On his 2007 CD Werewolves and Lollipops, comedian Patton Oswald ponders George Lucas' predilection for revisiting his most popular characters as children – to wit, Darth Vader in The Phantom Menace and Bobba Fett in Attack of the Clones.  What Oswald fails to mention – probably because the results were nowhere near as dire – is that Lucas' passion for regression began nearly a decade before the Star Wars prequels in an ABC television series titled The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.  The series, which premiered March 4, 1992 with the two-hour "The Curse of the Jackal," would run for two seasons on the network before vanishing to cable where eight more stories aired as double-length movies.  After much speculation (and seemingly endless intimations from producer Rick McCallum that they were on the way), The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones have arrived on DVD in the first of three sets presenting the episodes in their alleged chronological order with an astonishing array of documentaries exploring the historical events and real-life characters encountered by the eponymous youngster in his adventures.

Like the recently released time travel fantasy Voyagers! (with which it shares a number of historical guest characters), Young Indiana Jones is a rare example of television fusing dramatic entertainment and educational content into a weekly series.  Obvious early twentieth century figures like President Theodore Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia appear alongside lesser known characters such as philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti and novelist Nikos Kazantzakis in the seven 90-minute productions presented in volume one.  Ideally, such a series elegantly weaves the historical characters and events into a compelling dramatic narrative that services both fact and fiction with equal aplomb.  As one might expect, such a golden mean is rarely achieved and some stories succeed magnificently while others appear heavy handed or tedious.  The quality of the storytelling is further compromised by yet another of Lucas' well-known peccadilloes.

As with the special editions of the Star Wars trilogy, Lucas has seen fit to tinker with the chronology of Indiana Jones' childhood in a fashion that, while understandable in regard to the late 1990s VHS release, is rather annoying on a modern DVD release where shows are expected to be presented as they aired.  The initial conception of the TV series called for episodes to alternate between 10-year old Indy (Corey Carrier) on a lecture tour with his parents and teenaged Indy's (Sean Patrick Flannery) exploits up to and throughout World War I.  Indeed, the original pilot captured this intent by featuring the younger protagonist on an archaeological dig in 1908 Egypt where a murder was committed before segueing to 1916 Mexico where an older Indiana Jones crossed paths once again with the killer.  The following one-hour episodes would then present alternating adventures with Carrier and Flannery in turn.  As production went on, the Flannery episodes soon became prevalent, doubtlessly aided by child labor laws that limited Carrier's time in front of the camera.  Though the episodes exhibit surprising continuity that suggests the scripts were all completed before production commenced, they were not originally presented in chronological order.  Lucas being Lucas, he took the opportunity at the end of the last century to rectify that fact by re-editing the 44 stories into a series 22 chronological 90-minute movies.  Unfortunately, while one can sometimes discern the  linking themes intended to bridge the pairs of stitched together installments, the principal result of this exercise is an array of segue scenes filmed years after the original productions that stick out like a soar thumbs 45 minutes into each movie.

Had Corey Carrier obliged Mr. Lucas by not aging so obviously in the interim, the links would still jar as they consist almost entirely of Professor Henry Jones, Sr. (Lloyd Owen) or Anna Jones (Ruth de Sosa) pontificating on the virtues of the family's next destination with all the finesse of an unsubtle tour guide.  Indeed, one of Anna's lines within the Florence 1908 segment (presented as the second half of the third movie The Perils of Cupid) flatly contradicts the DVD set's chronology by stating that the family is headed Paris (an installment edited into the second half of the preceding movie, Passion for Life).  While such tinkering is a trifling matter for the most part, it is a shame that the re-editing of the series has robbed viewers of George Hall's performance as 93-year-old Indiana Jones in sequences that originally framed each ABC episode – one presumes a similar fate will not befall Harrison Ford's similar linking segments in an upcoming set.  The very least Lucasfilm could have done was present the excised Hall sequences as a supplemental feature.

Editorial peculiarities aside, the series offers up marvelous performances from Carrier and Flannery as younger iterations of the famous adventurer.  Additional acting kudos go to Margaret Tyzack, who brings to life Indy's English tutor Miss Seymour with a verve and vitality that makes her a much missed figure when the series transitions to Flannery episodes an she's reduced to an occasional guest spot.  Lloyd Owen does an uncanny impression of Sean Connery as Indy's father and his pronunciation of "Junior" in addressing his son is disturbingly accurate.  Sadly, Ruth de Sosa's Anna Jones falls terribly flat, even in the episode where she's given an affair with Giacomo Puccini (Georges Corraface).  Noteworthy guest stars include Raiders of the Lost Ark villain Paul Freeman, a young Elizabeth Hurley, Venus' Vanessa Redgrave, The Seventh Seal's Max von Sydow as Sigmund Freud, Witness' Lukas Haas as Norman Rockwell, and Pirates of the Caribbean's Kevin McNally among others.  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire  director Mike Newell oversees Anna Jones' romance in the Florence segment of The Perils of Cupid while The Rocketeer's Joe Johnston takes the reigns of Flannery's first outing in Spring Break Adventure.  Familiar names like Jonathan Hales (Star Wars – Episode II – Attack of the Clones) and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) adorn the writing credits for the assembled stories, though it's likely the latter's credit is a vestigial attribution referring to some Flannery framing sequences deleted from DVD version of Travels With Father.

Though many of the episodes are top-notch productions, the real worth of the set is in the 38 documentaries produced especially for this boxed set.  From broad overviews like "Ancient Questions: Philosophy and Our Search for Meaning," to more detailed explorations like "Annie Besant: An Unlikely Rebel," the DVD presents a wealth of factual information to stand alongside the dramatic content of the series proper.  The documentaries, which average 25 minutes, are insightful journeys into lives and events rarely touched upon in general history classes and go a long way in creating an appreciation for the context of the stories in their historical settings.

Though the 16mm photography looks beautiful on DVD, the added resolution plays havoc with some of the early CGI deployed in the episodes.  Rather disappointingly, the set seems to have forgone the services of Skywalker Sound and the audio is a bombastic, but under whelming Dolby Surround mix that misses out on the subtlety of a discrete 5.1 treatment.  This latter deficiency will doubtlessly become more apparent in volume 2, which finds our hero in the trenches of the war to end all wars…