I don’t know why this story appealed to me. Probably because I used to watch Star Trek: Voyager and enjoyed watching Kate Mulgrew forcefully exclaim, “Chakotay!” every ten minutes or so. Then I spotted Kate on Orange is the New Black and discovered she can be funny too. She’s great as the prison cook, Red. (These are photos of Kate at the PaleyFest premiere of OITNB‘s second season. Both Taylor Schilling and Laura Prepon are back for another round of commissary spending.)
Well the good times aren’t rolling forever when it comes to Kate. I’ve been trying to figure out whether she really needed a gig or believes in the new documentary that she narrates. I assume she was hired because she served as a Captain on a Star Trek show, and William Shatner wasn’t interested in this gig. The gist of this doc, called The Principle, is that some people still vehemently believe that the Earth is the center of the universe. It would follow that the Sun and all planets and galaxies revolve around the Earth. This is a crazy stance that goes back past the days of Copernicus.
What’s weird about this documentary’s existence is that noted scientists Michio Kaku, Max Tegmart and Lawrence Krauss are said to make appearances. In the trailer, Kate is heard saying, “Everything we think we know about our universe is wrong.” The funding for this film helps explain its controversial stance. Robert Sungenis produces the movie — he’s previously made terrible statements that deny the Holocaust ever happened, and so on. You can read more about Sungenis at Raw Story.
What I want to know is why Kate Mulgrew signed onto this project. Did she realize beforehand how “out there” this documentary would be? Plus all of these experts have supposedly lent their name to the cause too. This is so bizarre. Here’s that trailer. The graphics remind me of those crazy CO$ propaganda videos. Oh Kate.
Photos courtesy of WENN
….good grief this is just incorrect science. Do people still believe that the world is flat too? And this guy sounds charming by the way. Why in the world would she involve herself with this project. She appears in the Star Trek rebooted movies, has Voyager residuals, and appears on OITNB
Don’t be so hard on her. Clearly she’s been living under a rock as well as her parents and generations back.
At least wee have a steady show back on TV like Cosmos that can counter this incorrect info on a weekly basis.
Maybe she needed the check? Is it possible she did this before the success of OITNB?
Sherri from The View thought the Earth was flat and that Jesus predates everything.
As someone also notes at the bottom of the page, Kate Mulgrew has come out with a statement saying she was misled into providing the narration:
http://www.geekosystem.com/kate-mulgrew-not-geocentrist/
Official statement:
“I understand there has been some controversy about my participation in a documentary called THE PRINCIPLE. Let me assure everyone that I completely agree with the eminent physicist Lawrence Krauss, who was himself misrepresented in the film, and who has written a succinct rebuttal in SLATE. I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism. More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that. I apologize for any confusion that my voice on this trailer may have caused. Kate Mulgrew”
All wrong! For crying out loud…the SUN revolves around Gwyneth.
ahahah I would watch that documentary.
Ha! You win, Skyblue.
Ahhhhhh, I knew it!! 🙂
OMG HAHAHAHAH
Perfect!
Nah, the sun revolves around Goopy and Beyoncé: it’s a double star system.
Oh Kate. I’m really hoping she doesn’t believe this. This woman is one of my childhood heroes.
Well, she did spend a lot of time in that Delta Quadrant. Perhaps Seven of Nine tinkered with her thinking process?
Ugh. I just can’t with some people.
Let’s be honest, she’s just there for the paycheck.
I sure hope so 🙁
I don’t know if her just showing up for the pay is that much of an improvement in this situation. She’s actively advancing notions that have no basis in truth and adding to the already burgeoning ignorance of the populace. I can’t believe that 50 years post my grade school days we are STILL having to defend evolution.
Revolting.
Is not believeng in the evolution an American thing? I’ve never encountered so many people who don’t believe in it in any other country.
Bless her.
The actual scientists appear to be there to talk about why our planet is hospitable to life – I assume that they didn’t look into the premise of this film? Which they should have done, of course. Now they look foolish and are being used to promote a crazy idea.
What really disturbs me is that apparently 1/4 of my fellow Americans believe in geocentrism. Sad.
On some level, I suppose, geo-centrism makes some sense if you’re not scientifically inclined. That’s why it was so believable for so long. If you just stand outside and watch the sky, it sure does look like everything is moving around the Earth.
The problem now is that “every opinion is considered valid.” People don’t realize that you need a serious background in math and science to understand exactly WHY geo-centrism is wrong. But now you have a lot of people who think that their personal observations are on par with actual scientific observations, and that’s what gets us in this predicament in the first place.
A part of the problem is morons like Sherri Shepherd on TV five days a week saying things like the earth may be flat, and there is no religion older than Christianity. I’m shocked how the conservative Christian anti-science crowd is able to keep at this anti-intellectual stuff. It seeps into our politics and increases the push to teach Creationism as an alternative to Evolution in public schools.
Of course every conservative, neo-Christian opinion is valid! The only non-valid opinions are the ones voiced by those awful anti-American Christ-hating liberals.
On a serious note, the fact that people can so readily dismiss facts to suit their needs is scary. Like blood curdling scary.
🙁
The problem isn’t that every opinion is valid. The problem is that when you challenge certain people’s opinions they cry foul because you’re attacking their religious beliefs. Then a conversation that should be about fact and not fact becomes about personal attacks and persecution. My standard comeback to sensitive Christians is, “Just because you don’t believe in gravity doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to you.”
Algernon,
I don’t believe in gravity. God individually tethers us to the planet earth. Duh!
😉
@Algernon, spot on. On the one hand they want to spout their religious POV as science, until you question it and then it becomes all about religion. Can’t have it both ways.
As far as denying the Jewish Holocaust of WWII, where do they think all those people went? The rapture? Vacation? Mars?
No, you don’t “need a serious background in math and science” to understand that planets orbit stars. You don’t even need to abandon your faith if you’re religious. Newton had a profound belief in god but that didn’t stop him figuring out and accepting how gravity works.
Simon, I was referring to the point that geocontrism was considered correct largely based upon observation. That’s why it made so much sense for so long. Even today, if you or I just sat outside and watched the movement of the sky, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that everything is moving around us. Why do you think the breakdown of the model really started with the advent of telescopes and such? Because it was then that we could finally see things in a different way. Copernicus proposed it before, but his model was discounted because it failed to yield accurate predictions. If that hadn’t happened and we still needed to rely solely on observation? You and I could very well likely STILL be learning it all wrong. You can make that presumption because you know it to be true now, but that’s only because really smart people put in the legwork for you. That’s easy.
It goes both ways – just because you don’t beleive in God doesn’t mean he didn’t create the universe. Science has become religion for many. Dare to question evolution in school and you’ll experience a passionate if not angry response. Odd, you don’t get those responses when you question math or English. I see no problem teaching both creationism and evolution as theories. Neither has been proven factual and before you jump all over me with your claims of evolutionary fact, I hope you have substance to back it because even the scientific community cannot back it up. However, it has been highly accepted as fact and so it is taught as such. Research what it would have taken for the universe as we know it to be created via the big bang theory. Even scientists can’t explain how it happened or why and more importantly how each something so complex as a cell came to be created in it’s entirety and working as a whole. There is no explantion. A good analogy would be that a tornado hit a junk yard and somehow a perefectly built car came out of it. That is less plausible than creationism.
@jenniferjustice. It’s called science class for a reason. It’s one version of one theory of how the world is created and exists within a particular scope of parameters.
Creationism can be taught in a religious school of your choice. I got those lessons in Sunday school, took it how I wanted to understand it and moved on with making sure I knew the lessons for both. Growing up, I took Sunday school as this happened and my science class that this is the how it happened. The two ideas weren’t exclusive or no compatible of each other.
The problem with your stance is which version of creation do we teach? All or none? Because if it’s just one version, then it’s bias based on your preference of theory based on your preference of religion. Which is not cool.
Part of the problem, like you mentioned upthread, is that many people look at the 2 as mutually exclusive when that is not necessarily the case. Teaching evolution in a science classroom makes sense as there is quantifiable data that can be looked at to illustrate the theory of evolution. Creationism, not so much. But the existence of evolution doesn’t have to disqualify the existence of a higher power as well.
I always like to think of it this way… if i were to drop a book onto the ground, would you say it fell because of gravity, or would you say it fell because God reached his hand down and pushed it to the floor? Science and religion do not have to disqualify one another, but what we teach must be quantifiable.
I wen’t to Catholic religion classes for 12 years and the Evolution or the fact that the Earth circles the Sun have never ever been questioned.,
The only way I could understand this from a scientific perspective, and therefore understand the acclaimed physicists that are present is the “knowable universe”. That is, we can only detect light from 14 billion light years away in all directions, since the universe is only 14 billion years old. Any light outside of that sphere would be too far away to detect, but that certainly doesn’t make it nonexistent.
Meh, I tried. It’s BS.
I think it’s based on the fact that we don’t know for sure how the universe is shaped or how big it is and if there are plural universes in play, then we don’t know where we fit into it. It might also play on the question that just because we are not centrally located within the known universe or our galaxy, doesn’t mean it wasn’t all built around the Earth in order for the Earth to sustain life (we may not be centrally located, but we were the central idea.) I also read a bizarre theory that everything we see is backwards, like in a mirror, so if we sense we are rotating around the sun, the opposite would be that the sun is rotating around us. I feel nauseaus.
And you want to have THAT taught in schools.
Religious belief is not rational. I know, because I am a religious person. Irrationality does not belong in schools.
As someone who mostly fits the description of “conservative Christian” but who is not part of the anti-science crowd, I just wanted to share that my mind went immediately to that anti-Islam film that was made a couple years ago. Remember how everyone was mad at the makers and the actors? Then it turned out that scenes were shot to give one context to the actors’ lines, then after they finished their jobs and went on to other things, the producer/director cut the film to give a context that was 180 degrees different – a context that was ignorant and hateful. One actress says she still gets death threats. Perhaps the same shameful thing happened in this case.
NOOO- have loved Kate forever! Why is she taking $$ from this odious person? That being said, sincerely hope the scientists are being asked the same questions. Prob not tho- the downside of fame!
*points and laughs*
Looks like big bucks were involved. The trailer is misleading – saying things like “the Earth is special” is pretty harmless. Maybe she didn’t do her research and didn’t realize she was involved with serious cray-cray? Either that or she’s a total sellout!
Can’t wait for my favorite nerd and scientific genius, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson to get ahold of this foolishness.
Lol, he’d rip into this like me into birthday cake. He’s awesome.
OK, Kate Mulgrew being involved in this threw me, but Michio Kaku too? Say it ain’t so 🙁
Yeah I’m sure this will pack the theaters, as so many documentaries do these days. This is just some obscure nonsense no one will ever see.
Well, that’s a bit of early morning insanity.
I never really watched her show, but I have heard rumors of her not being very kind to another cast member. Though there’s 2 sides to every story.
If the Sun revolves around the earth, then there are White Walkers hiding out in my back garden.
Yikes. I’ll reserve judgment for now as it would be possible to deceive someone doing a voiceover. Of course that would also open the filmmakers up to a hell of a lawsuit so…
Good thing she’s not piloting the Enterprise in real life.
Haha! CRASH! Oops, maybe I miscalculated…
The current one has been retired.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)
I don’t know why people are surprised when some actors turn out to be total morons. Just because they are famous, get their pictures in the paper, and earn tons of money for reading words, written by a writer, while being told where to stand by a director, does not make them intelligent human beings!
Yes, and I think it’s worse today most actors and pop stars are morons; Read a bio of Richard Burton, he was amazingly well read and came from a difficult background, but he was also from a different generation and mold than today’s so-called stars.
Well, if we’re speaking relatively, it’s sort of true. For every single observer, that observer appears to be the center of the universe. Everything happens relative to the fixed position of the observer. If you are sitting in a moving car, the car appears to be stationary while the road moves under you. If you are standing on the road, the car appears to be moving while the road is stationary. Same as when you stand on the Earth. Relative to you, the sun, moon, all the planets in the solar system, the galaxy, and the entire universe are revolving around you as the fixed point in space.
Of course this all falls apart when you shift that fixed observer point to something outside yourself, say another person or the space station or even one of those drones sent into deep space. We are all both the center of the universe and yet only a tiny little dot revolving around countless other dots all at the same time. Isn’t it grand?
/early morning philosophy
I agree. If the universe is truly infinite, then there’s just as good a chance of saying any given point is the center as any other. However, the Earth, while it can be said it is center of the universe, still goes around the Sun.
Oh Janeway, honey, no.
She will forever be Mary Ryan to me.
I hope she is doing this for the money.
The anti science thing is bad enough, but working for a Holocaust Denier? This may sink her career.
And, I doubt she’s starving: she has had a healthy career since her 20s, and also does a lot of voice work. She also lives in Ohio most of the year.
I ignored my beloved Captain Janeway’s anti choice stance, but this is too much. So disappointed… and appalled.
You’re friggin kidding? Perhaps this isn’t an accident. Perhaps she knew exactly who she was working for and is okay with it.
Look at the guy who bankrolled it: he’s a very outspoken and proud anti-Semite and Holocaust Denier. He’s so horrible, his Bishop told him to quit connecting his website and beliefs to the Church.
I know she has some conservative social stances (ie 100% anti choice), but all of this is way beyond that.
http://www.geekosystem.com/kate-mulgrew-not-geocentrist/
Oh thank goodness
I watched Kate on Ryan’s Hope, one of my favorites.
@Bedhead — the scientists have been VERY public about this the last day, including on the film’s FB page: they were told they were being interviewed for a REAL science documentary, and then their interviews were quote-mined. So, basically, they were Punked.
Kate Mulgrew just issued a statement on her FB to the same effect. She says the project was misrepresented to her.
*In my best Ygritte voice* Kate Mulgrew, you know nothing.
Perfect
Lawrence Krauss is a brilliant physicist and cosmologist. I can assure you he does not believe the sun revolves around the earth. Krauss is also a renowned atheist. So, no, he is not on board with the subject of this so-called documentary.
He is already saying the footage of him in the documentary was misused. He isn’t taking legal action, however, because he doesn’t want to give this travesty of a film any more publicity than it is already getting.
Anyone ever see that movie Idiocracy? It’s becoming more true every day!
No, what’s it about???
I’m actually watching that right now! lol
Omg yes! Everyday we get closer and closer to that future!!!
Sigh. Here we go again, with the “scientists, with all their silly FACTS and experiments and postulations, know nothing because GAWD told me different, and if I SCARE you into believing my fairy tales than you will give me money.” THIS is why the aliens refuse to talk to us, and just visit us sporadically to see if we have progressed/advanced enough to earn admittance to the Universe. 😉 People, shows, statements, and political “leaders” (cough cough) still insisting that superstition, and not science, are viable ways to conduct the business of being human will literally be the death of us all. It’s just a shame we had to take out so many other worthwhile species in our lemming-like rush to commit suicide.
Ugh. From other things I know of her, I’ve felt for a long time that she wasn’t worthy of the Star Trek mantle. Yes, I’m a nerd, and I have standards, and no, she doesn’t meet them.
Jean Luc Picard was the better captain.
so, there is an article on Slate written by one of the scientists re this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/04/08/lawrence_krauss_on_ending_up_in_the_geocentricism_documentary_the_principle.html
“I have no recollection of being interviewed for such a film, and of course had I known of its premise I would have refused. So, either the producers used clips of me that were in the public domain, or they bought them from other production companies that I may have given some rights to distribute my interviews to, or they may have interviewed me under false pretenses, in which case I probably signed some release. I simply don’t know.”
and to add, Ms. Mulgrew posted this on her facebook page, which I think is a statement she put out to the public after this sh*t hit the fan…
“I understand there has been some controversy about my participation in a documentary called THE PRINCIPLE. Let me assure everyone that I completely agree with the eminent physicist Lawrence Krauss, who was himself misrepresented in the film, and who has written a succinct rebuttal in SLATE. I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism. More importantly, I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary. I was a voice for hire, and a misinformed one, at that. I apologize for any confusion that my voice on this trailer may have caused. Kate Mulgrew”
so, she was duped, it sounds like. I smell litigation…
I’m actually relieved.
Glad that’s cleared up. Has she issued a similar statement explaining why Voyager sucked so hard? I’ve been waiting for that for the better part of twenty years.
would it have killed a B to wear some hosiery?