Eleventh Hour

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
This page needs some cleaning up to be presentable.

Mixes the UK and American versions of the show. These should be split out into their own pages and this page made a disambiguation page between them.

Science-themed Crime Drama about the exploits of Dr. Jacob Hood (Professor Ian Hood in the UK version), a special government consultant dealing with crimes involving advanced science concepts the viewer has probably heard about on the news.

Hood is ably assisted by an attractive bodyguard, Rachel Young, as he uses his genius to solve crimes based around things like cloning, cryonics, and genetic engineering. His exploits have allegedly made Hood some powerful enemies, though none of them have yet surfaced.

The original UK series starred Patrick Stewart in the lead role, and is notable mostly for the fact that Patrick Stewart is the lead. A US remake with a more attractive cast (but less actual sex, due to differing Safe Harbor regulations) is more ongoing, and is most notable for being perhaps the only time a character on US television has been portrayed simultaneously as a genius and a human being with the capacity for emotion and social interaction who isn't suffering from some form of autism (See notes at Spock Speak).

The series bears some similarity to the older series Probe, but is somewhat less fanciful.

Not to be confused with the sequel to a certain videogame classic.

For the Doctor Who episode, see here.

Tropes used in Eleventh Hour include:
  • Action Girl: Rachel
  • British Brevity: The original UK series lasted only 4 episodes.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: Hood is brilliant, but requires Rachel to keep an eye on him.
  • Cultural Translation
  • Did Not Do the Research: Probably at least once an episode the writers get some basic scientific or biologic concept completely wrong.
  • Executive Meddling: Seventeen episodes in, a new character, a physically large, unexperienced, slightly inept FBI agent, joins Hood's protection detail. You can almost hear network executives saying, "You know what this show lacks? A comedy relief black guy."
  • Fake American: Rufus Sewell.
  • Fatal Family Photo: In an episode dealing with an outbreak, a construction worker who mentions his son's birthday is sure enough the first one to show symptoms.
  • I Always Wanted to Say That: Hood: "Duty calls."
  • Liz Lemon Job: Rachel is basically this to Hood.
  • Meganekko: Agent Young's glasses.
  • Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Hood
  • Phlebotinum Analogy: Hood is fond of destructive analogies involving Rachel's luggage, toiletries, etc.
  • Science Is Bad: Subverted and played straight - the science is (generally) good; the people abusing it are bad. Examples:
    • A suspended animation serum for long-term space travel is good; using it to attack teens on Spring Break for raping the attacker's teen daughter is bad. I have no idea how it became an STD that puts you in a coma, and then as a reward for waking up from the coma gives you flesh-eating bacteria.
    • A nanotech "virus" capable of creating super-effecient batteries is good; sabotaging it which causes it infect humans, leaching them of metal to create an ultrafine layer of metal that's attractive to lightening is bad.
    • Stemcell cancer treatments are good; stealing them for ultra-botox is bad. Abusing it causes Body Horror s!
  • Toad Licking: The solution to "Cardiac" turns out to involve this.
  • Too Soon: Likely reason that the culprits behind heavy water experiments in "Miracle" were changed to white supremacists in the US version from the government, trying to secretly create false evidence of dangerous middle-eastern nuclear programs as a pretext to start an unjustified invasion.
  • Trans-Atlantic Equivalent
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The villain of the week tends to be this, ranging from a park ranger poisoning Lake Michigan with mercury to raise awareness about pollution to a neurosurgeon performing illegal experiments on autistic teens to find a cure for autism.