Or that's what I'm guessing the pitch for this show was.Back in the 70's, one of the biggest shows was in fact "The Love Boat" which was a series based on a movie by the same name.
Supertrain looked like it had potential but NBC screwed it up big time. I remember seeing promos with train racing out of the Grand central tunnel all the time and watching Express to Terror then it disappeared.
One of the reasons I remember 'Supertrain' was - it was *never* shown on British TV! Actually, this was quite a scandal at the time because the BBC (our public broadcasting channel, funded by a license fee charged to every household with a TV set) paid a huge sum to screen this before it even premiered in the USA.
NBC seemed to have thought with this show....Let's WOW them with FX, who cares about things like plot, story, characters, lines that the actors say, and so on.
In a way Supertrain was ahead of its era. It debuted during the malaise era of Jimmy Carter, President of the USA from 1977 to 1981.
If you weren't watching TV back in 1978-1979, you can't know how much hype NBC subjected the public to over this inane piece of fluff. For months before it premiered, at 10 minute intervals during prime time, there were commercials about this supposedly innovative series.
Sure it was the 1970's and good taste took a vacation for a few years, but Supertrain did a decent job in providing escapist fare. As a high school junior, at the time, I looked forward to what else NBC might toss against the great broadcasting wall and pray stuck.
