During his visit, the game commander William Riker on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, Jonathan Frakes (seen above on the left) underwent a rudimentary director training camp. Frakes was interested in making episodes of the show, and the producers said that he would not be allowed to do so After observing other directors for 300 hours. Frakes put his reasonable diligence, and he ended up directing eight episodes of the series. The producers were so impressed that they also hired flakes to make two of the “Star Trek” feature films.

His experience as a director on “Next Generation”, he found, could be transformed in other concerts of realization. On the one hand, he stayed with the franchise “Star Trek” for decades, returning to the episodes of Helm of “Deep Space Nine”, “Voyager”, “Discovery”, “Strange New Worlds” and “Picard”. He directed the science fiction adventure film of the family “Clockstoppers” in 2002 and “Thunderbirds” in 2004, finally moving exclusively on television, supervising the episodes of “Levier”, “Roswell”, “The Librars”, “The Orville” and “NCIS: Los Angeles”. Frakes was actually more prolific behind the camera than ever in front of him.

One of the many concerts of Frakes director was an episode of the second revival of “The Twilight Zone”. The second renewal, to be clarified, was the short -term version broadcast on the UPN from 2002 to 2003. It lasted only one season, led by Forest Whitaker in the role of Rod Serling, and / film did not classify it very high. The episode of Frakes was called “the line player”, and he featured Jeremy Piven, two years before he found an overwhelming dominant renown on “Entourage”. It was written by Pen Densham, who also wrote four episodes of the resumption of “The Exter Limits”, as well as 22 episodes of the 90s television version of “The Magnifiment Seven”. Pensham is also credited as a history writer on successes like “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and quirks like “A Gnome called Gormm”.

“The line player”, as happened, was the only episode in two parts of the 2002 “Twilight zone”, taking the full time of the show. Most of the episodes were broadcast in 30 -minute pairs.

In the episode, Jeremy Piven plays Tyler Ward, a phone repairer who dreams of becoming rich and leaving his life of humdrum. He also assumes that wealth could draw the attention of his attractive boss, Shannon (Olivia d’Abo), and impress her best friend Buddy (Vincent Laresca). While repairing a shot deadline, Tyler is struck by lightning. Lightning him kills him for three full minutes, but he is miraculously revived at the hospital. Tyler notes, however, that the lightning of lightning has imbued him with strange psychic powers. He can now read the minds of people around him.

Tyler immediately uses his powers to win poker games, earning a lot of money. He spoke of this success in trading actions, which makes him rich beyond his wildest dreams. Shannon, however, is tasted by Tyler’s open greed, and she ends up falling into Buddy’s arms. Buddy also is disgusted with the greed of his best friend. Tyler realizes that he realized his dreams of wealth, but feels hollow after losing the people who were most for him. It is a classic ironic touch “Twilight Zone”.

“The line player” was the 11th episode broadcast, but he was unionized to be the pilot episode of the new “Twilight zone”. Although the 2002 renewal had a quality writing and staging, it was not as openly celebrated as the 1985 version of “The Twilight Zone”, and it was not as widely looked at as the recent revival of “The Exterior Limits”. The notes remained low, The studio constantly interferesAnd the show was ax after only 22 weeks and 43 episodes.

Frakes was not injured by this result. He was already working on “Clockstoppers”, and he would soon run the 2006 TV movie “The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines”. He continues to do well for himself behind the camera between reprisals of his “Star Trek” work.