David Marciano explained in a 1995 LA Times article on the series that the dead caribou seen in the pilot was a real caribou that they killed for use in filming. The Inuit people told the producers that they killed the caribou and did not use it for it's true purpose and that unless they had a proper burial for the caribou, the show would be cursed. Marciano then explained that the show was then cursed with such incidents as a plane use for production crashing and a special effects explosion nearly blowing up a location (the El Mocambo rock club). So the producers went back and gave the caribou a proper burial.
Originally, CBS intended this episode to be a stand-alone TV Movie. However, when ratings of the movie were pretty good, they decided to start production of a full-blown television series.
Kevin Rushton makes his first appearance in this episode playing the guy in the bar who threatens the boys with a bottle. He went on to play various characters throughout the show's history.
The scene where the Inuit Hunter has a conversation with Constable Fraser about the caribou population decrease was filmed at Moraine Lake in Alberta's Banff National Park.
The poem that Fraser was reciting at the end of the episode Victora's Secret part 2, as he lay on the train platform is "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins.