Trekkers watching The Dead Zone Sunday got a chuckle from a Star Trek reference in the show that night, especially in-the-know aficionados who recognized the inside joke.

In the episode, titled "Precipitate," lead character Johnny Smith (Anthony Michael Hall) is trying to prevent a death he sees in a vision, but he's not sure which of several individuals is the potential victim. One of the candidates is a young bookstore clerk named Jonah, an aspiring novelist who is depressed from numerous rejection letters and constant belittlement from his manager. Johnny offers him words of encouragement, and to make the kid look good in front of his manager, he loudly asks Jonah to wrap up 10 copies of the book he's holding, to pick up later. The manager approaches and asks Jonah what book the man just bought. Jonah shows him: it's the hardcover novelization of "Star Trek: Insurrection" off the bargain book table. The manager comments, "Finally. I never thought we'd move those."

In case you miss the connection, "Insurrection" was written and co-produced by Michael Piller, who is now the creator and executive producer of Dead Zone. (Piller also was executive producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, having co-created the latter two.)

Eric Stillwell, former script coordinator on TNG who now works with Piller on Dead Zone, confesses that the self-mocking allusion was his idea. "Michael loved it and wrote it into the script," Stillwell said. The "Precipitate" script can be read on the Dead Zone Web site.

"Precipitate" will air again later this week, Thursday at 11:00 p.m. and Saturday at 10:00 a.m. on USA, and Friday at 4:00 p.m. on Sci-Fi (check your local listings for airtimes). The Dead Zone co-stars Nicole deBoer, known in the Trek world as DS9's Ezri Dax, as well as David Ogden Stiers, "Dr. Timicin" in TNG's "Half a Life."

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