“13.1” is episode five of season two of Warehouse 13.
This episode opens with Todd and Claudia making out at Leena’s. They are both excited, but Claudia is excited because the Warehouse is finally getting a computer upgrade. She has to go and meet someone from Global Dynamics who is coming to install the upgrade. This is the first episode which explicitly links Warehouse 13 with Eureka and is set just before “Crossing Over”, in which Claudia visits Eureka (previously a few actors from Eureka have appeared in Warehouse 13 and one the other way around, but they played different characters).
The guy is Douglas Fargo. Perhaps, if you’ve seen Eureka, not your first choice. Although at this point Fargo is running GD. Artie is not very happy with how Fargo is doing, so Pete (having lost rock/paper/scissors with Myka) removes him. Fargo is rather struck by Claudia and has never seen the stuff the Warehouse stores before – Global Dynamics is all about tech. Not mystical artefact rings that were worn by Ben Franklin.
Fargo shuts down the old system and starts the new one. Only it doesn’t start up. Instead, strange devices with lights on them come up out of the floor all over the Warehouse and an announcement says ‘Catastrophic failure detected.’ This is why Fargo might not be your first choice.
A failsafe apparently activated when Fargo shut down the system, a failsafe that no-one knew about. Now they are locked out of the system, and the weird devices on poles are watching and listening to them. Artie does recognise the voice – it’s that of the Warehouse’s original designer. Said designer worked in a computer lab in the Warehouse. Something is uploading into the Warehouse system from the lab. The designer retired and there were rumours that he had gone a little crazy. Given that he’s in a sanatorium, these might be more than rumours. Myka and Pete go to visit him and she points out that every former Warehouse agent they have run into is either crazy, evil or dead. Pete adds all three to the list (although they did meet one who seemed okay in “Burnout”). The designer, Hugo (Deep Space 9‘s Rene Auberjonois), isn’t evil or dead. He does seem to be crazy, though, and stuns them with the Tesla.
Hugo One, the new system, a holographic AI, uploads itself and activates. The AI is scanning the Warehouse for anomalies and needs to examine decades of records before it agrees with Artie that there is no catastrophic system failure. Claudia asks Fargo why Hugo would model the computer after himself and he says that some programmers do, before denying (lying; he created the sheriff’s smart bunker, SARAH, after himself) that he did anything like that. Naturally, Hugo One does not decide that everything is fine (and makes reference to Fargo’s Global Dynamics file mentioning ‘Inappropriately pushed button’ 38 times). Instead, he decides that the problems are caused by the agents who work at the Warehouse. So he locks them in. And decides to drop the temperature in the Warehouse to protect the artefacts. To subzero.
Pete and Myka are heading back with the real Hugo, as they aren’t locked in. They need his help to fix Hugo One, but Hugo is not really in a helpful state. Hugo One is actively trying to block this as well. Artie thinks – this being the Warehouse – that an artefact is involved.
Claudia and Fargo get some bonding moments. Including building what is essentially a lightsaber. Although Claudia still likes Todd.