| Plenty of new television series need a season or two to sort themselves out, and as this three-disc, 13-episode plus bonus features box set from the second season 2007 reveals, the Sci-Fi Channel’s Eureka is still a work in progress--which is not a bad thing, considering that it’s one of the more provocative and ambitious shows out there. For the uninitiated, here’s the basic premise: Sheriff Jack Carter Colin Ferguson, accompanied by his teenage daughter Zoe Jordan Hinson, is stationed in Eureka, a picturesque little burg somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Eureka is hardly Anytown, USA; indeed, this is the place where "the world’s greatest thinkers" live and work, most of them at Global Dynamics, "the most advanced scientific facility in the world." It’s also a place where exceedingly strange things happen on a regular basis. In Season Two, those happenings include people spontaneously combusting, becoming invisible, turning into gold, or simply disappearing and leaving nothing behind--not even a memory that they ever existed; a "personal force field" that’s growing so large and so fast that it will soon engulf the whole town, and maybe even the whole world; freaky weather that changes by the moment; and even an experiment to re-create the Big Bang inside a Global Dynamics lab, leading to some unexpected side effects. These developments are all presented with enough cool special effects and scientific techno-babble to make Eureka a perfectly viable and sometimes quite dramatic science fiction diversion. But there’s more--much more. Sometimes this is a show about relationships: Jack and Zoe custody becomes an issue when Jack’s ex, played by Olivia D’Abo, shows up in the early episodes; Jack and Allison Blake Salli Richardson, Global Dynamics’ new boss their growing attraction is complicated by the continued presence of her ex, a genius scientist type; Jack and his pal Henry Joe Morton, who blames Jack for his girlfriend’s death but gradually learns there’s more to it than that. Much of the time it’s a comedy, heavy on the quirks; and, in a change from the first year, it’s also a serial, with several story arcs continuing over the course of the season. All of that can make Eureka a but convoluted and hard to get a handle on, but this show is a keeper. Extensive bonus features include deleted scenes, gag reels, podcast commentaries, and a good deal more. --Sam Graham |