The titular town of the cult Sci Fi Channel series Eureka is populated by eccentric geniuses who devote their time to coming up with all sorts of odd inventions. With the show back for a third series, Abbie Bernstein caught up with showrunners Jaime Paglia and Charlie Craig and star Colin Ferguson who plays Sheriff Jack Carter - a regular guy trying to adapt to Eureka’s eccentricities.

What’s new on Eureka this season?

Charlie Craig: Now that we know more about the characters and have a different dynamic, we introduce a new character [played by Frances Fisher] at the beginning of this first eight-episode arc. She’s going to be the person in charge of the town for a while. It’s a character who’s been sent by the government to say, ‘The days of corporate largesse are over. We’re not going to just throw money and have you guys build things that blow up periodically. We can design things here and then if they turn profits, we can sell them, and money would start flowing back in this direction.’ So it’s a switch. It frees Allison [Sallie Richardson-Whitfield] up to spend more time with Carter.

Is Carter any different this season?

Colin Ferguson: I think he’s thawed out a little bit. In the first season, he was the new guy in town and maybe a little emotionally distant. I think over the last couple years, through the relationship with his daughter and being embraced by the community, he’s come out of himself a little. There’s a little less of the deadpan stuff and more of the overt humor. Having said that, there’s still the fish-out-of-water element. That will always be there, because he isn’t a scientist, nor does he have the academic background [of most of the townsfolk]. So he’s always on the outside.

How physical is the new season?

Colin Ferguson: I wanted to do a ratchet pull [stunt]. I wanted to get yanked 30 feet into a mat, but the stunt people are doing it. They have no problem throwing me into walls, but having me go 30 feet and landing on a cushioned mat, that seems to be something that I’m not allowed to do!

How do you devise the various Eureka inventions?

Charlie Craig: Mostly you sit around and say, ‘What would an electric toothbrush be like in our town? Maybe he just stands in place and [the toothbrush] does it for him!’ We’re not really adapting stuff we read about as opposed to just making stuff up that seems entertaining.

When I was a kid, I remember, we had those pictures of what the future was going to be like. You were going to get in your car and it was going to drive you home by itself. Houses were going to be made out of plastic, you were going to hose them off...

Jaime Paglia: In the creation of the show, it was literally that. There’s no flying car - we are in the 21st century. 'Why isn’t my house cooking for me and doing all those things?' Those were literally the kinds of conversations that we had.

Charlie Craig: Or, 'I need a sandwich. A little door opens up, there’s my sandwich!' It still doesn’t happen [in real life], but it does on our show.

Does working on the same character for three seasons affect how your play him?

Colin Ferguson: Yeah. Including the pilot, it’s now four years that I’ve been playing this guy. It’s like a college degree. You just know the guy cold at this point, and so that’s a really interesting thing to be part of.

The level of comfort I’ve attained with this guy, doing this character on set, for some reason transfers over to everything that I do. I make stronger choices, I’m more comfortable in them, I don’t second-guess them – it’s made me a better actor. You become used to a certain level of [feeling] connected in front of the camera. You’re used to being really deep inside a character in front of the camera and so when you go to do something else, partially connected isn’t good enough.

Season 2 was somewhat darker than Season 1. Will Season 3 be lighter?

Charlie Craig: I think [the darker tone] was a fun, interesting place to go. We didn’t apologise for it at all.

Jaime Paglia: But when you’re planning a season, you say, ‘Alright, now what do we want to do?’ And we just started coming up with funnier stuff this time. I think of our show as a comedy, not as suspense.

Charlie Craig: Yeah. ‘Dramedy’ is what we were trying to go for, and I think that we went a little more into drama last season. Again, I think it was great to do for our characters, but I think we all sort of had an inclination to come back more to the funny side this time.

Has the growing popularity of cable television affected Eureka at all?

Colin Ferguson: I don’t know. I guess people are more willing to tune in to cable than they used to be. A lot of the shows [on Sci Fi] are ‘breakouts’, they’re really different. We’re more of a mainstream show that a lot of people can tune in to and have a good ride.

Eureka Season 3 begins on the US Sci Fi Channel on Tuesday 29 July 2008.