ABC Gives ‘Indiana’ a Third Try : Harrison Ford to Guest on George Lucas’ Ratings-Weak Show

In the patient eyes of George Lucas, “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”--an elaborately produced TV series that has consumed the last three years of his life, grinding his feature film work to a virtual halt--is still a TV franchise waiting to happen.

Although only 11 episodes have aired on ABC in the last year, Lucas has 21 more episodes filmed and ready to go. Beyond that, he has 22 scripts written and an additional 22 stories worked out.

But in the harsh reality of network television, where ratings dictate success and failure, the intricately mapped tales of young Indy may wind up being the greatest story never told.

Two brief runs on ABC--one last March and one in the fall--did not produce spectacular numbers. “Young Indiana” returns to ABC for a third try Saturday at 8 p.m., with a guest appearance by the original Indy, Harrison Ford, to pump up viewer interest. If the series fails to capture the public’s imagination this time around, chances are that even Indiana’s miraculous skill will not be able to save him from the cliffhanger of cancellation.

“We knew right from the very beginning that this was a real challenge because I was making a television program for people who don’t watch television, hoping I could draw them back to television,” Lucas said last week.

His drama, shot on location around the world, tells the remarkable coming of age of movie hero Indiana Jones, who learns valuable life lessons from famous figures from the past. In Saturday’s episode, Indy picks up the intricacies of jazz music from Sidney Bechet as a waiter in Prohibition Chicago. Later, Indy teams up with his college roommate, Eliot Ness, and a budding newspaper reporter, Ernest Hemingway, to solve the murder of Indy’s boss, restaurateur Jim Colosimo.

“What’s rewarding about television is that I have had a chance to say things and deal with subject matter I just can’t in features, at least not on a large scale,” Lucas said. “The show is much more like ‘Howards End’ than ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ and you don’t see many movies like ‘Howards End’ on television.”

Nor is that what TV viewers expect from Lucas, the architect of the “Indiana Jones” and “Star Wars” film trilogies. Lucas believes that, initially, viewers tuned in to “Young Indiana” expecting to embark on a white-knuckle adventure in the spirit of “Raiders.” Early ABC promos of young Indy thundering on horseback across the desert backed by a triumphant score reinforced that expectation.

“What they got was something a bit more contemplative,” Lucas said thoughtfully, somewhat proudly.

Despite the tough times “Young Indiana” has faced on ABC’s schedule--its pairing with “Monday Night Football” in the fall meant that it wasn’t even airing in prime time in Central and Mountain time zones--Lucas seems calm about the future of the show, which received five technical Emmy Awards last year.

Lucas has one movie script in development about black fighter pilots in World War II, and he plans to make another “Star Wars” film “in the next five years,” but for now he is consumed with “Young Indiana.”

He spends 50 hours a week working on the $1.5-million-plus episodes--writing stories, overseeing the editing and post-production, perfecting the pioneering digital special-effects techniques that enable him to turn 12 actors into a cavalry of 500, or to touch up shots of modern Europe to make them appear as they did in 1917.

“The advantage of television over feature films is that there’s not a lot of pressure, in terms of spending an entire year doing one piece of work and then having it come out on one weekend, having the fate of a studio depend on your success or failure,” Lucas said. “This way I can just keep doing my work, work that I don’t want to let go of.”

Lucas has even been pushing the TV division at Paramount Pictures to take the series elsewhere--to syndication or possibly another network--if things don’t work out at ABC.

“We haven’t had a chance to build an audience yet. I’m hoping if we get a constant time period (on ABC) and stay there a prolonged period of time, we will last,” Lucas said.

Executives at ABC would not specify how long they intend to keep the series on the air this time: “It’s on for the foreseeable future for now in that time period,” an ABC spokesman said.

Furthermore, “Young Indiana” faces serious peril Saturday night opposite another family themed show, the new hit “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” on CBS.

To help gain some attention, Lucas asked his friend Harrison Ford, who created the daring archeologist on the big screen, to lend a hand promoting the series.

Ford, playing Indy at 50, shot dramatic wraparounds to introduce the main story in Saturday’s two-hour installment. In the series, three other actors play Indy: as a boy (Corey Carrier), as a teen-ager (Sean Patrick Flanery) and as an old man (George Hall).

“Harrison was very nervous about the show when I first proposed it to him,” Lucas recalled. “This is his character--he created the character, the persona, as an actor. To have other actors play that character and expand on it would make any actor nervous. But since he’s seen the show, he’s been very pleased. If he had not liked the show, he wouldn’t have done this favor for me.”

“Young Indiana” is part of a master plan Lucas has developed that will ultimately take his adventurer through almost every known media format. Lucas intends to release the TV series on videocassette and laser disc, with additional unseen footage, and to develop an interactive classroom learning program using multimedia computer technology. LucasFilm and ABC already sent out carefully prepared lesson plans this week to 10,000 schools and teachers across the country for students to use Saturday’s episode as an inspiration for study.

“Some of the educational aspects have been overemphasized by people who don’t completely understand what we’re trying to do in that area,” Lucas said, suggesting that perhaps people are not watching “Young Indiana” because they expect to see educational programming.

“What I’m trying to do is introduce people to characters in history, not to lecture them about history. I simply want to give a personal introduction to various important people in the 20th Century, hoping the viewers will be more interested and take time to read and learn more about them.”