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Plymouth (1991)

 
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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:17 pm    Post subject: Plymouth (1991) Reply with quote

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"Plymouth" was a SF TV-movie pilot created by Lee David Zlotoff ("MacGyver" 1985~1992).

It was first broadcast on ABC on May 26, 1991 and a Walt Disney production.

Synopsis } Plymouth is a "all-American" town located in the Pacific North West whose economy is based upon logging and mining.

Tragically, in a Love-Canal-style disaster (a severe radiation leak) occurs at a factory managed by the UNIDAC Corporation.

UNIDAC attempts to compensate the survivors and their losses in Plymouth by making them an offer to relocate to the company's Moon colony where they operate a struggling mining colony.

The majority of the town's occupants accept the proposition and name their new colony Plymouth after their former town.

This was an impressive an intelligent TV-movie that should have been picked up as a weekly TV series.

The production values were excellent. No surprise as this was one of the most expensive SF TV-Movie/Pilots made at that time.

The producers attempted to do this in a scientifically accurate manner while presenting compelling drama with the colonists survival in a hostile environment.

This was a show going for a more realistic approach. It did not appear that "Plymouth" was going to go in for such SF TV show tropes such as alien civilizations or space craft, other worlds, time travel, parallel universes and so forth.

I would like to have seen how such a premise would have developed while keeping its roots in a more reality-based concept.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 13, 2021 2:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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I've never heard of this TV movie, Mike! Thanks for posting this fine review. Cool

Fortunately YouTube has the full movie, so I look forward to watching it.


______________________ Plymouth (1991)


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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Apr 17, 2023 11:27 am; edited 1 time in total
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Krel
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 13, 2021 4:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I remember when this was coming on, and I was anxious to see it. Unfortunately, the local ABC affiliate decided what we really needed to see was the Billy Graham Crusade special. It was usually the local NBC affiliate that showed the Billy Graham specials, and unlike the NBC affiliate, the ABC affiliate did not broadcast the bumped show later that night.

I missed more programs I wanted to see because of the Billy Graham Crusades. Laughing

David.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 13, 2021 10:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think you will enjoy it, Bruce.

I did wonder just how exactly the creator was going to execute the series on a weekly basis should it have been picked by ABC.

Since it was going to be much more reality-based than something like "Space:1999," "Plymouth" would not be relying on the more fantastical SF elements like we saw in "Space:1999."

I just assume that someone has a solid vision for their concept and has well thought out ideas for it.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 13, 2021 10:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I downloaded it yesterday and it really is a decent film. Much more believable than Space: 1999, although the special effects were not as well executed.
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 8:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

WIKIPEDIA.

Plymouth was funded by: ABC Television, the Walt Disney Company, and Rai uno radiotelevisione.

Lockheed acted as technical advisors.

The budget was $8,000,000 with ABC providing $3,500,000.

The production finished in 1990 and remained unaired for a year.

Despite enthusiasm from ABC executives and Walt Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, ABC declined to purchase Plymouth as a weekly television show saying "It just didn't meet our needs."
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Note: Sheesh! Even with the "enthusiasm" of ABC and Disney, Plymouth failed to sell. Makes me wonder who had the power at ABC to pull the plug on Plymouth?

Kind of depressing that so many execs and higher-ups can be solidly behind a production and it still can get snuffed out.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 06, 2023 9:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Starlog #155.

The Plymouth Moon Colony is a huge set that meanders through three soundstages at Culver Studios. Based on current ideas from NASA consultants and private space design firms, it is a reasonably accurate depiction of how Americans would be living on the Moon today, if manned lunar exploration hadn't stopped with the Apollo program.

At one end of a stage that was once used to film Citizen Kane and King Kong is a barren landscape with undulating hills of greyish white sand. Two lunar dune buggies are pulled to one side. A short step behind one of the craggy lunar peaks --- that aren't quite the miles away they appear to be --- is the beginning of a long winding walkway that takes you past hoses, stores and office buildings built out of volcanic looking rock. Massive stone work creates bridges, walls and even display shelves in the general store. Some walls are melted into a frozen flowstone that looks as if it were carved by intense heat.

In striving to make Plymouth the most factual and technologically accurate show about space ever developed for television, writer/director/producer Lee David Zlotoff rejects the popular notion that science gets in the way of drama.

"As far as Plymouth is concerned, the more realistic we become, the more interesting and dramatic the material is. In our story, a small logging town in the Pacific Northwest has been rendered uninhabitable by a toxic accident. Rather than go their own separate ways and abandon their community, the townspeople vote to remain together and accept an offer to become the first settlement and mining operation on the Moon."

Zlotoff emphasizes that Plymouth is not a man vs. technology show in which the drama arises via a series of technological disasters, but rather focuses on the dynamics of people working together to build a life for themselves in the harsh and dangerous environment of our next frontier. "Because you're on the Moon," Zlotoff explains, "certain ideas and standards that you take for granted on Earth, change drastically here.

"In our first story, Cindy Pickett, who plays the lead character Addy Mathewson, the town physician, becomes pregnant. If she chooses to have her child on the Moon, the community is morally bound on some level to stay with her, because, in all likelihood, a child raised in the one-sixth gravity field of the Moon can never go back to Earth. The community will be committed to the Moon; now they can never just evacuate the base and return to Earth."
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 11:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Starlog Number 155

Lee David Zlotoff: "So, for our purposes, not only does science not get in the way, it provides unique material for exciting stories. Then, too, space-based entertainment is technically driven: It's about spaceships, robots and laser guns. This really about people. It's about frontier survival."

"On Plymouth, human beings have the opportunity to create their own world from scratch. What choice do they make? What are our values? Is it important that our children be able to go back to Earth?"

Plymouth is the first international co-production of Walt Disney Television, RAI-Uno Radiotelevisione Italiana. It will air on ABC in the U.S. and play theatrically in Europe.

Because this is much more than just another TV pilot, Plymouth features extraordinary production values and special FX, including a highly detailed lunar landscape, Moon base, mining and agricultural operations --- all researched and designed for authenticity with close consultation of leading space experts, astronauts and N.A.S.A. scientists.

It was the task of production designer Michael Baugh to transform the information generated by the producer's team of technical advisers into practical movie sets.

"The Plymouth base is tucked into the shadow of the southern rim of the crater Pythagorus, states Baugh. "The temperatures on the Moon's surface range from -260 degrees F to +270 degrees F. In order to protect your base from such extreme temperatures and from the dangers of solar radiation, you need to tuck it into shadow somewhere. One way is to bury the base about 10 or 12 feet below the surface. But that's not very attractive from our point-of-view, dramatically, and I don't think people living below there would care for it very much. Instead, we've tucked the base into the shadowed rim of a very polar crater. Up on the crater's rime are a series of solar collectors used to supply the base's power and light. The light is piped down with fiber optics, so we can, in effect, turn the sunlight off and on, maintaining a normal 24-hour cycle."

The basic look of the lunar town was determined by asking the question: How would you build if you only had lunar materials to work with? "We evolved these five by six foot concrete blocks not unlike the concrete blocks that you see as the basic building materials on Earth, except that on the Moon, they're bigger. In only one-sixth gravity, two workers can lift this huge block to put it in place."

"There are glass windows, because it's very easy to make glass on the Moon. There are a lot of silicates lying around and glass can be made very strong when it's manufactured in a vacuum. Again, we make it oversized on the Moon; we make two-foot square bricks instead of normal eight-inch squares."


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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2023 6:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Plymouth's creator, Lee David Zlotoff (whose past TV credits include Murphy's Law, MacGyver, Hill Street Blues and Remington Steele) has something of a unique attitude for SF-TV. "Most space shows want to answer questions," he says. "I really like the idea of doing a show that poses questions---probably without answers."

"One of the things that I thought was so profound about 2001 is that it posed a whole lot of questions and one of the things that was so disappointing about 2010 was that it attempted to answer them. The answers are never as interesting as the questions."

"The tendency of the network is to say, 'No, you should answer all the questions---the audience should be left completely satisfied.' But I don't want to satisfy the audience, I want to invigorate them. I want to challenge them."

"The more research we did and the more we learned about being in space, the more we realized that there must be pre-existing human relationships that work in order for people to function in such a uniquely hostile environment. You can't take a group of strangers, or even people who trained together, and put them in a situation like that. Over a period of time, it breaks down. A transient community of workers will not work in the long run---you need family bonds, community bonds."

"It has taken us 20 years to come to the realization that it must be community driven if space exploration is to really work."
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