Young Indiana Jones and the Phantom Train of Doom first aired in June, 1993 as just that – Young Indiana Jones and the Phantom Train of Doom. No mashing up of two episodes with dates in their titles although, when you watch it, there’s clearly two stories in play that switch over around the halfway mark, so the effect isn’t really any different to the Frankenstein combinations of all the Young Indy movies to date.
(To which end, like some of the other Young Indy movie titles, the ‘phantom train’ of the title only applies to the first half of the movie. The second half of the piece has absolutely nothing to do with it!)
We begin with Indy and Remy transferring within the Belgian army to East Africa. A comedy of errors sees them moving further and further away from where they are meant to be meeting their unit. This humour continues through the whole movie and while it might not be a full 180 degree turn from where we’ve been with the character in recent stories, it’s a noticeable shift and reasonably jarring to me.
The first of the two “episodes” is, for me, the better of what’s on offer. Indy and Remy continue to get increasingly lost trying to get to their unit, but finally fall in with the 25th (Frontiersmen) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers – a real group of older men fighting in WW1, nicknamed “The Old and the Bold”. One of the soldiers in this unit (both in real life and in the TV episode), is Frederick Selous, whom Indy met with Teddy Roosevelt in Passion for Life. Notably, Selous was the inspiration for the Allan Quatermain character in fiction. Extra notably, Selous is played in both Young Indiana Jones Chronicles outings by Paul Freeman who was René Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark. So it’s all wheels within wheels in this story.
A group from the battalion want to find a mobile German artillery piece which has been shelling a beachfront encampment led by the South African statesman and military leader Jan Smuts – bizarrely played with an English accent by Norman Rodway. The mind boggles. Indy is very reluctant to go along on the mission. Indeed, for much of this part of the story, Indy seems like a real stick in the mud, compared to the old men of the 25th. Obviously it’s to showcase that being old is just a state of mind, but it also means that – for most of the story – our hero seems less than enthusiastic, quite whiny, and appearing like he doesn’t want to be there. Yes, and like I said, this is the better of the two parts.
Because don’t get me wrong, while the script and some performances are a bit odd, the location work is great and the action scenes are well shot. With much of the finale taking place on rails, it actually reminded me of the prologue to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Not as good, of course, as this is 1990s television… but when you stop and consider that yes, this is 1990s television, it actually seems all the more extraordinary. I can’t think of other shows doing anything like this and I’m glad it exists.
Into the second part and, gosh, there isn’t a whole lot to say. The premise is that Selous tricks Indy into another Frontiersman adventure – capturing the German military mastermind, Colonel Paul Von Lettow-Vorbeck. As one blog puts it, “peasant disguises, a hot air balloon, a pride of lions, a giant termite snack and angry natives…” and I can’t say it better. The episode becomes one big chase sequence across the African savannah, ending with Indy, Remy, and the captured Colonel in a hot air balloon… that Indy machine guns to pieces trying to hit a fighter plane piloted by Margaret Trappe – the first female professional hunter in East Africa (not that you’d know this by just watching the episode), whom Indy and the Frontiersmen had a close encounter with earlier in the story, and are being pursued by.
At best I could say the scene is a callback to Henry Jones Sr. machine gunning the tail off the biplane in The Last Crusade… but can you have a ‘callback’ to something that has yet to happen, timeline wise? If it sounds bizarre and over-stuffed, it’s because it is bizarre and over-stuffed. Potentially there’s a frame of mind you could watch this in where it seems like a hell of an adventure, but I was just willing it to end.
As I mentioned earlier, some of this stuff is just so different to the adventures surrounding it. You think of what was going on in Trenches of Hell, for example, and you wonder if this is the same show. The best I can throw at this movie is 7/10 with the advice that the first part is much more watchable in general.
Indeed, with the way this was packaged as a movie from the start – even back in 1993 – I wonder if the producers noted that the episodes might be better served in a movie (particularly the second part), rather than screening them as individual stories? It’s hard to say as they’re obviously not the only ‘iffy’ episodes of this show, and other sub-par episodes were screened individually. But something caused this to go out in the second season as a movie, rather than two episodes. I’d actually love to know why!