digitalfreaknyc

Hey all,

Just got this from an Ohio newspaper...GREAT news.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjourna...ng/8064049.htm

Lucas series inches to DVD

UA archivist takes part in `The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles' disc
By R.D. Heldenfels

The works of George Lucas have crawled on DVD. But one of his biggest and best projects is finally in the works.

That's the TV drama The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, a major labor of Lucas love that showed Indy at various ages.

There was Indy in his 90s (played by George Hall), whose recollections flashed back to tales of 10-year-old Indy (Corey Carrier) and an Indy in his teens and older (Sean Patrick Flanery). There was even one episode where Harrison Ford reprised his movie character.

Of greater note was the way the series wove in real-life characters -- from Theodore Roosevelt to musician Sidney Bechet -- so that viewers got both an adventure and some history lessons.

Sadly, the Chronicles ran only one season on ABC, in 1992-93. But there were some later TV-movies and a VHS release of TV episodes in the late '90s.

I loved the show. So did my sons. I've been carrying around videotapes of some episodes for years.

So it was good to hear that University of Akron archivist Dave Baker was involved in a DVD release of the Chronicles.

Director of the university's Archives of the History of American Psychology, Baker said he was contacted awhile back by Lucas' people looking for material for a documentary on psychology.

Baker talked with them about the differences between psychology and psychiatry. (``Psychologists are concerned with the human condition in the broad sense,'' he said. ``Psychiatrists are physicians first, concerned with the treatment of mental illness.'') He also talked about the development of psychology between the world wars.

``The thing I appreciated was that I was able to have some input,'' he said. ``I'm a very passionate historian of psychology.

And apparently an impressive one. Baker was flown out to Lucas' Skywalker Ranch facility for an interview to be included in the documentary. Which turned out to be a companion piece for the DVD release of a Chronicles episode featuring Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Baker did not really know the series. ``I had seen it once and it was a long time ago,'' he said.

Nor was he sure when the DVD will come out. Baker guessed it will be tied to the release of the fourth big-screen Indiana Jones, which had been expected in 2005 until reports of Lucas' dissatisfaction with the original script.

``I didn't see that they had a hard and fast marketing plan,'' Baker said. ``It's a very ambitious project. It looks like they're doing something like 50 or 100 of these documentaries.''

Still, it gave him a look inside Lucas' empire.

``The ranch was way cool,'' he said, adding that it is featured in the latest issue of Architectural Digest. But did he see Lucas himself?

``No, I didn't,'' he said. ``I was kind of snooping around, wondering where is he? I was told he was very busy with Star Wars.'' Another film is due out in 2005.

El-Kabong

About f'ing time! Aside from Brisco County and Land of the Lost, this is probably THE show I want on DVD the most.

Giles

I loved this series, had never bought the Japanese laserdisc box set of this, now I can patiently wait for the DVD

The Valeyard

Is it going to be the ORIGINAL series release or the re-edited, re-dubbed crop-jobs that smashed the episodes into the mini-movie formats?

Andrew

Chew

Good question. I can see the point of making movies out of them for TV, but don't see any reason to edit them for a DVD release.

digitalfreaknyc

Lucas had them ALL re-edited to get rid of the older Indy and tie two episodes together. This happened around the time that they were supposed to be released on VHS but stopped due to poor sales.

I'm SURE Lucas isn't going to release the original episodes whenever they come out. It's a shame because I'd like them for the sake of being complete. But...to be honest...the "old Indy" stuff was absolutely horrible. Luckily I have all the episodes on VHS. Guess I can just put them onto DVD-R if I need to.

obscurelabel

I didn't see all of them, but I thought the framing with "old Indy" on the episode about Picasso and Degas was pretty neat.

Josh Z

Not only that, he plans to digitally insert Jar Jar and CGI droids into the background of many scenes.

steebo777

Eh boy, here we go...

Qui Gon Jim

I was a huge fan of this show. I remember very clearly the night that Harrison was on the show. Why? There was a big storm hitting my area, and the local f'n news decided to break in during the first 10 minutes of the episode to give us the "breaking news" that the weather was bad! The report finally ends and I see Harrison fading to black to start the episode. I was absolutely livid!

I think that the episodes will be shown as originally broadcast. Those making the "Luca$ like SE's better" = "Luca$ likes edited Indy better" are jumping to conclusions. Time will tell.

digitalfreaknyc

Qui Gon! I remember that as well!!! Were you in the Northeast at that point at all? We had a huge storm that weekend but luckily it did not cut into the program. I lived in CT at the time and I think they might have cut into the NYC one but not the CT or the other way around. Either way I was very happy. But I know the episode where Young Indy goes to China was cut because of weather and never re-aired. Still have that one cut episode.

DrOBoogie1

Young Indy was a great show -- the Sean Patrick Flannery episodes were better than the 8-year-old Indu episodes. But I've been looking forward to this on DVD for a long time, and glad to see some preparation is being made.

bboisvert

Slightly off topic, but too cool not to point out:

http://www.indianajones.com/collecti...s20040302.html

TylerDurden_73

I've never seen this show....how good was it?

bboisvert

I thought it was very good, bordering on great. But it has a VERY different tone than the feature films (more slowly paced and historical, a lot less action)... and this tone turned off a lot of people who were expecting this to be a weekly version of the Harrison Ford movies.

Josh Z

Lucas has already re-edited the episodes. The VHS releases were the re-edited versions. Given his history, there is about a 0% chance of seeing anything other than the re-edited versions ever again.

Flynn

Great news!!! I'm all over this!

Seeker

Oh, for the original stuff.

Why is it people don't get it that we want what came out at first.

The re-edits are FINE AND DANDY - we'll take those too, but the originals, please.

GuessWho

THE SWORDSMAN NOW SHOOTS FIRST

wertent

wow i cant wait.. I first found this series when they reran some of the episodes on USA a few years back

BJacks

I was a huge fan of the show when it originally aired. I remember it being exorbitantly bloody.

kidindy

I really liked this show. Didn't see too many episode though. Hope this is released in the episode format.

Qui Gon Jim

I just don't understand how you can say with certainty that these will not be the original releases. Do you work for Lucasfilm or Paramount? I am also sure that Lucas himself did not edit these. This post smacks of baseless Lucas bashing.

These have not even been oficially announced, much less specs revealed. Let's hold judgement until then.

bboisvert

Qui Gon -- I don't have the exact issue, but if you look at the Star Wars Insiders that came out around fall of 1999, Lucas himself says in an interview that he was combining the episodes into 2-hour chapters for release. This is also the interview when he mentions that he is pulling together a bunch of educational documentary material for eventual DVD release.

Look at the official site... (http://www.indianajones.com/young/) all evidence that these were once TV episodes is gone. They are all listed as the 2-hour movies.

A lot of work went into combining these into chapters (10 of which haven't even been released yet), reorganizing the material, etc. And Lucas was HEAVILY involved in the process.

While I can't say with 100% certainty that they will be released this way... all evidence certainly points in that direction. (And, without Lucas bashing at all... when has he released something he's been involved in on DVD *without* altering it?... American Graffiti, Indy, all 5 Star Wars films, and now rumors of THX-1138 getting new effects. The guy likes to play with his stuff.)

Jackskeleton

You guys call yourself Indiana jones fans?

The episode Ford appears in was Mystery of the Blues. Now that was a great episode.



And yes, they did combine two parters to make it so that they were more like movies then tv episodes. either way, give them to me anyway as long as I gets them.

(as for lucas, the man is an editor at heart. It would be hard for him to tweak things as that is what he does the best)