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CLASSIC TV
THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES
Lessons in his-story…
1992-96 AVAILABLE ON DVD, DIGITAL
A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE
SOMME, EARLY AUGUST 1916 S2 1992
‘I think it’s very important for people to see in terms of understanding what it was like to fight in World War One,’ says Lucas of this relatively unflinching (for prime-time TV) episode detailing Indy’s experience of trench warfare while attached to a decimated Belgian unit during the Battle of the Somme.
A few years before George Lucas set about expanding a short piece of exposition from Return of the Jedi (1983) into a mixed-results movie trilogy, he had already tried his hand at a prequel to another blockbuster franchise.
Reportedly inspired by repeated inquiries from Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg about Indiana Jones’ formative years, Lucas conceived a television show exploring the character’s early life.
But unlike some brand extensions, this was no mere exercise in nostalgia bait. Instead, Lucas had a different ambition for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Befitting a character whose primary source of employment was as a professor of archaeology (even if his cinematic adventures tended to prioritise extracurricular exploits), Lucas’ chief desire was to use the show to educate audiences about world history.
To this end the show played like a small-screen Zelig (1983) with the young Indy – played by either Corey Carrier (ages eight-10) or Sean Patrick Flanery (ages 16-21) – travelling the world during the early decades of the 20th century and encountering such real-world historical personalities as T.E.
Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, Al Capone and Pablo Picasso. Shot on location across 35 countries, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was as lavish as any of Lucasfilm’s feature productions, with each episode costing in the region of $1.5m.
While the series attracted plenty of star power both in front of and behind the camera (Nicolas Roeg and Mike Newell both directed episodes) and numerous industry accolades (including six Emmys), when it came to viewers it just didn’t have the same pulling power as Indy’s cinematic adventures. Maybe the original non-sequential episodic approach to the series timeline was too off-putting for mainstream audiences. Or maybe they simply wanted (as Entertainment Weekly put it) ‘more whip-cracking and less lecturing’. Either way, the outcome was the same: ABC pulled the plug after two seasons, though the much smaller The Family Channel played home to four subsequent TV films.
And Lucas wasn’t entirely done with it. For its VHS release, the pioneering filmmaker oversaw a re-edit, using newly shot footage to pair individual episodes into feature-length films, now running in a chronological order and retitled The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. Perhaps the closest Lucas got to his educational Holy Grail, though, was the series of 94 documentaries commissioned to support the show on DVD, which would go on to be used as teaching aids by some educators.