At the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones meets with representatives of the United States government and asks about the location of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant that was earlier retrieved by the legendary archeologist. “It’s some place very safe,” he is told. “We have our top men working on it right now.”
Right before the closing credits begin to roll, however, the camera shows a crate making its way through an endless warehouse overflowing with similar crates. The message of the scene is clear – the Ark of the Covenant has been lost and forgotten in a sea of government bureaucracy, never to be seen or heard from again.
In July 2009, the Syfy Network expanded upon those final moments of Raiders of the Lost Ark with the premier of Warehouse 13, giving the “some place very safe” an actual location and the “top men working on it” both names and faces. The warehouse in question is built into a mountain located in the Badlands of South Dakota, while the man-in-charge is an overweight, bushy-haired former cryptographer for the National Security Agency named Artie.
Just as the Ark of the Covenant in Raider of the Lost Ark had supernatural powers, the other objects stored inside warehouse are likewise mystical and dangerous. They have been locked away not because of governmental inefficiency and red tape but to keep the general population safe from their inherent powers and aftereffects.
Warehouse 13 follows the adventures of Artie Nielsen and his latest recruits, Secret Service Agents Pete Lattimer and Myka Bering, as they travel the world to find and ultimately “snag, bag and tag” such items. These “artifacts” are drawn from a wide assortment of historical and mythological facts as well as fictions, with everything from Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod, George Patton’s military helmet, Pandora’s Box, and statues of Greek gods Zeus and Hera coming into play.
In many ways, watching Warehouse 13 is a crash-course on not only history but pop culture as well, with items from Marilyn Monroe, Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix, Vincent Van Gogh, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Edgar Allen Poe also given the artifact treatment.
Like the series itself, many of the items contain humorous attributes. The shoes once worn by Richard Nixon, for instance, grants the ability to “tap dance” around the truth, while the juggling balls of W.C. Fields induce drunkenness. Other items are more dangerous, such as the looking glass of Lewis Carroll – which serves as the prison for an insane Alice Lidell – while the facial compact of axe-murderer Lizzie Borden causes its owner to kill the person they love the most.
As the series continues over the course of its five seasons, the mythology of Warehouse 13 is more fully explored. The South Dakota-based facility is the thirteenth rendition of such a warehouse – the original was established by Alexander the Great – and is always located in the country that serves as the dominant world power of its time period. Prior warehouses have thus been located in Egypt, Mongolia, Constantinople, Russia, and Great Britain.
The leading minds of each generation have also been associated with these warehouses. H.G. Wells, for instance, was an agent for Warehouse 12 in London, while Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, M.C. Escher, and Nikola Tesla all played roles in the establishment of Warehouse 13 in the United States.
Because of its long history, the technology of Warehouse 13 is more akin to the past then the present, giving the series a retro style that is reminiscent of modern-day steampunk. Instead of guns, the agents of Warehouse 13 use an electrical ray gun invented by Nikola Tesla that stuns its victims into unconsciousness, and the group communicates via handheld audio/video devices designed by Philo Farnsworth shortly after he invented the television in 1929.
Although the office of Artie Nielsen within Warehouse 13 is equipped with high-tech computer screens and security devices, the keyboards are from early typewriters and the room itself is cluttered with an outdated index card filing system, complementing the twenty-first century database that keeps track of the millions of artifacts both stored in the warehouse and still at-large in the outside world.
In addition to more fully developing its mythology, Warehouse 13 also grows darker as the seasons progress. Many of the “Big Bads” featured on the series are former agents of the Warehouse, including Artie Nielsen’s one-time partner James McPherson, H.G. Wells, and Paracelsus.
Instead of incarcerating such dangerous villains, the Warehouse places them in “bronze,” a form of suspended animation. The effects can also be reversed, and both H.G. Wells – who is actually a woman – and the sixteenth century Paracelsus are brought back to the present during the overarching narrative and inevitably set out to either destroy or rule the world using artifacts from Warehouse 13.
While the threats these former agents represent are clearly evil, numerous investigations assigned to Pete Lattimer and Myka Bering are not so black-and-white. In the season one instalment “Resonance,” for instance, a group of bank robbers use a musical recording to lull the employees and patrons of their targets into a state of bliss.
When Lattimer and Bering track down the culprits, they discover that the daughter of the musician who wrote the song used the stolen money to purchase his original recordings so she could reconnect with her ailing father. Faced with breaking up the touching reunion, the pair of Warehouse agents fulfill their orders to “snag, bag and tag” but allow the bank robbers to remain free.
During the season four episode “Endless Wonder,” meanwhile, a representative from a pharmaceutical company stumbles upon Warehouse 13 and questions why the items are kept under lock and key. Contained within the endless aisles of artifacts, after all, are devices capable of extending life, curing disease, and ending hunger. The representative’s father died from Parkinson’s disease, and Pete Lattimer shows her an artifact that could have saved him – but with a catch.
“To use it, you have to give the disease to someone else,” he explains. “This raincoat, it boosts your immunity to the point that nothing can hurt you, but it turns you into a serial killer. There are things here that could wipe out a country or start a famine. I know your hearts in the right place, but what about your boss? Isn’t it his job to think about money first? What if he has friends that build weapons or want to control governments for ‘all the right reasons?’ Will they always do the right things?”
“Bureaucratic fools!” Indiana Jones exclaims to Marion Ravenwood at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. “They don’t know what they’ve got there.”
According to the Syfy drama, the agents of Warehouse 13 are neither bureaucrats nor fools but dedicated preservers of the safety and wellbeing of everyone on the planet. They are also fully aware of the uncontrollable powers contained within the artifacts that they “snag, bag and tag,” and while their adventures may not elicit the same big screen thrills of Indiana Jones, they are just as fun and entertaining – as well as educational – to watch nonetheless.
Anthony Letizia