I’ve been wanting to start a re-watch of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for a long time and, last night, I pulled out my DVD sets and started the journey. I was doing this in the knowledge of the abomination George Lucas made of the series for its DVD release (the shorthand version being he had a wonderful series of 45 minute-ish episodes – the sweet spot for watching episodic TV – and yet he’d had the brainfart idea to squish episodes together to be “movies”). Yes, despite the fact episodes are vastly different from one installment to another, you now have to watch the content as movie-length, even though the effect is generally that the story will lurch violently halfway through – because the second half of the “movie” comes from a completely different episode. Utterly bizarre. Unwarranted. We go from perfect-length stories, to movies where the first and second half literally aren’t the same story.
(And it would be remiss if I didn’t mention here the Young Indy Restored channel on YouTube which obviously shares my preference for the episodes as they were originally transmitted. Not only does it return them to coherent stories with a start, middle, and end, but also returns the ‘bookends’ to the episodes – generally featuring George Hall as a 90-something year old Indiana Jones – interacting with a member of the public in some way, and reminiscing about his adventures which then leads into the story. It was cheesy, sure, and I guess that’s why it was cut, but I prefer the episodes with Hall, too.)
So, onto the first “movie” which has the umbrella title of My First Adventure and is basically the first half of Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal, confusingly – given I’ve just explained how the TV series was made of up 45 minute episodes – a feature length movie that introduced the series on TV, but whereas that adventure switched from a 9 year old Indy to a 16 year old Indy in the second half to conclude the storyline, My First Adventure takes a previously unseen episode – Tangiers, May 1908 – and glues that onto the back-end of the first half to totally replace the storyline with 16 year old Indy.
Confused? The effect is that Young Indy (who I’ve decided after all these years is played really well by Corey Carrier), has an adventure in Egypt with Howard Carter and T. E. Lawrence, largely set around the excavation of the Pharaoh Ka’s tomb. This is all very fanciful; Ka’s tomb had been found years before; Lawrence was in the region, but not hanging out with Carter as far as I’m aware, and so on. At the climax of the story – as a graverobber is confronted, but found to be missing the item Lawrence and Indy believe he has stolen – the adventure simply changes to Indy and his family getting on a ship for Morocco. So no resolution to the adventure (as that’s contained in the second half of the TV movie that was cut from this version), no goodbyes to Lawrence or Carter… it all just ends. Jarringly, Carrier also seems MUCH older than he was in the Egypt story, so not only does the story take a leap, Carrier’s age takes a leap. A casual viewer would be scratching their head and wondering, “What the hell just happened?” It’s very discombobulating and only serves to highlight what a bizarre decision it was to chop up stories and glue them back together in ways they were never really intended to be viewed.
But now that I’ve got that off my chest, I’ll comment on the two stories making up the movie.
The first half of Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal is stronger than I remember it. I believe the narration at the beginning from Carrier was recorded at a later time (his voice certainly sounds different), and after some brief fan service stateside (including seeing Indiana with his childhood dog… Indiana), we’re off to Egypt. The location work is great and really sells the story. The death of Howard Carter’s assistant, Rashid, is surprisingly brutal – they don’t do much to disguise his horribly burned body – and you’re really left with the feeling that this was a different time in television. I normally get sensation that when watching 60s Star Trek or 70s Doctor Who, but this is the 1990s and you expect TV to have felt more like today’s offerings, but it actually doesn’t. This has an older, more timeless feel to proceedings – and I think it’s stronger for it. I enjoyed this – right up to the moment it just… stops.
As I mentioned at the start of this article, the second half of the movie is a previously unseen episode – Tangiers, May 1908 – and the way it just comes crashing in, with zero resolution to what was set up in the first half is absolutely mind-bending. “But… huh… what about… where did… what’s going on?” All of these questions, and more, are entirely valid, Dear Reader. Of course I know that the second half of Young Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Jackal will emerge at a later point in the series and there will be a resolution to that storyline. But that’s some time down the track. For now, Tangiers, May 1908 is the focus and it can be best described as, “Indy befriends a slave boy… decides slavery is a bad thing… dons blackface to go and see a head on a pike at the local bazaar… and gets kidnapped with his friend…” Yes indeed, I’m not sure this is an episode that would easily be made today (again, evoking that older feeling for the series even though it comes from the 1990s), particularly with the use of blackface. While it’s not done for comedy or caricature, we live in a climate today where any example of blackface or anything approaching cultural appropriation is stamped upon with little nuance from example to example, and it’s probably only the relative obscurity of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in pop culture that has likely saved this from being problematic for Lucasfilm and Disney with the wider fandom.
Together, the stories aren’t the worst things that could be mashed together, but they absolutely feel like two totally separate adventures, in two quite different countries (no kidding, given they were written as two totally separate stories), so the umbrella title of My First Adventure seems a little forced. But I have to say, being able to sit back and watch Carrier do his Young Indy routine, in some wonderful locations, with a great supporting cast, and interesting historical times and issues to think about was still a fine way to spend the evening. I thought I’d be a bit bored with the Carrier episodes of the series – knowing my soft spot for the WW1 episodes with the older Sean Patrick Flannery as Indy that I’ve adored since the 1990s – but I received this incredibly well, and was entertained throughout. A 6.5/10 for me.