EUREKA unscripted

… MINI-MARATHON to show.  

That’s right.  There will be no new episode of our show tonight.  However, get caught up to speed on everything with tonight’s Mini-Marathon. The Sci Fi Channel will be showing all of Season Three (so far!).

#301 - “Bad to the Drone”

#302 - “What About Bob?”

#303 - “Best In Faux”

#304 - “I Do Over”

#305 - “Show Me the Mummy”

Check your local listings for exact show times. 

See what everyone’s been talking about or relive your favorite moments from this year.  Our next new episode #306 - “PHASED AND CONFUSED” — will air next Tuesday, SEPT. 9th.  

Oh, and why is tonight’s episode being pre-empted?  Honestly… we have no idea.  But hey, the folks in post production are happy, so that makes us happy, too.  

THE LATEST FROM JAIME...

Before we let Jaime jump into his latest “State of the Union” update, join us in wishing him a HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY.  It was actually two weeks ago, but we just got around to a cake…

AND NOW…

Another two weeks, another State of the Union.

A whole lot has happened in our first five episodes and I know you guys are talking about it.  Thania and Curtis have written eloquently about our process of arriving at the Death of Nathan Stark and the challenges of crafting those episodes (“I Do Over,” and “Show Me the Mummy!).  But I’d be remiss if I didn’t add how difficult it was to say goodbye to a character that you’ve created, and the actor who played him so memorably, Ed Quinn.

Nathan Stark appeared in episode two of our first season (“Many Happy Returns”) and his character experienced a lot of growth in his 30 episodes. He went from being head of Global Dynamics, Allison’s ex-husband, and Carter’s nemesis, to losing his job, winning back the girl, and, ultimately, making peace with Carter in their competition for Allison’s affections.  I loved watching his character suffer a great fall, then slowly climb his way back to the top.  We got to see Stark in a different light, which for us as writers (and, hopefully, for you as the audience) only deepened our connection to him.  Stark was a guy you loved to hate, or hated to love, and his legacy will live on even as we bring in new characters and dramas for our heroes to contend with in the next half of the season. 

Many thanks to Ed Quinn for his commitment to making Stark the best he could be.  

With Stark gone and Eva Thorne’s secret agenda soon to be revealed, we are now immersed in what we affectionately refer to as Season 3.5, the back 13 episodes of our 21 episode order.  I can promise you that there are big surprises in store.  We’ve added a new writer to our fold, Joan Weiss, most recently of “Journeyman” and “Inconceivable,” and she’s getting a crash course in writing our show.  It’s good to have some fresh eyes in the room, and she’s already become one of the team. 

Part of the challenge that we face is crafting a new mystery/mythology for the back half, and this one is unlike anything we’ve done so far.  We also have to deal with the reality of BUDGET.  As in we’re now WAY OVER-BUDGET.  So look for some episodes that are more character-focused and less “War of the Worlds.”   Otherwise you’ll be watching us acting out our own scripts for the last five episodes.  And believe me, no one wants to see that.

Anyway, thanks for making this the most-watched season of our show yet.  We hope to keep you coming back.

Best,

J.

CURTIS KHEEL REVEALS THE "MUMMY'S" SECRETS!

“Goodbye, Nathan.”

The end of this episode is actually where it all began.  Going in, we knew actor Ed Quinn was only under contract for 5 episodes this season, and on another show, that might mean his character would’ve died in this season’s fifth episode.  But this is “Eureka.”  And on “Eureka,” characters can still appear even after their demise. 

Early on in our discussions for this season, we decided that it would make the most sense dramatically to kill Nathan Stark as a shocking end to the wedding episode, slated for 304.  But we didn’t want the emotional downer of having Allison mourn Stark for the rest of the season.  At the same time, we knew we had to honor their relationship and the loss of his character.  So we opted to use Stark’s appearance in 305 to give Allison emotional closure.

Thus, the diamond story was born.  At first a wedding ring, and ultimately a necklace, we always intended that the late Nathan Stark would leave a piece of himself behind for Allison to discover — a message that would allow her to say goodbye to him and move on.  Originally, we envisioned that the Stark hologram would be interactive.  Allison could talk to him, ask him questions, even get a pre-programmed response.  But somehow that seemed like an emotional cheat. So instead we settled on the non-interactive “love letter” that you saw.  Some viewers might’ve thought Stark’s “ghostly” appearances were actually him calling out to her from another plane, time or dimension – as if this might be the way we intended to bring Stark back to the series.  In our “Eureka” writers’ room, that’s what we call a “switch-up” and it’s something we look for in crafting our stories.

As for whether Nathan Stark will make future appearances in “Eureka,” there are currently no plans.  However, like I said, on “Eureka” you never know when someone might show up again from the dead. We realize that some fans are upset about the loss of his character, but I can assure you that the legacy of Nathan Stark will continue to be a part of our series.  He will not be forgotten.

Still, Nathan’s goodbye to Allison was always only intended to be the B-story of this episode.  What about the rest?  A theme about moving on from the past began to emerge in our discussions:  Allison is confronting the death of Stark and putting her past behind her.  Meanwhile, Carter has his sister in town, which brings their own conflicted past into the present.   And Eva Thorne is literally digging into Eureka’s past as well.  So what better way to bring that all together than with an A-story based in the past too?  A mummy’s tale, as it were.  It all seemed to fit.

But what is a mummy story like on “Eureka”?  Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned while writing this episode, it’s that it is definitely not outrageously expensive.  By far, the greatest challenge of this episode was watching the bottom line.  Yes, “Show Me the Mummy!” was actually all about the Money.  We’d already spent a lot on flying drones and drilling machines this season, so by the time this episode went into production, we were faced with a severe budget crunch.

And this episode was never plotted to be cheap to begin with.   For example, originally, “Pharaohpalooza” was intended to be a small-town fair, complete with booths, games, and costumes.  Think the Renaissance Fair with an Egyptian theme instead of a Medieval one.  There was also the visual effect of a mummy corpse trouncing through the fair to comments like “Nice costume!” (ironic, no?) before jumping into the fair’s lazy river (nicknamed “The Nile,” of course). Later the lazy river changed into a dunk tank before finally winding up as a bathtub.  And don’t even get me started on the camels.  Yes, camels. If we had had a few hundred thousand dollars extra in our budget, the Swarm would’ve emerged from the corpses of desiccated camels instead.

CRUNCH!

Goodbye not just to Nathan, but to the street fair, the walking mummy, and the camels too.   But for the sake of story, we were determined to keep the basics:  The Queen’s tomb, the mummy corpses (and a lone mummified hand!) as well as the Swarm “switch-up.”  So “Pharaohpalooza” was scaled back to a Café Diem event, with Vincent’s King Tut outfit the only surviving costume.  (Doesn’t he look just like Victor Buono from the 1960s “Batman”?)  Truthfully, in the end, I think a little Pharaohpalooza goes a long way.  Many thanks to our amazing production team for getting us as much bang for our buck as possible.  (On a side note, there was also an intermediate version of the script where the Swarm never left our budget-friendly sets at Global Dynamics.  Thankfully, that was one budget crunch too many for the Network.)

Despite all that, from out of the wreckage of our budget crisis, we discovered one of my favorite parts of the episode:  The Nathan Stark Memorial Hallway scenes.  Our Waterfall Hallway set (already pre-existing since season 2) had a built-in fountain that we could plant a mummy in relatively cheaply.  And at the same time we could use the set as a memorial to Stark at Global, which also gave Fargo a way to grieve himself.  These were key emotional components that had been missing from previous drafts.

Which brings me to the last big change from the original conception: Fargo being “cursed.”  Up until about a week before this episode filmed, it was actually Henry who fell ill with the “dehydration sickness”.  The idea was that Henry became infected through his autopsy of Marx’s body.  But as we got more and more into revision process, it became less and less plausible that a genius like Henry wouldn’t have protected himself from this sort of exposure.  And it was our brilliant writer’s assistant, Ed Fowler, who came up with the best solution to this problem:  Let’s make it Fargo instead!  And that made much more sense both logistically and emotionally.  I still owe Ed big-time for saving my ass on that one. 

In retrospect, with all the different versions, I feel like I wrote three episodes instead of just one.  But that’s all in the past.   If there’s anything this episode proves, it’s that life goes on in “Eureka,” even in the face of death.  And I have to move on now too, just like Allison. 

Goodbye, 305.  

Best,

Curtis

CARTER'S SPOOKIEST CASE YET!