We discuss this week’s awesome Eureka episode Of Mites and Men. And we take our first listener call, which outlines some of the many sponsors of Eureka and offers some ideas as to how those who enjoy the show can encourage them to offer continued support.
I think I pulled a muscle (NIYKWIM) when Audra made her G spot joke. I laughed harder when I realized I don’t think anyone caught it.
Point: Audra.
I like Juan’s idea that the alternate timeline versions of Jack, Allison, Fargo, Henry, and Lupo may have been displaced by the original timeline versions.
There are a lot of theories about time travel. From what little research I have done, it seems that traveling to the past is theoretically more difficult than traveling to the future (Which makes sense considering most people I know are already moving forward in time. :D). Some theories about traveling to the past have to do with wormholes. Wormholes also have to do with theories of traveling to other dimensions. There is a good article on time travel here… http://xar.us/stuff/papers/time_travel/ .
Some scientists think that nature protects itself and “causality” would prevent someone from going back in time so they couldn’t negate their own existence (think Marty McFly). However, I wonder if traveling to the past in another dimension would be some sort of loophole. Because you wouldn’t be endangering your own existence, but that of your alternate self (if you even exist in that dimesion in the first place).
So lets say the gang not only traveled to the past, but to an alternate dimesion as well. A dimesion very similar to their own. While they came back to the future, they may not have come back to Universe A (“Besides, this place kinda feels like a “B”, y’know?”).
So let’s say the alternates ended up in Universe A. What would they do? Just except things the way they are and assume Universe A lives? I don’t think so. I think they would be very motivated to figure out what happened and get back to their own universe. Here are some reasons Allison - though she is head of GD would now have a son with Autism whom she can’t connect with. Douchebag Fargo - Would be stuck in an unpowerful position with little respect. Henry - Would be lonely. Lupo - would probably not like playing second fiddle to Carter… What about Jack? - He might be the only one of the bunch to not mind the switch. However, he would probably feel motivated to “Fix” it.
Ok I think I’ve written enough. What do you think?
Thank you Juan! I knew I could have been the only one to catch the Star Wars reference! ALthough it was in plural in this episode compared to the original! 
If Larry is the Rimmer of Eureka does that make Fargo the Ace Rimmer? He’s the better version of himself who’d probably get frustrated if he had to deal with the original version but still stay reasonably cool about it.
I think if I were a Eureka writer looking to add drama I’d do it like this:
Split each of the couples so that half get grounded and half go on the mission to Titan. Jo but not Zane, Holly but not Fargo, Grace but not Henry, Allison but not Carter. Then you put the peeps on the spaceship in danger and have the ground crew try to save them remotely (should probably watch Apollo 13 for the inevitable references). At the same time it becomes apparent that there is a mole on the mission and Carter (who probably cannot help that much with being Kevin Bacon on the ground has to hunt down Beverly to find out who it is. If you want tragedy too then have one of the characters on the mission needs to undertake some kind of suicide mission while being in contact with the ground crew.
That’s what I’d do any way.
I just realised that when I split the couples I put all the women on the space mission. All the women in this show sure are ossim!
Told you I need to watch it again 
Hmmm, a thought just popped into my head. When Zane told Jo that having his name cleared would allow him to be in Eureka because he wanted to be, I wonder if the lovely and charming Beverly is blackmailing him based on his past misdeeds?
As i was listening and they talked about the back to the future time line chart… i thought i would go and find it.
The device that Chuck was thinking of from the Foundation series is called The Prime Radiant. When I saw Year of Hell for the first time, I totally thot of Seldon and the Foundation.
Listened to the cast whilst running my errand this morning and having seen that particular episode as US pace all the more sweeter. This is why I tend watch the US broadcasts even if the UK is not that far behind, I don’t want to deny myself podcasting and forum goodness:D
Exactly my thots as well. One of your fellow UKers has written an articles which reflects our views as well why we don’t wanna be put aside and to wait months for a TV episode which has aired in the States months ago. Edited down a bit for length: Source
It is still only in the very early seeds of development but I feel it is beginning to become more visible with each passing year. This is that television is no longer just about watching.
It is an experience.
Television these days is not necessarily spending one hour a week with a group of characters and then going the rest of the week without sparing them a thought. Now it is about interaction, it is about connecting. It encompasses all areas of life; we wear it on t-shirts, we have it on our desktop backgrounds, it sits on our DVD shelves and we read it in magazines.
The perfect example of such a show is LOST. LOST transformed the medium of television into the on-line experience with people who lived and breathed every ounce of island related air. There may be other shows which also started this process, but none succeeded or were as important as LOST. The show deserves a lot of credit in how it changed television. Whether you found its ending to be worthy of the time you put into it is irrelevant. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. To many people, LOST was about the journey and the experience of trying to understand the grand-mythos of life on the island. A LOST fan would do that with people across the globe. Perhaps had The X-Files been born a few years later it would have done the same, but the simple truth is that LOST was a success not just because of its quality and scope. It was because it launched at the time when television was finding its connection with the online world and the way LOST was created was the ideal fit to do so.
If you look around the web, you will find that a lot of websites and communities were born out of what LOST did or what people tried to copy from it and use in their own shows. Regardless of whether you loved LOST or not, the fact that you are reading this article is credit to what happened between 2004 and 2010.
There is no denying that nowadays all shows are beginning to find their feet on-line. Some shows have moved faster than others, often the shows that have larger mythologies that require analysis. Supernatural, Fringe, The Vampire Diaries are examples of these sort of shows, which nowadays have entire online experiences created by fans that others can immerse themselves into without even watching the official product. There is a reason why Law & Order: LA should fail whilst The Mentalist should not. One show is living in the pre-LOST time, and the other is adapting to the post-LOST world.
Within the next ten years television will have changed completely. It will soon be a worldwide enterprise. If it hasn’t then it will perhaps not exist at all. The perfect and easily relatable subject is films. Films are using worldwide launches much more regularly than they did even four to five years ago. When one country gets to see a movie, so does every other country. Look at Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End as well as the final Harry Potter. Both films opened to virtually every country within twenty four hours. Everyone got together, globally and watched them. Look at the box office figures of both movies and you will see just how incredibly popular they were. Sure, they both came from big franchises, but that is irrelevant. The key factor is that for the week leading up to those releases, if you were talking about films you were talking about those films. That is regardless of where you were in the world.
Television is still not at this advanced stage. Admittedly it is a tougher format to transfer to a global market, but it is still too far behind. Even shows such as House, The Mentalist & Fringe had UK airings which were still (at a minimum) being released seven days after the US. Whilst some films may be able to cope with this time gap, I assure you that television will not. It is just not good enough.
That is not because television is much easier to find at a higher quality within hours of an airing. That is not denying that point but it is irrelevant. What is relevant is that being a part of a television show is being part of a community. A film is a two hour ‘dip’ into the life of a stranger who you can connect with briefly, likely only once, and then you leave his world behind. Television isn’t a ‘dip’ into the world, it’s an immersion. You stick with these characters for years. In a bizarre way, you don’t just watch the show; you join the life of the characters. The crucial part is that you become part of the community that also immerses themselves with those characters.
That community isn’t restricted to being just within the walls of your own home or your own country. It’s worldwide. When I want to talk to somebody about Fringe, I could go online and type ‘Fringe’ into Google. The three top fan-made websites for the show are fringetelevision, fringepedia and fringe here at spoilertv. Clicking on any three of those pages will undoubtedly find me at a point where I need knowledge of the season 3 finale to avoid being spoiled. So if I was in a country where Fringe currently was not available up to that point, then what do I now do? I am alienated from the communities. The result that any television fan will find being pushed into is to watch this show where it is available. That place is unfortunately the many websites that litter the globe with the episodes available illegally. The incredible thing is that the companies who own these shows are the ones pushing their own fans towards these places.
When you look at social media, and how rapidly that has grown thanks to Facebook and Twitter, you can see exactly what the heads of the networks need to know. On a Friday night in September at 9PM Eastern Time I dare you to type #SPN or #Fringe into the search bar. You’ll see something that is incredible. You’ll see millions of Americans sharing their experience of watching an episode of Supernatural and Fringe. There will be comments, there will be arguments, there will be love and there will be hate. But what there actually is, is connection. That is the connection between the millions of people from across America. In fact, on three occasions in the 2010-2011 season the actors and executive producers of Fringe actually joined in and interacted with the fans first hand!
On that night scroll down a few pages and you’ll find a few different kinds of tweets. You’ll find the people who aren’t in America. They will be either disappointed at being spoiled or they will be angry that they are missing out.
I was one of the many who was awake in the wee hours of the morning seeing how LOST ended. I remember I had a small screen on the left side of my laptop with Jack strolling through the bamboo forest; I also had the darkUFO chat open on the right hand side of my screen with over 5,000 people commenting like crazy. In front of me was my alarm clock in the corner of my eye reading 4:57. That was the greatest moment I have ever been in whilst experiencing television. At that moment, it was clear to me exactly what I was invested in. My heart beating and a slight tear in my eye I found myself there, next to Jack, with thousands of other people watching the last moments of a show I was deeply affectionate for.
Had I sat on my own, without other people there ‘alongside me’ it wouldn’t have been the same. After all, don’t we as humans like to know what other people think? Why else would we care when someone blasts that film we happened to like? It needs to be officially noted that television isn’t just television any more. To view it in such a way is perhaps the most basic and fundamental error that can ever be made on the subject.
When I said that television is beginning to sow the seeds to understanding this you need only look around. There is everything that television networks, studios and people seeking money from these enterprises should see… I mean I can see it. You can see it. Surely they can!
There is this experience. There is this worldwide community. And it costs them nothing!
That experience transforms thousands/millions of people into devoted followers. So how is it that they can’t yet implement changes in these places where there are free communities? Could a multi-million dollar company not find a financially viable method to grant access to a video player? Sites worldwide could embed this beside the chat rooms with the shows playing, with adverts, with actors tweeting and answering questions and interacting with fans over the entire world.
Even in the darkest of nights, looking at Fringe being renewed for season four is perhaps one of the greatest hints that the message is beginning to get through. I almost see Fringe as an experiment for Fox. It is like an experiment to see what the internet can do for a show which has such a huge community. If that is the case then Fringe fans are lucky, but all fans should look around and watch what happens.
Think back a few years. The writers of America took strike action. It was all about making money online. Remember just how long and hard their opposition fought. That is because they knew, deep down, there’s something worth fighting for.
I’d consider that message received.
Now it is just that wait. Hopefully then we can all breathe easy…
I hope at that point, whatever year that may be, come mid-September and pilot week I can sit down and watch a TV episode of the latest new and exciting TV show with you. All of you.
Together…
AdDHarris
Adam
Wonderful podcasts! I took the listener’s suggestion to heart and did a bit of research regarding the key sponsors. As he said, Subaru is a top sponsor, both in ad time and in providing cars for use in the show. However, while writing to Subaru’s marketing director with a plea to save Eureka couldn’t hurt, it would be difficult for a grass roots effort to be organized around an expensive product like a car.
So, turning to Hershey’s, it advertises KitKat and Reese’s candy heavily during Eureka. Here’s the idea:
Buy a Hershey’s product. Even better, buy several. Then email their marketing czars to tell them what product you bought and, politely, say you did it in support of the effort to Save Eureka. The email addresses to use are:
mburk@hersheys.com (Michele Burk, Chief Marketing Officer)
jcooper@hersheys.com (Jay Cooper, VP of Chocolate Marketing) (great job to have, BTW)
And/or write them (send product labels!) at:
The Hershey’s Company
100 Crystal A Drive
Hershey, PA 17033
If you like the idea, tweet, facebook and otherwise share it with friends!
Wow. Welcome aboard, and excellent idea!
Thanks! It’s a pleasure to find you guys. If you have any ideas about how to get the word out about a Hershey’s focused campaign to save Eureka, I’d love to hear them. I really think, or hope, that having Hershey’s receive emails or product labels with SAVE EUREKA written on them might make a difference, if the ship on reviving the show hasn’t sailed for good.
I’ve tried tweeting, posting to sites, etc., but it’s a slow and random way to reach people. I’d start up a campaign site, but don’t have the know-how to drive people to it. I’d be happy to rent a skywriting plane to alert more people, but the whole limited budget thing keeps getting in the way.
BTW, sorry if I spammed your phone line. I called about this idea and ran into the 2 minute limit before my mouth stopped moving. So I re-recorded–sorry if you hear the message twice, but I didn’t want the call to sound like you had a blithering idiot on the line!
LOL… I usally feel that way after I hang up!!! I feel like I’m trying to make an oral speech in middle-school again. The fact tht everyone here is so nice helps… although it doesn’t hurt to have a timer handy.
Also, I just bought some Hershey’s yesterday. I think I’ll email them. Thanks!
I’m sure if you start one and post the address on the forum you’ll get many people from here to visit!
Maybe you could post some sort of form letter we could email?
[SIZE=2]
[/SIZE]Here we go: www.saveeurekacandycampaign.com is UP!
For Hershey’s the drill would be:
If you snail mail, you can remove the candy label and write PLEASE SAVE EUREKA on it or any other paper, and send it off to Jay Cooper. If you email, put PLEASE SAVE EUREKA in the subject line. Don’t include attachments or links that could get your email bounced by a spam filter.
Snail mail to:
Jay Cooper, VP of Chocolate Marketing
THE HERSHEY’S COMPANY
100 Crystal A Drive
Hershey’s PA 17033
or email Ms. Burk and Mr. Cooper to tell them which products you’ve purchased and ask (politely!) for Hershey’s support of EUREKA at:
mburk@Hersheys.com
jcooper@Hersheys.com
A sample letter to send to SyFy/NBC/Comcast to alert them to the campaign and ask them to reconsider the decision is on its way…thanks!
As promised, here’s a letter that could go to powers-that-be at SyFy/ NBC Universal about fans buying sponsor Hershey’s products in support of renewing Eureka. No pride of authorship–anyone can feel free to edit at will!
David Howe, Executive President
NBC Universal | SyFy Channel
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY. 10112
Mark Stern, EVP Original Programming
NBC Universal / SyFy Channel
100 Universal City Plaza
Bldg. 1400, 14th Floor
Universal City, CA 91608
Re: Cancellation of EUREKA Television Series
Gentlemen:
In the depths of a seemingly endless recession, it’s difficult to take issue with a company’s effort to attend to the bottom line for its shareholders. However, respect for one’s customers and employees is never optional in any economy. The company that ignores that maxim for short-term gain puts its long-term survival at risk.
With all due respect, it appears that SyFy/NBC Universal has made such an error with its handling of the recent cancellation of EUREKA. The decision itself was, of course, in the sole discretion of the company to make. Its handling, however, evinced a disregard for the goodwill of the series’ viewers. The whipsaw between announcement of a commitment to a partial sixth season followed days later by outright cancellation of the show caused outrage among its fans. Leak of the cancellation decision to the press before its communication to the show’s cast and crew added unnecessary insult to injury.
The resulting damage was self-inflicted, but could be mitigated in part by a demonstration of concern for audience loyalty. Although it is always difficult to reverse a course of action taken in a corporate environment, we respectfully submit that the benefits of doing so in this situation would far outweigh the downsides. Since news of EUREKA’s cancellation was released, thousands of fans have written SyFy advertisers, signed petitions, sent letters and otherwise mobilized to express their support for continued production of the show.
Several sponsor-targeted campaigns have begun to raise support for renewal of the series. One is a campaign for fans to buy Hershey’s products, and contact The Hershey’s Company with requests for its support. See: www.saveeurekacandycampaign.com.
These are dedicated viewers whose loyalty to SyFy, NBC Universal and their sponsors would be unshakeable if rewarded by renewal of EUREKA, at least for the initially contemplated partial sixth season.
As you know, filming of EUREKA through its planned series finale has wrapped. Time is therefore of the essence for this opportunity.
Thank you for your time and consideration of this letter.