Even with the disappointing news that next year’s season 5 will be the last one for Eureka, there are still plenty of episodes and excitement left for the show (currently airing season 4.5).
Eric Wallace, writer of the recent episode, “Omega Girls” — and several other Eureka episodes — spoke with BuddyTV about Eureka, upcoming guest stars and the allure of the show.
This is part 2 of the Eric Wallace interview.
BuddyTV: I know you can’t give any spoilers away, but are there any upcoming guest stars you can tell us about?
Eric Wallace: Yes. Yes, we’ve got some fantastic guest stars still to come.
The first appearance of Wallace Shawn coming up in episode 4.15, and as you know, if you’re a Princess Bride fan like we all here on the Eureka staff, we just love Wallace Shawn, and we’ve written a role for him in 4.17, which is written by Eric Tuchman, our co-executive producer, and Paula Yoo, who’s a producer on the show.
They have co-written this just marvelously-funny episode about what it might like to be to actually go to Titan. We get a little taste of Titan, because that’s what our season’s about. And Wallace Shawn is the guest star, and boy do some really funny things happen. He was just a delight on set, and when you see what he brings to the show, you’ll ask yourself, “Why don’t we bring him back all the time?” because he’s just fantastic.
So I’m very, very excited. The name of that episode is “Clash of the Titans.” Because we are that geeky. That comes up in a couple of weeks, in two weeks from now.
Next week’s episode, we’ll see the return of Felicia — Felicia Day — as Dr. Holly Martin and Wil Wheaton as Dr. Parrish. Boy, are we going to see a lot more of them than perhaps we ever imagined. It’s going to be pretty funny.
I can’t tell you how excited I am about the back-half of season 4.5, because I think it’s our strongest run, perhaps, of episodes we’ve ever put together. And that’s saying something because, having already seen the first episodes of season 5, they’re even stronger. We’re coming into, I think, our best run of the series, of ever. And season 4.5 and the top of 5, it’s just fantastic. We take some big risks in the same way that we took big risks to go back to 1947 at the beginning of season 4. Get ready for another gut punch.
BuddyTV: Wow. OK…
Eric Wallace: And I’m not kidding.
BuddyTV: That’s certainly ominous and/or really, really cool. What was it about a show like Eureka that attracted you and made you want to write for it?
Eric Wallace: Well, I’ll tell you. I read the pilot of Eureka, and I had just finished a long stint in reality television, and I was making the transition from reality television to fiction shows.
I was looking around to see what kind of shows were out there, what could I possibly work on. And I read a lot of pilots, and when I read the pilot of Eureka — and this was five months before I was ever lucky enough to land a gig on the show — I said to myself, “Wow! This is exactly the kind of show I want to work on!” It’s funny. It’s got great science fiction, epic ideas and has a big quality to it. It’s got some romance, it’s got some sparks. You know, there’s a great romance between… What would become the romance between Carter and Allison. There was still the inkling of it was still there in the pilot script. And it was so imaginative! It was a two-hour pilot, so you could really sink your teeth into the world and really understand what the possibilities were for the show. And I saw the possibilities as endless.
So from day 1, when I read the pilot, five months before I ever started working on the show — this would have been summer or spring of 2005 — I was excited about it. Well, cut to four or five months later, I got the opportunity to start on the show in season 1, just as an assistant. And I felt like I was the luckiest person in the world.
I had always felt, from day 1, this was a show that had legs. This was a show that could run multiple seasons. And I know, you don’t say that about a lot of shows. Some shows, you read the pilot script and go, “Well that’s a great idea but I don’t know… How are they going to pull 50, 60, 70, 80-plus episodes out of this concept? I’m not sure I really see the possibilities.” Well I immediately saw those possibilities and the endless array of stories one can come up with in this town when I had read the pilot of Eureka. By the time I got that assistant gig in the fall of 2005, I was ready to rock.
Click here to continue to part 3 of the Eric Wallace Eureka interview.
(Image courtesy of Syfy)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
Laurel grew up in Mamaroneck, NY, Grosse Pointe, MI and Bellevue WA. She then went on to live in places like Boston, Tucson, Houston, Wales, Tanzania, Prince Edward Island and New York City before heading back to Seattle. Ever since early childhood, when she became addicted to The Muppet Show, Laurel has watched far too much TV. Current favorites include Chuck, Modern Family, Supernatural, Mad Men and Community. Laurel received a BA in Astrophysics (yes, that is possible) from Colgate University and a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies and History of Science from Columbia University before she realized that television is much better than studying.
