Mulgrew’s character, Kove, is “definitely obsessed with Trent, obsessed with sex and obsessed with herself and her hairdo,” explained Mulgrew.

“[Star Trek] fans are very loyal,” said Mulgrew. ” They’re very game and very smart and they love to roll with it. Janeway is their captain, whether she’s in an insane asylum or not.”

Mulgrew isn’t the only Voyager actor to appear on NTSF:SD:SUV. “They said they wanted a creepy guy,” said Mulgrew, ” and I said, ‘Bob Picardo!’ He was deliciously creepy.”

Picardo may not be the only guest star who will appear on NTSF:SD:SUV. “I want to get all my pals on it,” said Mulgrew, “and I think Paul [Scheer] is game for it. John de Lancie would be wonderful. Finally, people would find out how funny we are!”

NTSF:SD:SUV airs on the Cartoon Network on Thursdays at 12:15 AM ET.

Mulgrew was on the panel with Eddie McClintock and writer Deric A. Hughes, and she shared stories about her time working on Warehouse 13.

Mulgrew began to explain how she felt about returning to a science fiction show. “When you step into a situation that is foreign to you,” she said, “sci-fi is familiar to me of course, because I did seven years on Voyager, but I’ve not stepped out since then…this is my first venture.”

Before Mulgrew could continue though, McClintock said, “Can I say one thing? You were the best Seven of Nine, I believe. I mean, frankly I, thought you were EIGHT of Nine.”

The first part of the video is shown below.

http://youtu.be/zuQLLsMR7sQ

Other Star Trek actors from four of the five televised series can also be heard on the audio dramas.

According to de Lancie, he was “raised on the classics. – Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and others. Now we can bring these to even wider audiences by means of new technologies and old friends. We at Alien Voices feel that the dramatization should remain faithful to the original works. We are presenting Verne, Wells and other giants of the science fiction genre as they, themselves, might have wished to be heard.”

“After years of being associated with other people’s projects we wanted to enter the nest century at the helm of our own,” said Nimoy. “Alien Voices gives us the chance to work with other artists who also want to branch out, yet still provide audiences with the quality they’ve come to expect from us.”

The five audio dramas were based on three novels from H.G. Wells and from novels by Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They include: The First Men in the Moon, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Lost World and Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Other Star Trek stars lent their voices to the project, including: Ethan Phillips, Dwight Schultz, William Shatner, Roxann Dawson, Kate Mulgrew, Nana Visitor, Armin Shimerman and Andrew Robinson.

The audio dramas can be purchased here.

Mulgrew explained what attracted her to the role of Kove, boss of an anti-terrorism task force and why she took on the part “Madness,” she said. “Sheer madness! I lost my mind and found myself with a bunch of other people who lost their minds together! [Series creator] Paul Scheer was astute enough to sense that at this point in my life, I needed a departure and I needed to laugh. So he called me up and he said, ‘Will you play the head of this strike force?’ And I said, ‘Sure!’”

Scheer explained a bit more about the character, but Mulgrew was still game to take on the role. “[Scheer] said, ‘You have to wear an eye patch and you’re obsessed with sex and we’ve been married and divorced twice, and we have two little kids and they don’t talk,’ said Mulgrew. “I said, ‘You’re on!’ I went to work for four weeks, maybe it was five, and all I did was laugh. All day and all night long. I think he’s a bit of a genius, Paul Scheer. Comedians of his stripe are really smart guys.”

Mulgrew enjoyed the departure from the typical acting experience. “Most of these guys – Scheer and his partners – came out of improv,” she said. “That’s the way they approach it. That’s not been my school and therefore it was a wonderfully liberating experience for me. I’m usually handed a script and told in no uncertain terms to honor every single syllable. These guys want us to loosen it up and see what we can find.”

Although she has moved on from Star Trek: Voyager, Mulgrew still does Star Trek-related things. “I’m attending nothing but conventions for the next six weeks, all over the world,” she said. “I go to Vegas and Australia and Germany and Prague and Atlanta. I’m everywhere! It’s still hard to believe it’s been fifteen years since Voyager and forty-five since the whole thing began.”

NTSF:SD:SUV airs on the Cartoon Network on Thursdays at 12:15 AM ET.

Mulgrew will portray Jane, a character who will have a “profound impact on the Warehouse.”
“She is a Regent, a very important Regent,” said series creator Jack Kenny. “Her first episode (The 40th Floor), will make her relationship to the Warehouse and everyone in it vital. And for the next three episodes that Kate is in (9/12′s Shadows, 9/26′s Emily Lake and the 10/3 season ender titled Stand), we’ll learn a lot more about how the Regents are chosen, how they affect the Warehouse, and in particular how Jane will have a very strong impact on Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly).”

Mulgrew spoke about what attracted her to playing Jane. “She has mystical and magical powers beyond all articulation. I play an important part regarding the future of the Warehouse, and also its history. You will increasingly understand her mysterious value to the warehouse and everybody in it.”

The four-episode arc may not be Mulgrew’s only appearance on Warehouse 13. “Jack [Kenny] and I spoke about [the next season] over dinner the other night. I’d very much like to go back and I hope we can do that.”

Warehouse 13 airs Mondays on Syfy at 9 PM.

Photos, clips and interview excerpts are beginning to emerge ahead of next week’s Shatnerpalooza extravaganza, which will air on EPIX and kick off next Thursday with Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet. An exclusive photo is shown here in a thumbnail-sized edition and the full-sized photo can be seen by clicking on that thumbnail.

The Captains features “in-depth interviews and vintage Star Trek footage with actors Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard), Kate Mulgrew (Captain Kathryn Janeway), Avery Brooks (Captain Benjamin Sisko), Scott Bakula (Captain Jonathan Archer), and Chris Pine (Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek 2009).” Shot on location in Toronto, London, New York, Princeton and Los Angeles, so that “Shatner could capture his fellow Captains and peers in their home environments, the HD film exposes the Captains in all their “humanity”, stripped down to the barest of earth-bound qualities and heavenly thoughts. [The Captains] offers a rare and candid glimpse into the inner sanctum of each actor. The film is grand in its sincerity and reflective of the passion and compassion each Captain demonstrated over the last forty-give years on both small and large screens. The Captains is all about the working challenges and personal rewards each actor garnered from the groundbreaking role of Starship helmer.”

“My hope is to delve deeply into these actors’ psyches, find out more about them so you can… see what common denominator there is among us as actors that brought [us] to this worldwide renown as part of Star Trek,” sad Shatner.

The Captains was based on hours of interviews with the Star Trek actors. They spoke about why they got involved in acting and Star Trek and what working on Star Trek meant to them. “I remember a play I did in a camp that my mother ran,” said Shatner. “I was in a play about the Holocaust. I played a kid [saying goodbye to his dog], because the Germans were taking me. When the play was over, I looked out there and the audience was crying – and I took my bow and my father came and held me and praised me. I’m convinced that was the moment I thought hey, this is fantastic. This has got me places with my father and the audience that I’d never dreamt of. I’m convinced that’s what started me on my acting thing, this moment in time.”

For some actors, acting took priority over everything, even family. “I remember once sitting around a dinner table with colleagues, actors, directors and hearing one of them say ‘I love my job, but my family always comes first, always,’” said Stewart. “And a voice inside my head said ‘not me.’”

Brooks spoke about being the only black Star Trek Captain, paying homage to those who went before him. “Without Paul Robson, I [wouldn't be] on Star Trek,” he said. “That is to say I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here without Brock Peters. I wouldn’t be here without Muhammad Ali, I wouldn’t be here without Sidney Poitier, I wouldn’t be here without William Warfield. I could go on and on. That’s the fact of the matter and I’m not fooled.”

For Mulgrew, acting came with a price, as she had two very important jobs to do at once and inevitably, as many women find out, in that case, one will suffer. “I think that the great difference is that the female is wired once she has her young to take care of them and to raise them, and I couldn’t do it well,” she said. “You know, there were sixteen to eighteen-hour days on that set for seven years, and I had two little kids. Believe me; they resented it to this day. They never watched it, they disdained it, they had nothing but dripping contempt for it. And I don’t blame them. So the woman cannot have it all. But I’ve watched you guys and you guys can.”

Bakula spoke of aging and his gratitude for his acting career. “The longer I’m here and the more I see, the less I think about [growing older], because so many people don’t get to have what I’ve had as long as I have,” he said. “So many people don’t have as much as I have, and so I think as you get older, you know people talk about perspective, but I think you get more grateful about it every day.”

Pine, the newest Star Trek captain, spoke about his love for theater, a love shared by many actors. “What I love about theater is that there’s an ephemeral quality to it,” he said. “It happens, it comes together, it exists and then it goes away.”

The Captains airs next Friday on EPIX at 8 PM. For those whose cable systems don’t carry EPIX, a free two-week trial (details in a future article as the time gets closer) is being offered which requires no credit card and will enable U.S. visitors to watch The Captains and other Shatnerpalooza events online. For fans outside of the U.S., word is that a DVD of The Captains will be released this autumn.

Mulgrew and director Josh Shelov will be featured guests and after the screening of the film, will participate in a brief question and answer session with the audience.

In The Best and the Brightest, Jeff and Samantha, a young couple, move into New York City and find that they must go to great lengths in order to get their five-year-old daughter into the “right” school.

Mulgrew portrays “The Player’s Wife,” a former attorney-turned politician who sits on the board of the elite Coventry Day School. “I’m ‘The Player’s Wife,’” said Mulgrew. “I play a politician and more of them are like that. She’s pretty oily, but not nearly as oily as her husband. They’re a charming, creepy and ambitious duo. It’s a send-up of everybody in New York.”

Trying to get a child into an elite school has “…brought many a marriage down in New York City,” said Mulgrew.

Mulgrew believes that her hometown audience will enjoy the movie. Iowa audiences have “a hell of a sense of humor. They’ll appreciate the naughtiness of the film. It’s not cute, not Disney. It’s for the sophisticated belly laugh.”

For ticket information, head to the link located here.

From a woman’s viewpoint, having a character that she knew was added as “eye candy” was tough for Mulgrew to accept. “I found that that was hard, Jeri notwithstanding,” said Mulgrew. “Certainly, I could see with my own eyes that she was a va-va-va-voom and beautiful-beautiful bombshell of a girl. Sexuality was brought into Voyager, and that’s what I resented. I chose not to use sexuality.”

According to Mulgrew, it would have been better (and different on TV) to have the character without the need to have her be a sex symbol. “I thought that if Paramount and UPN and Rick (Berman) were being exceptionally prescient and brave, they would give a woman a shot at commanding without sex,” said Mulgrew. “‘Can we do this without sex?’ There are always other ways. So I resented that and I was hurt by the immediate, extraordinary attention given to this character.”

Unfortunately for Mulgrew, she saw that sex did indeed sell. “The numbers went up,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Ah, you can’t argue with a business decision and you can’t argue with sex.’ That’s just part of life, but all of that is very difficult for a woman, particularly an actress like me. But it had nothing to do with Jeri.”

Mulgrew is currently working on a project that she is developing that is based on the life of Stella Adler.

Mulgrew credits Brannon Braga‘s writing for what worked best on Voyager, the relationships on the show. “Instantly, Brannon Braga comes to mind, because much of it was his writing. I think the cast was extraordinary. We were a very disciplined group. I was prepared.”

Although she felt the entire cast was strong, her work with Robert Picardo stood out the most for Mulgrew. “My stuff with Bob Picardo, I think, probably could not have been much better, given the time constraints,” said Mulgrew. “We were extremely capable as a group and could really explore the human aspects of what was happening to these characters. We could do it one on one and in the bigger picture, as a group.”

Being the first Star Trek female captain in a series was important and the success of Janeway was not just due to female fans, but to men accepting a female captain. “I’ve always felt that Paramount was so very brave to do that because there was a lot of money on the line, and we could have really tanked,” said Mulgrew. “If men had chosen to turn me off altogether we could have tanked very quickly, and then they would have had to scramble and get a man to do the whole thing. But enough men said, “Let’s give her a shot.” And that told me it was time, the right time, because that’s how you assess everything in a culture, if men can come along for the difficult part of the ride. And they did. They gave me a tough time for a season and a half, and then they said, ‘She can do it.’ But, definitely, it was time in the history of television and in the history of the world. That’s one of the great achievements of my life, that I got to play Janeway.”

Over the seven year run of the show, Mulgrew feels that her Janeway matured. “She grew up,” said Mulgrew. “I’d say she grew up considerably. She deepened. She hardened. She got tough in space. The losses she endured both galvanized and hurt her. So that conflict was always in Janeway. Her relationships deepened. She found love in space, and I don’t think she’d ever truly found that before. She loved Tuvok (Tim Russ) and Chakotay (Robert Beltran) and all of her crew very, very deeply. There was loneliness, too. The sharp edges of loneliness, I think, were very much in play for Janeway. And that made the ultimate sacrifice that much more delicious. The admiral sacrificed her life so that the captain could persevere. That’s who I really was as Janeway, and I tried, always, to show that conflict.”

Actors are usually outgoing types and as expected, Mulgrew admits to being an extrovert, but she admits that she is also an introvert. “I’d say that my personality is extroverted,” she said. “I’m actually in equal measures an extrovert and an introvert. Socially extroverted. Curious. Generous. Strong. Willful. Happy. By in large. And then there’s the flip side. But we won’t get into that!”

Although Mulgrew works in drama, and is drawn professionally to those who throw themselves into their work wholeheartedly, what she would like in her private life is strength and stability, but no drama please. “I am drawn to a disciplined personality, I am very disciplined,” she said. “I’m drawn to humor.  But I’m drawn to someone who loves the work and wants to completely immerse themselves. And I’m very drawn to talent. I don’t have any friends who aren’t talented, do you know what I mean? I love talent. I love goodness, so if that element is present as well, that’s the icing on the cake. In my private life it’s a little different. I’m increasingly – you’ll laugh at me – I’m increasingly drawn to a real alpha personality, who can … sort of take care of me, since I’ve never, ever had that. A warm, but big, almost powerful, I’d say, personality. And devoted, but balanced. No highs, no lows – I don’t need it. I’ll take that when I go to work! In my private life I want somebody there who’s constant.”

In spite of her dislike of drama in her personal life, Mulgrew admits to being a bit of a drama magnet. “My life is always fraught” she said. ” My father said something to me which I will share with you, because it’s true:  When I was ten, maybe twelve years old, he said, ‘You’re a catalyst for drama. You’re a lightning rod for it! This room was perfectly fine, and there were twelve people in it. You walked in – within five minutes there was chaos. It’s something you do. It’s just – you stir it up!’ And it is true wherever I go, I manage to stir it up. And I don’t know why, but I do! So that’s … that’s always … been equally fun and troubling.”

Asked what real life experiences or people, fictional or not, she drew on in her role as Captain Janeway, Mulgrew said that it wasn’t just one person but a combination of people, including herself. “It’s an often asked question,” said Mulgrew, “but it’s seldom the case that one draws on any one. One draws on a composite. It’s what I draw from my imagination, from my own personality. From my mother, from women I know in authoritative positions. It’s what I’ve always said about Janeway – that kind of a character emerges as a love affair. When you know you’re going to play somebody for seven years you have to tap into things that you like and trust about yourself as a leader, because the audience will see through it very quickly. So I think that my warmth, my capacity for love, my allegiance, again my curiosity, my discipline – all those things stood me in good stead. And they just translated into Janeway in the end, do you know?  Also I think she had a grace … I loved her grace. Always gracious. To the end. Even to the Borg Queen as she was taking her down, right?”