Trivia / Supertrain

• Creator Backlash: NBC doesn't really like to talk about this show much. Though considering it almost wiped the network off the face of the planet, can we really blame them?
• Creator Killer: This show started Fred Silverman's NBC career on the wrong track right away, it eventually became a factor in derailing his NBC career completely, and it very nearly destroyed NBC itself. Silverman ended up becoming an independent producer, but would not produce a single hit show until 1986, when he teamed up with Dean Hargrove to produce Matlock.
• Distanced from Current Events: The premise of the show was that the train was nuclear-powered... less than two months before the Three-Mile Island meltdown. Positive thoughts about nuclear power may not have been foremost on most people's minds.
• Follow the Leader: A pretty shameless ripoff of The Love Boat, though being a mystery dramedy rather than a romantic comedy.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Like many in-house NBC shows from the 1977-81 doldrums, this one isn't available in any manner outside of old tapes. Surprisingly, somebody bothered to record all nine episodes to have aired, and these recordings were uploaded to YouTube.
• Playing Against Type: Dick Van Dyke plays an assassin in "And a Cup Of Kindness, Too".
• Referenced by...: This series ranks at #20 in the book What Were They Thinking? The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History, which takes several shots at Fred Silverman.
• Technology Marches On:
  • A proposed crosscountry mag-lev train would go coast-to-coast in a few hours.
  • New York to Chicago to Los Angeles is about 2700-2800 miles depending on exact routing chosen, etc. For reference, the faster bullet trains in Asia (Japan's Shinkansen and China's HSR) presently average about 140-160 MPH, stops included, so total travel time would probably land around 18-20 hours, meaning that heading westbound you could seriously hope to do a summer solstice daylight run.
• Troubled Production: At the time, it was one of the most expensive flops in television history. The series had elaborate sets and props and not helping matters was one of the trains crashing during production and having to be rebuilt (making it a "train wreck" in more than one way). NBC did all it could to salvage the series but people just weren't tuning in.
• What Could Have Been: The series was due to air in the UK on The BBC, but after its catastrophic failure on NBC they decided against it. Though the whole show never aired in the UK, the pilot movie was screened by ITV.

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