Mulgrew Discusses Trek, Religious Controversies

Kate Mulgrew told a crowd at the London Film & Comic Con that she told Rick Berman that she thought one of the Janeways should die in the Star Trek: Voyager finale and that Seven of Nine should marry Chakotay.

Totally Kate! has a transcript of Mulgrew's appearance at the convention, where she also discussed potential plans to take her play Tea at Five to London and joked that the baby lizards to which Janeway gave birth in "Threshold" were the only reason she survived seven seasons of the show, because Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris)'s trailer was next to hers, "and every day we'd say, 'Are we going to make some more lizards today?' Was that the most absurd idea?"

Asked whether she was sorry about how Voyager had ended, Mulgrew stated that she was very glad the ship was not left in the Delta Quadrant and that Janeway got her triumphant homecoming, though she added, "Am I sorry that Voyager didn't end in a series of feature films that would breed nothing but endless sums of money? Yes of course." She felt that "Endgame" tied up the series well, though she said she was aware that the episode was controversial.

Mulgrew thanked the fans who have followed her and Tea at Five to numerous venues. Asked how she prepares to go onstage before the play, she said, "I do my warm-ups. I have to. And as I age they become increasingly crucial. So I do about thirty minutes of physical warm-ups and about twenty of vocal warm-ups. Then I throw up and think about my mother and dash on. It never gets easier...but that's the joy of it."

The actress answered some personal questions about her parents' illnesses and her faith, including whether she believes everyone has the right to be forgiven ("I would advocate it every time. Christ did, didn't he?") and whether her Catholicism comes into conflict with her advocacy for the Alzheimer's Association, which supports stem cell research ("I believe in life. And as we well know in the last decade, we have seen the Catholic Church suffer from a lack – for any better way of putting this – of a love of life").

As for the popular topic of erotic subtext between Seven of Nine and Janeway, Mulgrew insisted that she did not have to work to create it because "the best writing of the entire seven years was between Janeway and Seven of Nine. So the writers saw to it that the chemistry was built in." She also alluded to her unhappiness with the sexual element brought onto the show with Seven of Nine when asked whether there was anything she wished Voyager had done differently:

I'm supposed to be very, very diplomatic about all this. I wish that they had given Janeway and this particular ship and the philosophy of this particular ship a little more opportunity to grow before they worried so much about the numbers that they had to bring in another element, if you understand what I'm saying. It was one step forward for mankind, and four back, because of the numbers. And I wish that they had had more faith in what the viewing audience would have ascribed to philosophically had we been left alone for a bit longer.

The complete transcript is at Totally Kate!

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