headed to Talladega to cheer on his beloved Earnhardt Jr and the #8 Budweiser Chevrolet, or something like that. He asked that I take over Eureka, so here I am. Before we get to the actual episode though, I wanted to bring up a comment that TV Squad reader Derek made on last week's post.

He mentioned his growing annoyance with the formula of Eureka. I think it's a fair criticism. It hasn't worn on me yet, but we all react differently to these things, which is part of what makes it all so fun. I bring it up though, because I think it highlights what is a difficult balancing act for a show like this. If a show gets too wrapped up in an ongoing story, it runs the risk of alienating viewers who think it's all a big stall game. Please see every Lost post on the internet for an example. On the other hand, not enough serialization, and it gets formulaic, annoying an entirely different group. It's something that I think team Eureka has balanced well this season, but your mileage may vary. Anyway, after the jump, a look at the big season finale.

Aaaand we're back with part two of the Eureka panel discussion at the Sci Fi Digital Press tour in Vancouver. I've got to say that I'm very glad we got the DVDs of these panels, not only so I can share them with you but because I can check them out again myself. In some respects you can kind of take these things for granted, then I step back and realize that these guys came out and took time to sit down and talk to us, the fans. You can still check out the first part of this video.

Enjoy the rest of the panel video below!

Eureka! Ahem... Wahoo! I got the Eureka panel interview DVD working, and was able to get the first part embedded for you below. I was definitely impressed by the energy and commitment of the cast and crew for this show, and Neil Grayston was awesome enough to have taken the time to show us around the "smart house" set and even give us a demonstration of his SARAH voice (you'd have to know the show to know what I mean).

Thanks to Colin Furguson, Erica Cerra, Salli Richardson, Joe Morton, Ed Quinn, Neil Grayston and Mark Stern for putting up with us sci-fi geeks.

Once again, I'll be posting more on this and the others shows we visited in the coming days. Look for part two of this panel video later today.

Good news everyone. SciFi has announced that Eureka will be coming back for a second season. They have ordered 13 more episodes which are set to begin production in the spring. The series will return with all new episodes next summer. Based on the numbers, this was a slam dunk decision for the network. According to the press release, Eureka is SciFi's highest rated, most watched show of 2006. Not only that, it outperformed the previous year's time slot average by +175%. The detail that really surprised me though... Tuesday's Eureka finale beat the CW's Veronica Mars premiere in males 18-49 and males 25-54. Confirmed to be returning for the second season are Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Joe Morton, Jordan Hinson, Ed Quinn, Debrah Farentino and Matt Frewer. I'm a little disturbed that they didn't mention Erica Cerra there, but hopefully that's just an over-site.