When Star Trek's Jonathan Frakes signed on to direct an episode of TNT's Leverage, he agreed to helm one of the drama's most complex episodes yet: one where Timothy Huttons team of cons for good causes help upset an attempt to rig a trial.
But Frakes also beamed in a few friends to turn the set into a mini-Star Trek convention, recruiting The Next Generation's Brent Spiner and Deep Space Nine's Armin Shimmerman and Kitty Swink for key roles.
The once-and-perhaps future Commander Riker also hinted about the possibility of getting involved with J.J. Abrams' reboot of the Star Trek franchise, and his acting role on the soon-to-be scheduled Fox drama Persons Unknown, from The Usual Suspects and Valkyrie writer Christopher McQuarrie. And intelligent guy that he is, he took a moment to praise his wife, Genie Francis, for her recent performance in the Hallmark Channel's The Note II: Taking a Chance on Love.
Frakes' Leverage episode, "The Juror No. 6 Job," airs Tuesday at 10 pm/ET.
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Now playing in this week's Mitovich Mega Minute:
• It's the face-off 24 fans have been waiting for — Chloe vs. Janice! Mary Lynn Rajskub shares a peek at what happens when socket monkey meets socket monkey.
• Will a picture trigger a thousand angry words between CSI: Miami's Eric and Calleigh?
• A Star Trek reunion is coming to TNT. See which show is playing host, and who all is involved.
Watch and discuss the new MMM after the jump.
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Tonight's episode is the fourth and last of the six that were produced that ABC intends to run. (All six will be seen in Canada, at least, on the cable channel Space, starting in November). And it was the episode a number of viewers were most eager to see, I suspect, since it was based on a short story by Harlan Ellison, who has established himself as a major figure in both fantastic fiction (among other sorts of prose) and in screenwriting, as well as being responsible for some notable comics scripting and work in other media. Apparently Ellison gave executive producer Keith Addis strong support when they resisted the attempts by ABC to call the series "Masters of Sci-Fi," which would be comparable to calling its Showtime sibling series Masters of Horror something like "Masters of Spookiness" (ABC chose to slip "scifi" into the URL for the series' pages on abc.go.com, anyway... perhaps the smallest of many hostilities the network has shown toward this project). And the story was ad...
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ABC's Masters of Science Fiction anthology series, announced what seems like light-years ago, will finally hit the airwaves during the dog days of August. The lineup — slashed from six installments to four — is as follows:August 4: "A Clean Escape," based on Nebula Award-winning author John Kessel's short story about a postapocalyptic psychiatrist (Judy Davis) determined to solve a man's (Sam Waterston) apparent memory lapse.August 11: "The Awakening," based on a short story by Howard Fast, starring Terry O'Quinn, Elisabeth Rohm and William B. Davis, and concerning Baghdad-based soldiers' discovery of a "mysterious casualty."August 18: "Jerry Was a Man," based on the Robert Heinlein story about an affluent couple (Anne Heche and Malcolm McDowell) who acquire an anthropoid.August 25: "The Discarded," based on the short story by seven-time Hugo Award winner, three-time Nebula Award winner, and Science Fiction Grand Master Laureate Harlan Ellison, directed by Jonathan Frakes,...
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