Supercarrier

This really might have made it. Supercarrier was an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the megahit Topgun. It could have been done, note how well JAG has done over its run. Where the network messed up was instead of trying to concentrate on the action, it tried to make a nightime soap on the water. The US Navy took one look at the pilot which featured a female officer sleeping around and a male pilot altering his records to allow him to keep flying and said "No thank you" and withdrew its support. Kind of hard to have a show about an aircraft carrier with no aircraft carrier. End of show.

The show was obviously trying to fill the gaps between commercials for people needing a Top Gun fix. I saw two minutes of one episode to confirm this. In the episode the carrier had to sail through a narrow canal, and the fear was that the enemy could be anywhere in the jungle below. Worse was that the jungle was so close that the carrier's guns couldn't depress far enough to engage them, should they appear. So the crew was just standing around in dread. I guess "hoping while dreading" can be considered a military tactic, right up there with praying and crossing fingers. I can't see how that kind of writing could engage any viewers over the age of nine. The show seemed to belong on Saturday mornings. Maybe if there was a red LED going back and forth between the bridle catchers, and the carrier's AI would converse with the crew. These are sarcastic suggestions alluding to Knight Rider.

I will never understand why Hollywood half bakes a show. If one wants to make a show about naval aviation, get people who know something about the topic, write dialog that people in the military would actually say, get the conops close to correct, and don't have any "big red levers that will destroy the reactor" or any other "the ship is in great danger again this week" formula.

Excellent as in excellent to work on. I was story editor on the series, but not the pilot episode. We shot mainly on a stage in Santa Clarita with exteriors at the Long Beach Naval shipyard. The Navy tried to censor most things (sailors gambling, having family lives, drinking in bars, etc), tried to rewrite all the pilot dialogue so no one could understand it and the Navy Guy (An Admiral named Mike) liked to also send jokes over. We had a Navy man as a consultant on set so we could get things right (like funerals at sea) and of course Captain Dale Dye was one of the stars, so he could consult somewhat militarily.

The Navy pulled the plug when we did a show that took place in an unknown country in Central America. We had sold jets to their dictator and his brother, who was getting guns from Cuba, started an uprising against him and they flew our own jets against us. We did 2 more episodes the WGA strike hit and closed us down and when the strike was over 6 months later, we couldn't make it back. There were no bad guys like Saddam back then and the Navy refused to help.

I was an extra in a scene in the berthing compartment of the USS John F. Kennedy CV-67. It was a drug bust scene, it took forever to finish because the actor couldn't get the simple lines right. He kept messing them up, it took no less than 6-10 shots per scene to get it right, and then the director wanted to shoot it from 5 different angles. They filmed a ton of flight deck footage while we were out. If I remember right we left Norfolk and did "Doughnuts" for like 4 days just for this show to shoot. The crew was psyched to do the shoot, when they first got there. But after we saw the episodes no one was happy with the result. Another reviewer stated the fact, it was a good idea, but the Navy did not like how the characters portrayed the service.

the show was great even better than that wannabe movie top gun. it only had one flaw it told the truth and the navy just like always can't handle the truth. the only reason the navy pulled support for the show was that it showed people a side of navy life that the navy didn't want them to see the truth