Eureka: Season 5 – The Final Season (Universal), the whimsical SyFy original series about a secret government think-tank town and the most popular show on the SyFy network of the past couple of years, arrives on DVD mere days after the broadcast of the series finale

Picking up where the Season Four cliffhanger left up hanging, with the interstellar flight to Titan sabotaged by players unknown, we find the truth to the conspiracy and a familiar character behind the plot while Sheriff Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson), the sardonic everyman in the population of maverick inventors and eccentric geniuses, leads the investigation to find the missing crew with Dr. Henry Deacon (Joe Morton) providing the tech support.

Along with the regular cast of characters (Salli Richardson-Whitfield​ as Allison Blake, Erica Cerra as former deputy turned head of security Jo Lupo, Neil Grayston as Douglas Fargo director of Global Dynamics, Niall Matter as computer guy Zane Donovan, and Kavan Smith is Deputy Andy, short for android) are returning and recurring characters played by Felicia Day, Wil Wheaton, Ming-Na, and Deborah Fiorentino, plus return visits by Jack’s daughter Zoe (Jordan Hinson). And really, it’s the cast and the characters — and the humor embedded in the byplay — that makes the show.

Like previous seasons, we have alternate realities, hijacked minds and bodies, espionage, conspiracies, and all sorts of experiments gone haywire that threaten the town and possibly the world. Which, when you think about it, does give the government some justification in the final episodes when it decides to shut the place down.

Fear not, the show ends not with a memorial but a celebration, and even offers a fitting tribute to our every day hero, Sherriff Carter: “I remember,” says Dr. Holly Marten (Felicia Day) as she recovers her lost memories. “You guys are smart but the sheriff is the strong force. He holds it all together.” And the smart guys realize that she’s right.

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“Eureka: Season 4.5” (Universal) – The whimsical SyFy original series about a secret government think-tank town start the second half of its fourth season back in the present but in a parallel timeline, thanks to a time travel mishap, before launching two characters into space with an unplanned lift-off and an unexpected reboot to the American space program, thanks to Eureka-developed technology. The rest of the season is space camp, Eureka style, with training, tests, and a healthy competitive spirit as they all vie for the 20 spots on the mission. Next stop: Titan. (That’s one of the moons of Jupiter, in case you’re not as astronomically well informed as the characters of the show.) Fear not: the grueling testing and training regimen provides for plenty of scientific disasters in need of solving.

The cast continues to expand along with the show’s alternate timelines, and this half-season brings in Felicia Day as a consulting scientist on the mission to Titan, Wil Wheaton as an arrogant young physicist, and Ming-Na as a science-savvy Senator, all as continuing characters through the story arc, brings back Matt Frewer (and his overworked Aussie accent) and Deborah Fiorentino (who is, of course, up to no good) for a few episodes, and welcomes guest star Wallace Shawn as psychiatrist for employee evaluations.

10 regular season episodes, plus the 2010 Christmas special (with guest star Chris Parnell as the physicist who may be Santa Claua) and the “Warehouse 13″ crossover, on three discs.  DVD only.

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Warehouse 13: Season One (Universal) – Remember the end of Raider’s of the Lost Ark where the Ark of the Covenant is stashed away amidst the brick-a-brac of lost and found treasures in some massive government warehouse? That could be Warehouse 13, where, in the words of its curator Artie (Saul Rubinek), “We take the unexplained and we just safely tuck it away in the supersized Pandora’s Box.” In this case, the unexplained involves supernatural objects, metaphysical inventions and ancient technology, the “artifacts” that the warehouse is designed to hide away.

Taking a break from guarding The Warehouse

Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly star as the oil-and-water secret service agents who are drafted into the even more secret service of the Warehouse: Kelly as the smart, disciplined and driven agent’s agent Myka Bering and McClintock as the easygoing, off-the cuff Pete Lattimer, whose freewheeling attitude actually comes in handy when tracking down items of magic (such as Edgar Allan Poe’s pen) and metaphysics (like Tesla inventions). The steampunk aesthetic, and the mix of science and supernatural, makes it a companion piece to SyFy’s other lighthearted science adventure series, Eureka (and in fact, a few Eureka performers show in guest roles here). Teenage hacker Claudia (Allison Scagliotti) joins the series in episode four, CCH Pounder brings a sardonic authority as their boss and Roger Rees has a recurring role as a former agent turned nemesis with a thriving business in black market artifacts.

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