Voices From Krypton

YOUNG INDIANA JONES ON DVD: BEHIND THE SCENES

by Edward Gross

While fans of Indiana Jones may not hold the spin-off TV series, Young Indiana Jones, in the same regard they hold the big-screen version of the character, it’s nonetheless a project that is dear to George Lucas’ heart, as will be evident to anyone checking out Paramount’s first collection of episodes released on DVD next week. Most notably, check out the in depth historical documentaries that accompany the episodes themselves to fully grasp his original inspiration for the show.
   Back in 1992, Lucas had become intensely interested in education and was developing interactive technology that would make it more interesting for young students to learn history and geography. Lucas came up with an idea for an educational CD-ROM he called A Walk Through Early Twentieth Century History with Indiana Jones, but he liked it so much that he decided to turn it into a television series, writing the story for the pilot episode himself. 
    The result, which aired on ABC from 1992 to 1994, was not your typical episodic fare. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was perhaps the most ambitious television show ever launched: It was a series of short motion pictures rather than conventional hour-long episodes, and it attracted big-league Hollywood writers and directors, such as Jonathan Hensleigh, Nicolas Roeg, Frank Darabont and Simon Wincer. At the center of it all was Lucas, whose enthusiasm for the series was palpable.
   Through the course of the series, audiences would meet Indiana Jones at a number of different ages, most notably as a small child (as portrayed by Corey Carrier), a late teen (Sean Patrick Flanery, Greg Stillson of the TV series based on Stephen King’s The Dead Zone) and an elderly man (George Hall). As a favor to Lucas, Harrison Ford reprised the role in a framing sequence for one episode.
   Frank Darabont, who wrote and directed The Shawshank Redemption and the forthcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist, believes Lucas’ passion for the project grew out of a new-found liberty. He postulates that the mini-mogul  felt that Lucasfilm and its many limbs reached a level of prosperity – both creatively and financially – that would allow him to step back from CEO duties and concentrate on being a filmmaker again.

"JERICHO" SEASON 1 DVD

Jericho is all about survival, whether you're talking about the show's basic premise or the fact that it's coming back for a second season. In terms of the former, it's a drama that looks at what happens when the Kansas town of Jericho finds itself cut off from the rest of the world following the appearance of a nuclear mushroom cloud in the distance. How does the populace of a town react when they don't know if anybody else is out there? Although not as harrowing (or downright emotionally debilitating) as 1983's Testament, Jericho nonetheless serves as a prism through which to study human nature as individuals in the town cope with their new situation, and their true nature -- both good and bad -- is revealed.
   As to the show's survival to its forthcoming second season, it's really a testament (no pun intended... okay, maybe it was intentional) to its fanbase that it's coming back at all. Like the original Star Trek and Roswell before it, a massive write-in campaign convinced CBS to keep the show alive, though be aware: the network will reportedly be filming two endings for the first 13 episodes in case they are forced to cancel the show again; there won't be a cliffhanger as there was at the end of year one, thus less reason to bring the show back yet again.
   The Jericho season one DVD box set includes a number of extras, including the obligatory deleted scenes, commentaries on several episodes, a documentary called "What If?", which take a fairly detailed look at the arms race that began with the conclusion of World War II and explores how we would survive if our nuclear nightmares came true; and for fans the most interesting part of the package, "Building Jericho," a comprehensive look at the making of the show through the eyes of its cast and crew.