'Legends of Tomorrow' To Channel 'Groundhog Day' and 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' In Upcoming Episode

Now that fans of DC's Legends of Tomorrow have met Tala Ashe's Zari Adrianna, get ready for an episode that will feature her -- a lot.

During a Q&A with reporters earlier this week, showrunners and Ashe discussed an upcoming episode inspired by the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect."

"We blow through our production money and then some every year with our crossover, so [we have] the infamous 'bottle show' which always turns out to be great, but it's also driven by 'How could we do it all on our standing sets for as cheaply as possible?'" joked executive producer Phil Klemmer.

"It's our Groundhog Day episode, and Tala's at the center of it," his fellow EP Marc Guggenheim added.

"I was warned by the writers' room. 'You're going to be in every single scene,'" said Ashe.

"...And every single scene, you're going to have to do eight different ways!" Klemmer ended for her.

In "Cause And Effect," The Enterprise finds itself entering a time anomaly; they see a crisis looming and work to avert it, but fail; the craft is destroyed, and the crew would have died, except that time gives them numerous "do-overs." The catch? The crew have no idea what is happening and each time are trying to advance their understanding of the situation without the benefit of the knowledge they might have gained in previous attempts.

In the world of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, there has always been a rule: in order to preserve the stakes of the show (and the continuity of the universe in it), time-travelers cannot just declare a mulligan and go back to try the same thing again. It was doing so at the end of Legends of Tomorrow's second season that resulted in the seriously-damaged timestream the team faces this time around.

On next week's episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Ray Palmer finds his life in jeopardy after an anachronism lands in his childhood and he is killed by aliens after befriending a baby Dominator. The episode homages E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Stranger Things, but the image of Ray huddled in a drainage pipe at the end of this week's episode, only to be greeted by a pair of shining, alien eyes deep within, has an undeniable It vibe right about now.