An article on IGN.com is reporting that The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles are finally on their way to DVD, according to the Great Flanneled One. However, it looks like I’ll still have to hold on to the old VHS recordings I made of the series when it originally aired:

The DVDs will include the reedited versions of the series previously available on VHS, which took the 44 episodes of the show and turned them into 22, 90 minute, feature length stories.
(Emphasis mine.)

Now, to be fair, that sentence is vaguely worded. The word “include” suggests that the feature-length versions could be in addition to the original, one-hour episodes. But past experience with Uncle George would suggest otherwise, wouldn’t it? I think he probably intends for the original aired versions to vanish from history, just as he’s trying to expunge the original version of Star Wars from our collective memories.

I don’t have the same kind of attachment to Young Indy that I do to Star Wars, but nevertheless, I continue to be baffled and offended by Lucas’ attitude toward his own creations. What is so terrible about simply letting things be what they are, or rather what they were when they were first created?

I’ve stated time and time again on this blog that my personal preference is to see movies and TV shows unchanged from the way they were originally released. I’ll admit that it’s somewhat selfish on my part — I want these things to remain the way I first experienced them. That’s the core of my opposition to Lucas’ (and others’) revisionism. But something else that really bugs me about George’s tinkering, in particular, is that it’s ultimately disrespectful to the people who originally worked on those films and episodes. In the case of Star Wars, ripping out large patches of special-effects work and replacing them with CGI is like telling dozens of people that the pioneering work they did back in 1976 no longer matters and isn’t worth seeing.

With The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, the work that no longer matters (in Lucas’ mind, anyway) is the contributions of a late actor named George Hall. When the series first aired, Hall played an elderly version of Indy in “bookend” sequences that opened and closed most episodes. The usual set-up was that codgerly old Jones was going about his business when something would remind him of one of his adventures, and he’d start spinning a tale for whatever poor schlep happened to be in earshot. Old Indy’s reminiscences were, of course, the bulk of that particular episode. These bookends were excised when the individual episodes were stitched together to become the the feature-length Young Indy “movies” mentioned above.

To be honest, the bookends varied wildly in quality, ranging from genuine and touching to painfully lame, and it’s arguable as to whether they’re any great loss. But it still bothers me as a matter of principle that George Hall’s contributions have simply vanished from the Indiana Jones legacy, if I may use such a pretentious word. I hope, if we’re not to have Young Indy the way it was originally broadcast, that the DVDs will include Hall’s scenes as an extra. They deserve to be preserved at least in that form.

Not surprisingly, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (or whatever George ends up calling the series, since he’s prone to changing titles as well as content) is supposed to be released in conjunction with the fourth Indy feature film next year…