Eureka Welcomes Back Quinn

Ed Quinn, co-star of the SCI FI Channel's original series Eureka, told SCI FI Wire that he's excited about the upcoming third season and added that he's been particularly pleased by the show's colorblindness.

Quinn plays Dr. Nathan Stark in Eureka, head researcher at Global Dynamics and a character initially introduced as a not-to-be-trusted villain. Stark has mellowed, and as Eureka season three begins, he's hoping to re-marry his estranged wife Allison (Salli Richardson-Whitfield). The fact that Stark is a Caucasian and Allison is African-American has never been addressed.

"You want television, sometimes, to represent the way things should be," Quinn said in an interview. "I love the fact that there's never even a mention of it, that it's so seamless. It doesn't really strike anyone as odd or like it needs to be addressed. It's completely and totally natural, which is exactly what it should be. Life should imitate art in this sense, and I have always been really proud of the network and the writers for always leaving it alone and letting it be exactly what it is and letting it live the way it does."

Season three of Eureka will run 21 episodes and be split in two parts, with the first of eight episodes premiering on July 29, followed by 13 episodes set to run in 2009. Quinn revealed that the year will start with "Bad to the Drone," in which a military target drone goes AWOL just as a Department of Defense numbers cruncher (Frances Fisher) arrives in Eureka.

"Season three of Eureka is moving forward in kind of the same tone from season two," Quinn said. "The opening episode is a massive, massive special-effects episode. We normally shoot an episode of Eureka in seven days. We were supposed to shoot this one in seven days, and it ended up taking at least nine. It's going to be a lot of fun, with a couple of new characters coming into town and a couple of really, really big story arc reveals."

Quinn added, "So it's a great big episode, and then we'll start moving forward into the main part of the Eureka season. And there are some huge developments by about episode four, episode five, that I think the audience will be pretty blown away by." "Bad to the Drone" premieres on July 29 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

-Ian Spelling