How "period-accurate" was the YIJC?

Indyfan82

Member
George Lucas made an extraordinary amount of effort to be as period accurate as possible, including filming in the actual locales where the stories took place. I would generally say The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles are fairly on target, but I'm sure there are discrepancies as there most likely are with any historical fiction.
 

Raiders90

Well-known member
Indyfan82 said:
George Lucas made an extraordinary amount of effort to be as period accurate as possible, including filming in the actual locales where the stories took place. I would generally say The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles are fairly on target, but I'm sure there are discrepancies as there most likely are with any historical fiction.

Kinda ashame it's about to be rendered non-canon, then, eh?
 

Indyfan82

Member
We don't know that for sure. But yes- it would be a shame if it happens and I'll be very disappointed. (Especially since "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" helped solidify its place as canon all the more with the reference to Indy riding with Pancho Villa.)
 

Udvarnoky

Well-known member
I suspect it's the rest of the expanded universe (novels and video games) that the reboot will conflict with rather than Young Indy. Disney will no doubt want their reboot to take place during Indy's prime decade, the 1930s, and of course the storytellers behind many of those extra-cinematic Indy outings had the same idea. Between Fate of Atlantis, Staff of Kings, and the plethora of novels and comics, I'm expecting all kinds of toes to get stomped on. The timeline's pretty nonsensical as it is, and I don't know how many gaps remain to fit more tales into.
 

Lao_Che

Active member
Crack that whip said:
If that's what's about to happen, it is a shame, indeed. But we'll see.

More likely that the TV series is kept because due to the extent of Lucas' involvement and everything else is dropped - as it was with Star Wars - with certain things brought back in (birthdays and middle names and such).

Might have already started with the hangar bar at Disney which references Jock's other adventures in passing.

But unlike Star Wars we probably won't get told that continuity has been rebooted.

Udvarnoky said:
Between Fate of Atlantis, Staff of Kings, and the plethora of novels and comics, I'm expecting all kinds of toes to get stomped on. The timeline's pretty nonsensical as it is, and I don't know how many gaps remain to fit more tales into.

In general the timeline of stories line up okay, it's specifics where things become problematic. But yeah, there's no way Disney will let the films be constrained by an existing work.
 
Last edited:

Crack that whip

New member
Lao_Che said:
More likely that the TV series is kept because due to the extent of Lucas' involvement and everything else is dropped - as it was with Star Wars - with certain things brought back in (birthdays and middle names and such).

Might have already started with the hangar bar at Disney which references Jock's other adventures in passing.

But unlike Star Wars we probably won't get told that continuity has been rebooted.



In general the timeline of stories line up okay, it's specifics where things become problematic. But yeah, there's no way Disney will let the films be constrained by an existing work.

Indeed, I don't think Lucasfilm itself ever felt constrained by existing (non-live-action screen) works, even pre-Disney. It's never been that much of an issue simply because they've never produced new screen Indy at the rate at which they've been producing new screen Star Wars (while also overseeing print, videogame, etc. Star Wars) for the last few years. Do note, though, that at least one of the unproduced episodes planned for season 3 of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles would have covered some of the same ground as (and presumably conflicted with) a Rob MacGregor novel that had just been published only three or four years earlier or so.

Lucasfilm really did seem to make a real effort to maintain consistency between its own productions and licensed published works by outside authors, but they seemed to do it mainly by telling those authors to steer clear of certain areas they thought were likely to come up on screen, and occasionally giving authors notice of developments in productions as they were happening. But I don't think George Lucas ever felt an obligation to steer away from something that had always been covered one way in a novel or a comic or whatever. He went ahead and made the movies and shows he wanted to make, occasionally adopting some minor part of outside authors' material (like the planet name "Coruscant") if it didn't affect his stories in any meaningful way, and Lucasfilm would also coordinate efforts between their current productions and outside authors writing spinoff works and whatnot. But George wouldn't scrap something like a Boba Fett origin (for example) that he wanted in a movie just because somebody had written about it earlier in a licensed work, and if something like that happened, it would be up to the licensing and publishing people to work out some sort of retconned explanation.

I do think, now that Lucasfilm's properties are no longer beholden to their original creator's creative drives (for better or worse) and are instead going to be mapped out by a story group, there will be better linkage between screen productions and licensed publications than ever before. I just hope that as they're deciding how much of the old material to keep in the Indy canon (as they've already done for Star Wars), they do decide to keep the show as well as the movies, if nothing else.

_______________________________________


Meanwhile, to get back to the actual stated topic of the thread (assuming it wasn't really just the OP baiting all the fans of the show with a discussion of whether it would be canon any longer), I'd say the show is imperfect, but it's closer to being period-accurate than the film's, as well as being more period-accurate than most other period shows produced for network TV (certainly up to that point, at least).
 
Top