There have been some shakeups at GD since Allison got brainjacked by Beverly. Senator Wen has stepped in to take over for Allison as interim director of GD, shut her out of her department, and reassigned Carter to her personal security. She has also accelerated the timetable for construction on the Astraeus ship. Everybody is on edge.

Speaking of being on edge, the remaining Astraeus candidates have moved on to the next phase: stress testing. Jo, Fargo, Holly and Parrish get locked in a small room and given the task of making one hundred origami cranes each while Fargo’s assistant – taking more pleasure in this than he probably should – hits them with random environmental changes. To add to the stress of the situation, Zane has smuggled himself into the locked room.

This being Eureka, of course, nothing goes as smoothly as it should. One of the techs, working on building an interstellar communications array – and having hilarious scenes where he generates huge tremors in GD and then follows them up with a “my bad” announcement – accidentally fries the circuits on the construction mites that are building the Astraeus ship. The mites, given the task of finding and taking tungsten wherever they can find it and building hull pieces from it, begin eating away at GD and randomly putting up ship panels all over the facility. Since the mites can’t be shut down, they begin eating away at essential systems, and soon the candidates in their isolation chamber are completely cut off from the rest of the world while GD threatens to come crushing down on top of them.

As Jo, Fargo, Holly and Zane begin to realize that what they are experiencing is not part of the test, Parrish dutifully continues making his origami cranes, ignoring everything else around him. Meanwhile, Allison is fighting an uphill battle with Wen to convince her that she is ready to come back to work. This emergency is the best way for her to show that she is still on her game and can run GD as well as ever. While it’s never explicitly said, there is certainly an air of fear that, if Allison’s brain was compromised once, it could happen again. As is always the case, things are finally solved with modifying the thing that caused the problem in the first place (in this case, a pulse from the interstellar transmitter), and Carter rushing into the heart of danger to stop it.

Where this episode really shines is in the interaction between Jo, Fargo, Zane, Parrish and Holly. The chemistry between the cast is some of the best on TV. Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, while the newest members of the cast, blend seamlessly with them. This show continues to be a constant bright spot in the weekly schedule, and one of the shows I most look forward to watching. I cannot wait for next week. I don’t even know what’s going to happen, but I know I’m going to enjoy it. That’s the ‘Eureka’ Guarantee.

If you missed last week’s episode be sure to read out Eureka: Omega Girls recap.