‘Plymouth’ Takes a Shot at Moon Living : Television: Disney’s $8-million pilot finally will be aired after a year in network limbo.

Two years ago, Wendell Mendell, a planetary scientist at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, was recruited by Hollywood as technical consultant on “Plymouth,” an elaborate $8-million TV pilot that Walt Disney Television was making for ABC about the first human settlement on the moon.

“I travel around the country, and I still get asked about ‘Plymouth’ two or three times a week,” Mendell said. “When (production) was going on, I referred to ‘Plymouth’ in talks that I gave at aerospace meetings. Now, wherever I go, people ask me, ‘Whatever happened to that TV show?’ I say, ‘Damned if I know.’ ”

After a year in television limbo, “Plymouth” will finally touch down Sunday at 9 p.m. In the scientific epic, starring Cindy Pickett and Dale Midkiff, a small community is relocated to a mining colony on the moon by the company responsible for a chemical spill that destroyed their town on Earth.

About this time a year ago, when ABC was trying to decide on its fall lineup, the producers of “Plymouth” were sure that their’s would be one of the hottest new shows for the network. After all, it was loaded with the best space gadgetry money could buy and visual effects and set designs suggested by some of the top minds in NASA.

So it came as a shock to the producers when ABC announced its new schedule and “Plymouth” was left marooned on the moon.

“ABC was acting, right up until the moment they said they didn’t want it, like it was one of the most promising shows they had,” said writer and producer Lee David Zlotoff, who is now developing TV projects at Columbia Studios. “For whatever reason, they lost interest. And I wasn’t able to do anything to resuscitate that interest.”

Constructed on three massive sound stages at the Culver Studios, the sets used in “Plymouth” were based on first-hand information from artists and design experts in spaceships, lunar-based architecture and lunar life-support systems.

What’s surprising is that ABC waited so long to schedule “Plymouth,” considering that the network contributed about $3.5 million toward its production. ABC, however, reports that it is not unusual for the network to hold on to a TV movie for a year or more before airing it. But one question still nags the producers: Why didn’t “Plymouth” get picked up as a TV series in the first place?

“The most frustrating element in all of this,” production associate Rick Singer said, “is when we first screened ‘Plymouth’ for both Disney and ABC out here in Los Angeles, both screenings went incredibly well. We were on top of the world. We were really riding this huge wave of enthusiasm and encouragement right up until the final moment. It could have been delusions of grandeur, but I don’t think so.”

ABC’s only official comment: “It just didn’t meet our needs.”

Although the pilot had a lavish budget, ABC and Disney’s costs would have been about normal had it gone to series, Zlotoff said, because it was co-funded by the Italian media company RAI-Uno, which retains foreign distribution rights.

The studio reportedly believed in the project so much that Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, after the initial screening, gave Zlotoff more money to reshoot some scenes.

“I don’t know what happened to it,” Katzenberg said. “I know I liked it. I know it was well done.”

One Disney executive who was attached to “Plymouth” suggested story weaknesses were at fault.

“All the problems that I had with the project from day one were in the script,” said the executive, who requested anonymity. “You can make a high-tech, scientifically accurate movie with beautiful sets and lots of special effects, but if you have problems with the story, forget it.”