Eureka 1.07: Blink review

AIR-DATE: 29/8/06

Written by: Andrew Cosby and Jaime Paglia

Directed by: Jeffery Levy

Starring: Neil Grayston, Chris Gauthier, Shayn Solberg, David Quinlan, Tom Tames

Rating: 4/5

Synopsis
Jack is
investigating a very battered
dead body found at the bottom
of a hill. Every bone in its body is
cracked, and it’s almost as if it
was killed by falling miles from
the sky. They find a chip in his
body, which means he was
something to do with Global
Dynamics. Lordy!

Stark is pitting two teams
against each other to produce
the prototype for a (deep breath)
hyper velocity anti-missile shield
array for the Pentagon. They
don’t have much time to finish it
and Fargo, bless the little tyke, is
worried. The other team, from
the esteemed (we’re told)
Section 5, seem to be on course
to finish in time. But (splutter
splutter) how?

Henry works out that the body
must have hit a car, but the
person must have been travelling
at 588 mph. Impossible, right?
Noooo. It turns out the
researchers have been using this
new drug that makes them move
at incredible speeds, but the
drug is dangerous and obviously
they are guilty of giving the
drug to the man who died
because of it.

Jack works out that it must be
easy to spot the addicts, because
they’ll be eating huge amounts of
food to replenish their energy.
This proves easy as all he has to
do is go down to the canteen
and find the people with triple
portions. “I don’t care what they
say,” he says, “but no canteen
food is that good.” He questions
the research team. During cold
turkey they tell him what the
drug is and who concocted it. It
was Dylan, the intern who’s
currently seeing Jack’s daughter.
Dylan pulls him from the car and
says the drug was the only way
he could do the work and
impress Global Dynamics enough
to keep him. Jack knocks him out
with an impressive baseball
throw to the head.

After that he joins the rest of
his Eureka-ites in a nice and
communal baseball game. How
very American.

Review
One of the best
Eureka episodes so far. It’s an
interesting idea about a drug
that makes people move faster,
but with the added twist that this
drug really is a narcotic with cold
turkey-inducing withdrawal
symptoms. There are some cool
small elements too, such as
Henry’s pen, which reproduces a
three-dimensional hologram of
anything you point it at. Oh, and
the speeding effects are always
good to watch.

The best episodes of Eureka
seem to be the ones that
encompass as many of the full
cast as they can juggle. But it’s
still too small a cast. It would be
good to start filling it up and
giving some of the more minor
characters full episodes. For a
series seemingly founded on the
word “quirky” it still doesn’t feel
different enough.

Dialogue
Zoe (When
walking through her school
for the first time.): “Good God,
it’s nerdvana.”

Steve O'Brien