It's been a long time (almost a year at this point) since Sci Fi's surprise hit Eureka has been on the air. The show, a casualty of last year's writers strike and this year's recession woes, returns next Friday, July 10 at 9 PM with the final 10 episodes of season 3.

Series star Colin Ferguson and co-creator Jamie Paglia spoke to reporters on a media call and dished a little dirt on all the mid-season drama that's coming up. After the jump we'll get into Sheriff Carter finally having a "real honest love interest," the possibility of two well-liked characters making a re-appearance on the show, and, sadly, the one face that we won't be seeing (at all) around Eureka. Just a heads up to serious spoiler-phobes, there's an answer to at least one question you may want to avoid.

Good news everyone. SciFi has announced that Eureka will be coming back for a second season. They have ordered 13 more episodes which are set to begin production in the spring. The series will return with all new episodes next summer. Based on the numbers, this was a slam dunk decision for the network. According to the press release, Eureka is SciFi's highest rated, most watched show of 2006. Not only that, it outperformed the previous year's time slot average by +175%. The detail that really surprised me though... Tuesday's Eureka finale beat the CW's Veronica Mars premiere in males 18-49 and males 25-54. Confirmed to be returning for the second season are Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Joe Morton, Jordan Hinson, Ed Quinn, Debrah Farentino and Matt Frewer. I'm a little disturbed that they didn't mention Erica Cerra there, but hopefully that's just an over-site.