Supertrain is an American science-fiction, adventure, drama television series that ran on NBC from February 7 to May 5, 1979. Nine episodes were made, including a two-hour pilot episode.
Premise
The series takes place on the
Supertrain, a
nuclear power,
high-speed rail that is equipped with amenities more appropriate to a
cruise ship. It has luxuries such as a swimming pool, shopping centers, a gym, a library, a medical center, and a
discotheque.
[ ] It is so big, it has to run on very broad-gauge
rail track. Though it had a rated top speed of , and cruised at , the train took 36 hours to go from New York City to Los Angeles, which would put the train's average speed around , slower than the moderately paced
Amtrak Acela Express and well below the speeds of bullet trains in Europe and Asia; however, the first few episodes establish that Supertrain does not go directly from New York to Los Angeles, stopping in
Chicago and
Denver, as well as an unnamed stop somewhere in
Texas.
Much like its contemporary, The Love Boat, the plots concerned the passengers' social lives, usually with multiple intertwining storylines. Supertrain was described in a 1979 Variety review, "It's a 'Love Boat' on wheels, which has yet to get on track."[Telefilm Review: Supertrain. (1979). Variety, (46), p.18.] Most of the cast of a given episode were guest stars. The production was elaborate, with huge sets and two high-tech model trains for outside shots.
Production troubles
Supertrain was the most expensive series ever aired in the United States at the time. The production was beset by problems, including a model train that crashed. NBC paid $10 million for a total of three sets of trains. A full-sized portion of the train with enormous passenger cars measuring was used mostly for
train station scenes. A model train at 1:9.6 scale was used for location exteriors using forced perspective, while a smaller train allowed for shooting on studio miniature sets.
While the series was heavily advertised during the 1978–79 season, it received poor reviews and low ratings, with 16.24 million viewers watching its premiere.
The two-hour premiere was out-rated by a two-hour special of ABC's
Charlie's Angels, and received a 21.8 rating and 32 share, ranking it 17th for the week.
[Weekly Rating Scorecard. (1979, February 14). Variety, 294(2), 68.] Despite attempts to salvage the show by replacing its producer and reworking the cast and the show's genre to a
sitcom-like format, and a timeslot change from Wednesdays at 8:00 pm to Saturdays at 10:00 pm, it went off the air after only three months. NBC, which had produced the show itself, with help from
Dark Shadows producer
Dan Curtis, was unable to recoup its losses from the high production costs. This, combined with the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics the following season (whose coverage NBC was to have carried, costing the network millions in advertising revenue), nearly bankrupted the network.
For these reasons,
Supertrain has been called one of the greatest television flops.
[ "7 Of The Most Expensive Flops In Television History: 1. Supertrain." www.businesspundit.com, January 31, 2010. Retrieved February 1, 2010.] The show finished 69th out of 114 shows during the 1978–79 season, with an average 15.7 rating and 25 share.
By the end of the series, the show had lost over half its audience, with only 7.08 million viewers watching the last episode.
Before the show aired in the U.S., NBC sold it directly to the BBC, the first foreign broadcaster to pick up the series. "For two runs, BBC reportedly coughed up more than $25,000 per hour episode, which if not a record series price in this market is close to it."['Supertrain' Sold to BCC Directly by NBC. (1979, January 31). Variety, 293(13), 39.] The BBC was planning to air Supertrain in the fall of 1979, after the series premiered in the U.S. in February. By selling the show to international markets, NBC hoped to offset its own development costs. After the failure of the series in the United States, the BBC never aired the show.
Reception
In 2002,
TV Guide ranked
Supertrain number 28 on its "50 Worst TV Shows of All Time" list.
In the May 19, 1979, edition of TV Guide, the show received criticism from Robert MacKenzie. He compared the futuristic train to his traditional ideas of a Pullman Company passenger car and describes the environment as "bigger, gaudier, and noisier, including the passengers."[MacKenzie, Robert. "Supertrain." TV Guide, 19 May 1979, p. 1. Fine Arts and Music Collection, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A1282359/PPFA?u=uga&sid=PPFA&xid=91d89e0b . Accessed 29 Apr. 2019.] He described the amenities of the train and the "marvel, cinematically" of the set design and train itself. Mackenzie found fault with the show's reliance on the extravagant train to wow the audience and the lack of character depth or entertaining plot. "When the early ratings proved disappointing, NBC took the series off the air for emergency surgery. The 'All New Supertrain' appeared April 14 looking remarkably like the old Supertrain", which shows NBC's attempts to fix the show's flaws midseason.
Supertrain was critiqued by the Telefilm Review in the February 9, 1979, edition of Variety. The article begins, "NBC's highly promoted new Supertrain series features a slick new train of tomorrow, with a script from yesterday...it seeks to overwhelm, but underwhelms, instead."
Episodes
Home media
The pilot was released on
VHS, as
Express to Terror in the US,
and
Super-Train in the UK. It was also released in Norway.
See also
-
Breitspurbahn — broad-gauge railway planned by Nazi Germany
-
Snowpiercer — A 2013 science-fiction film about a cruise ship-like train (with an aquarium and a swimming pool) that went around the world serving as the last resort of humanity in a new ice age
-
The Big Bus — A 1976 comedy film that follows the maiden cross-country trip of an enormous nuclear-powered bus
External links
-
Supertrain Unofficial Site Supertrain series information including episode guide and airdates.
-
Boxcutters ep 270 The Boxcutters podcast takes a look back at Supertrain (includes archive interview material).
-
Telehell ep 4 The Telehell Podcast looks at the history of the show, and covers the events of the Pilot episode
