Welcome back Eureka fans!
YAY! It is finally launch day for Eureka!
All of the preparation, scientific discoveries and colossal mistakes are about to bear fruit as the crew of the Astreaus gathers on the flight deck to begin their epic mission to Titan.
Poor Allison Blake’s (Salli Richardson Whitfield) day is starting out pretty crappy in Eureka.
But as always our lovely Allison keeps herself in an upbeat mood as she and Sheriff Carter (Colin Ferguson) meet in the Global Dynamics headquarters building corridors just before historic events of the big day begin.
Little does Alison know what the heck is about to happen that will affect not only her life, but everyone other citizen in in Eureka as well! 
So are Fargo (Neil Grayston) and Holly Marten (Felicia Day) as they discuss their future together on Titan.
Fargo suggests that they get closer, hinting that their first intimate encounter could be on Titan, when his PDA beeps. Both of them are being summoned to the Bio-pod demonstration, but first they steal a lovers kiss to seal the deal!
To protect the members of the Astreaus crew, each member must be inside a Bio-pod that will cushion their bodies from the stresses exerted by space travel.
Allison adds that, if the Astreaus pods do not work, there are life support chairs that the crew can use to strap themselves into for the rest of the journey.
Everyone is not too concerned that the chairs will be necessary, but, when a person ends up on the ship by accident later on, the life support chairs become very necessary.
Jo Lupo (Erica Cerra) drops by to congratulate Fargo as Holly heads off to take care of her pre-flight check. She tells him how impressed she is with him; what a great job he has done as director of G.D.
To send the message home, she give Fargo a big hug reminding him, “Can you even remember the last time you pushed the wrong button?” Fargo has to admit that he cannot remember such a thing! In the background during the conversation, we see for the first time, a mist that is wafting down from the ceiling. 
It reminds me of the same type of mist that was often visible on the Destiny; the space ship from MGM Studios Stargate Universe.
It seems like a very effective way to maintain and spread a comfortable level of humidity in an enclosed space. It also looks cool and very technologically advanced.
Shortly afterward, Jo and Alison meet to chat. Jo has information she wants to tell Alison that she wants to be kept secret.
Before we get to hear what is going on, though, the scene changes again to the large launch bay where the Astreaus is being made ready. Henry Deacon (Joe Morton) is busy ensuring that everything is running smoothly before lift-off. Grace Monroe (Tembi Locke) enters.
Since these two people have gotten married, they are entirely too chipper and supportive of each other. They seem to have an ideal relationship. 
Their intercourse…verbal intercourse, that is, leads to a passionate kiss which is interrupted by Jack Carter looking just a little embarrassed.
Carter has caught them smooching. He is, apparently, just in time to watch them “fire up the FTL Ion reactor”, or as Jack likes to call it, “the big-ass battery”. Henry powers up the cooling containment shield without which the reactor would overheat and shut down.
This becomes important to the story later on. As the ship’s cool features are displayed, Senator Wen (Ming Na) drops by. She is impressed. Henry assures her that everything will be ready. Senator Wen states that the information is good news since they don’t want to disappoint their special guest. It seems that the President is on his way to Eureka.
As the President’s motorcade drives into town, someone fires a laser at the vehicles. Sheriff Carter, who has been busy taking pictures with his PDA, is forced to dash forward and save the man in the Presidential limo, who he discovers to his surprise is not actually the President.
Carter is just a little miffed that the guy in the limo is not the big cheese after all. Jo reminds him that “they always send an advance team and they are testing us.” 
With a laser blast neatly slicing through the Presidential limo, their next conclusion is that it was an assassination attempt. Alison decides that they will cancel the President’s visit until they can figure out what the heck is going on.
As Jo and Carter head out into an area outside of Eureka to do some investigating, they come across a destroyed piece of technology.
Fortunately, it has the name of the builder on it, which leads them to Doctor Plotkin (Dave Foley), a bit of an odd character who pretty much seems to keep to himself in a cabin in the woods, collects old weapons, and has a thing for protecting the environment.
Doctor Plotkin has created 15 special arrays that collect positive energy that he has scattered around Eureka that were used to power the laser weapon.
Jo “manages” to convince Doctor Plotkin to show them where the positive energy array collectors are located, in her own unique way; you know, something to do with bending a few fingers back as the good doctor winces in pain to provide an incentive. Simply put, Jo, you rule!
Meanwhile, Alison is showing the Astreaus ship off to Kevin. He too is duly impressed. She asks him if he would be okay with moving in with Carter. His only question is, would S.A.R.A.H clean his room. I thought this was great dialogue between mother and son.
It would be what a typical teenager would be interested in; how would a future move benefit him. Jo, Carter and Doctor Plotkin come across Taggart (Matt Frewer) who is out and about and doing his own scientific work.
Apparently, Taggart and Dr. Plotkin do not much like each other. They verbally jab at each other, until Taggart’s truck gets sucked into a black hole that suddenly appears in the sky overhead.
Grace Monroe gathers her crew together to give a rousing speech about their mission. Part of her speech, which trouble’s Fargo, is Graces comment that each member of the crew will be tested in ways they can’t imagine. To reassure Fargo, Holly gives him a kiss. There is a great deal of public affection in this episode. So much so, it is surprising that no one actually asked the participants to get a room.
Henry continues to work hard getting everything ready for the mission. Senator Wen shows up again, oddly insistent that the mission take place, even when there appears to be an unidentified power drain in the system. He stops the countdown. Senator Wen states, “This launch has to happen, Dr. Deacon. The future of Eureka depends on it.” Wow! Are these words prophetic or a red herring thrown in by the writers?
Vincent (Christopher Gauthier) is offering a taste of Titan to everyone at Cafe Diem; powdered this and cryo-desicated that. Yum. Again, just as Jo and Carter are talking about what would be good for lunch, another black hole opens up in the ceiling of Cafe Diem.
It is that time again, and Carter does it so well. He rushes everyone out of the cafe. Once safe, he and Jo and Vincent watch as Cafe Diem get swallowed up by the black hole. It looks like a renovation job is in Vincent’s future.
Back at G.D, Henry and Alison are doing what they do best; theorizing a solution to their current predicament. They determine that a collapsing black hole could explain the photon bursts that sliced the limo. Carter again has a great line when he says, “First my PDA has a camera, then black holes are everywhere. People need to know these things!”
Alison and Henry determine that the leak in the FTL drive is feeding the black holes, and Plotkin’s array was keeping them in one area. Now that the array has been turned off, the black holes are popping up all over town. If Plotkin’s rods attract them, Carter suggests turning them back on somewhere remote. They will place them around the lake to keep them there until they can dissipate on their own.
Deputy Jo finds Zane (Niall Matter) with an odd look of sadness on her face. She wants to ay goodbye to Zane before he leaves on the mission. The look on her face as she approaches Zane clearly says it all.
Zane thinks the goodbye is just for scheduled mission duration of six months, but Jo sees this goodbye as being a potentially permanent situation. They kiss each other goodbye and Jo leaves. 
We segue to the lake, where Carter is overseeing the placement of the array rods that will coral a bunch of little black holes.
Plotkin turns on the array. It begins to work immediately and a variety of small black holes begin to pop into existence in the sky over the lake. Unfortunately, a bunch of little ones quickly become one big one, and it is not dissipating.
Fargo and Holly are still flirting with each other despite being busy preparing for the mission. Fargo tells Holly he loves her and wanted to say so, just in case. Holly replies that she doesn’t know how she got to be so lucky, and, again there is a passionate and very public kiss shared between them.
But they go a step further and make out in a virtual reality Titan environment. An ongoing joke is that having sex on Titan means they get to join the billion mile club. Looks like Fargo and Holly are practicing for the big event with great enthusiasm.
Back to the black hole; this time, Alison, Carter, Jo and Dr. Plotkin come up with a fix to plug the hole. They will use some antimatter, which Carter knows is on hand, from his experience with the floating bank. And Plotkin has the traditional bomb casings. Looks like they are all set.
Plotkin places antimatter provided by Jo into the bomb casing and Carer gets to be the delivery boy who delivers it to the event horizon of the black hole. At first, I questioned them placing something as dangerous as antimatter into a shell casing in the middle of town with people walking by in the background.
But, assuming that loose antimatter would create an explosion of epic proportions, it is quite likely that nowhere would be safe, and thus it really did not matter where they worked on the bomb. Carter drives his jeep to the location of the black hole and sets up the bomb as close to the event horizon as he can get.
As he runs back to his jeep, the suction of the black hole increases and we watch Carter do some clever calisthenics over the top of the jeep. Carter scrambles forward away from his jeep, turns around in time to see that bombs are away, and so is his jeep.
Both get sucked into the event horizon. There is a huge explosion, the black hole dissipates and the jeep falls back to earth and into the lake. Carter has lost yet another vehicle to the delight of Eureka fans!
The entire Astreaus crew get together to head off to the ship. Dr. Parrish (Wil Wheaton) asks if anyone has changed their mind and wants to stay behind. It is his last chance to replace someone.
Sadly for him, there are no takers. Fargo begins his final goodbye with a snarky comment that it must be tough not being a pioneer.
When he sees that Parrish is really feeling the pain of not quite making the grade, he decides to be more pleasant and tells Parrish that his stasis jell will make all the difference. Maybe these two enemies will finally find a way to bury the hatchet and be kind to each other.
As the season episode ends, Jo says goodbye to Carter at the Sheriff’s office before she drives out of Eureka and past Taggart who heads off on his own “walkabout”. 
Allison meets with Carter just before her last duty with the Astreaus and agrees to move in with him. Carter is thrilled. But, moments later, as she does the motherly thing by virtually tucking everyone in to their individual pods on the ship, disaster strikes.
Of course, something has to go wrong; it is the last episode of the season, after all. Suddenly the countdown clock speeds up. Someone else is controlling the launch and the destination has changed.
Despite Jack’s efforts to shut down the reactor by smashing the cooling chambers, the ship jumps into FTL. The crew is gone and so is Allison. Henry has a stricken look on his face and no answers.
We will have to wait until 2012 to find out what happens. Will Jo come back? Will Carter and Henry find out what happened to the Astreaus, and most important, what will Vincent do without Cafe Diem? Inquiring Eureka fans want to know.
Thanks to Kenn staging the video in this post for me. And thanks to you for stopping by WormholeRiders News Agency
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Regards.
ArcticGoddess1 (Patricia)