Castle has had a long running history of Star Trek connections.  Earlier this year we saw two new cast members join Castle. Series regular Penny Johnson Jerald (Kasidy Yates Deep Space 9 ) was cast as Captain Gates and Michael Dorn (Worf, ST:TNG and DS9) as a  recurring guest playing psychiatrist, Dr Carver Burke.

In the past we've had guest appearances by Voyager's Robert Picardo as “Doctor Death”, Ethan Phillips (Nelix, ST: Voyager) in the season 3 episode “The Final Nail”, Jonathan Frakes (Commander Riker, ST: TNG) as director of Season 2 episode “Kill the Messenger” and Trek producer René Echevarria was a Writer/Executive Producer for Season 2 and of course, with Castle since the beginning, Rob Bowman who directed many Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes.

In the January 23rd episode titled "An Embarrassment of Bitches"  a famous dog trainer is killed, the investigation keeps coming back to charismatic reality TV star Kay Cappuccio, a favorite of tabloids and gossip websites the world over but there seems to be more to her story than she is letting on.

Among the guest cast for this episode is none other than Star Trek Deep Space 9's Nana Visitor as Dr. Patty Barker.  If there isn't some kind of Trek reference in this episode, here's one Castle fan that will be a little disappointed!

Also of note to Sci-Fi fans, the episode is directed by Tom Wright who also directed episodes of Angel, Firefly and the X-Files.