A TV show imagined a secret vault of cursed objects that began with Alexander the Great
Warehouse 13 sent two Secret Service agents to a barren corner of South Dakota to guard objects soaked in supernatural power, from Lewis Carroll's looking glass to Studio 54's disco ball. Its backstory claimed twelve earlier warehouses, the first ordered by Alexander the Great, each following whichever empire was strongest.
Created by Jane Espenson and D. Brent Mote, the series ran on Syfy from July 7, 2009 to May 19, 2014. Critics described a blend of The X-Files with Raiders of the Lost Ark and a dash of Moonlighting, and compared it with the late-1980s show Friday the 13th: The Series. Pete Lattimer, a rule-bending agent played by Eddie McClintock, and Myka Bering, a meticulous one played by Joanne Kelly, first treat the posting as a punishment before grasping why the work matters.
The fictional history does much of the heavy lifting. Warehouse 1 was supposedly built between 336 and 323 BC to hold Alexander's war spoils, then moved to Egypt after his death, starting a tradition of housing the collection in the most powerful empire of the age, where it could best be defended. Later versions passed through Rome, the Huns, Byzantium, the Khmer, the Mongols and the Ottomans. Warehouse 13 broke the pattern by hiding in a remote landscape; a first building from 1898 burned down because nobody understood how to store the items safely, and the current one dates from 1914.
Artifacts gain their powers from a maker, an owner or a historic event. Carroll's mirror traps an evil presence called Alice that can take over bodies, and Edgar Allan Poe's pen also turns up. Agents are drawn from US agencies such as the FBI, ATF and CDC, chosen for exceptional minds or unusual gifts. Pete senses good and bad vibes and is a recovering alcoholic with a weakness for cookies; Myka grew up in a bookshop and has an eidetic memory.
Saul Rubinek played Artie Nielsen, a former NSA codebreaker who has spent over 40 years at the warehouse and becomes a father figure to Claudia Donovan, a young hacker played by Allison Scagliotti who talks her way in by uncovering too many secrets. Aaron Ashmore joined as Steve Jinks, an ATF agent who can always tell when someone is lying, and Jaime Murray played a version of H.G. Wells.
Source: Warehouse 13
