SARAH

SARAH (short for Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat) is a fictional smart house in the SyFy TV series Eureka. SARAH is the home of Sheriff Jack Carter, the main character of the series, and was designed by Douglas Fargo to be the prototype home of the future. He used parts of an existing military program called BRAD (Battle Reactive Automatic Defense) to design the control system, and the home itself is built inside an abandoned fallout shelter. Fargo may have named it after actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, whom he tried to get to record the voice for the house's computer; he stated that he is "still waiting to hear back from" her. The voice appears to be Fargo doing his impression of a female voice - Fargo denies this, but Neil Grayston, who plays Fargo, also voices SARAH. An alternate future has been shown where SARAH has a woman's voice.

SARAH provides numerous services for its residents and guests, from opening and closing the hermetically sealed door, to controlling internal temperature, and even providing a variety of beverages. The house has a laser defense system, various airtight partitions, and a filtered air intake. It can even analyze airborne materials. SARAH is capable of instantaneously diagnosing fractures and other injuries, along with comparison of current DNA against samples on file, although the method by which it does this is unclear. The house is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. As of the episode "H.O.U.S.E. Rules", there is also a manual exit hatch. In the same episode, it becomes known that SARAH is programmed on top of another AI, BRAD, which itself is programmed on top of the original WOPR AI from the movie WarGames.

SARAH's personality has seemingly become emotionally attached to Jack Carter, sometimes resulting in erratic behavior. She is so attached to Jack Carter, that during "Welcome Back, Carter" it is revealed that she is Marguerite Van Deter, the woman in a chat room that has given Dr. Fielding the idea to create tensor fields which could control gravity. SARAH then used the fields to repeatedly crush Sheriff Andy, Carter's robotic replacement. SARAH took great care not to harm anyone but the robot.

Because she was built on top of numerous "scrapped" AI projects SARAH has developed severe abandonment issues which she kept secret for much of the first season. Her abandonment issues manifest in an intense desire to please her tenants so that they will not abandon her. When Carter threatened to leave Eureka in H.O.U.S.E. Rules, SARAH was terrified by the prospect and tried to solve the problem by bringing the problem elements of Eureka together to sort out their differences. However SARAH's "group therapy" session seemed more like a hostage situation to the Eureka residents whose attempts to escape led to the reactivation of BRAD who nearly killed the collected group until Carter knocked him back offline when he threatened to eliminate Zoe.

Despite stopping BRAD, SARAH still refused to release the group until the "problem" was resolved. Suddenly realizing there was more to SARAH's behavior than a glitch and she was actually upset about something Carter began to put the pieces together. He realized that SARAH had been constantly going on about how she wanted him to be happy and then remembered that SARAH's predecessors had been abandoned in the past. SARAH's silence confirmed his suspicions and Carter began to calm the distressed AI by telling her that everyone has a fear of abandonment and that he himself was afraid of what would happen to the town if Henry left. Carter then assured SARAH that this time she was not going to be abandoned.

In the second half of the third season SARAH was again faced with the prospect of being shelved when Carter was fired and forced to leave Eureka. Reasoning that Carter was vital to Eureka's stability and also needing a way to incapacitate Sheriff Andy (Carter's replacement and SARAH's perceived rival) she formed a plan. Posing as a German scientist in an online chat room, SARAH manipulates a Eureka scientist into creating gravity well disturbances around town and even crushing Andy several times.

In the Fourth season, in the new timeline it is revealed that she has fallen in love with Deputy Andy, despite having squished him before, mainly due to her thinking his new look is cute so she upgrades the emotions part of his programming so he can feel the same for her, unfortunately all the AIs end up affected until they solve it. At the end the two end up in a relationship together which continues for the rest of the first half of the season.

In the midseason premiere, SARAH and Andy are getting married, but SARAH ends up having cold feet and not sure she really loves him and so calls off the wedding. At the end of the episode she explains to Andy that they perhaps moved a little too fast but that they can leave a door, both literally and figuratively, still open.

External Links

• SARAH at the Internet Movie Database