Entry 17: Trenches of Hell

Indy Timeline: 1916

It is evident from the opening shot of "Trenches of Hell" that the tone of the series has changed with Young Indy's arrival to the WWI frontlines.  A dusty train, filled with war weary soldiers, pulls into a rundown station.  We learn that Indy's unit of Belgian soldiers has just returned from Flanders, where all of their officers were killed by Germans in heavy fighting.  Sean Patrick Flannery, as young Indy, is fraying at the edges, and his frustrations are threatening to boil over after having to take command of the decimated unit.  This scene is a long way from the "hijinks" of earlier episodes (like the time he knocked out a goon with a wind-up toy airplane in "passion for life"). 

There is soon an actual battle scene, which is quite surreal.  While it is gritty - with lots of explosions and soldiers getting mowed down by gatling gun fire - there is no blood (still just a TV show).  The video quality really jumps around here - at some points it looks as if they might actually be using real WWI footage.  Other times, the film is in color, but hazy and grainy.  There is mustard gas, soldiers with flamethrowers burning men alive, and hoards of warriors on horseback wearing gasmasks.  These scenes are unsettling, but the strange variations in film quality and funny edits add a "hellish" quality to it (as the title of the episode implies). 

I suppose that this is a "good" thing - probably as nasty depiction of WWI as was possible on network TV at the time of release.  I can also say that it is also very far away from Harrison Ford and the original trilogy of movies.  It doesn't have the tone or feel of those movies at all, just disorienting unease and discomfort. 

Moments after this scene, Indy is on leave and decides to play tennis with some English soldiers - quite a juxtaposition.  After losing a quick match, Indy makes friends with Robert Graves and Sigfried Sassoon and they discuss poetry and the war.  Just when I thought that plotline was going somewhere, Indy is back to the front.

Once back in the action, the violence ramps up immediately, including a scene in which Indy bayonets a German soldier to death a close range.  Yikes!  Shortly after taking their objective, Indy's unit is overrun and all of his friends are killed.  Jarring, surprising, and an effort to showcase the "chaos" of war (I think). 

This leads beautifully into the second part of the "movie" in which Indy is taken prisoner of war by the Germans.  For the first time in watching these episodes in order, the bridging sequence is actually seamless here. 

The tone of the second half of the episode is a little lighter, but not much.  After Indy is caught trying to tunnel out of his first detention camp and is sent to a maximum security "castle" prison.  Here, he meets a fellow POW named Charles De Gaulle.  He also makes friends with a pair of goofy Russian POWs.  These two - I'll call them Vlad and Igor - are hammed up stereotypes of "crazy Russians".  At first, I thought they were included only for a cheap attempt at comic relief in an otherwise (surprisingly) serious episode. 

However, when they turn up dead after a failed escape, de Gaulle and Indy decide to escape the prison by hiding in their coffins.  In a chilling (albeit heavy handed) allusion to the holocaust, the coffins containing a live de Gaulle and Indy are brought to "the ovens" to be incinerated.  Thankfully, they escape this bind and the episode concludes with de Gaulle's recapture and Indy's narrow escape.  Phew!

"Trenches of Hell" felt like a complete reboot of the series, which is why I suppose they decided to make it the first episode in the second Young Indy box set ("The War Years").  This is a long way from Corey Carrier's clumsy accidents in "Perils of Cupid" or his diarrhea trouble in "Journey of Radiance" - suddenly, everything is much more serious.  I suppose one could argue that this is just like real life- you get older and things get more serious.  However, as I wrote above, this is nothing at all like the original trilogy of movies that the TV show is "based on".  It feels like it is its own universe and the only thing connecting it to those films is having the "Indiana Jones" name in the title.  They don't even call him "Indiana Jones" in this episode as he is using an assumed name ("Henry Deforce"). 

While this is still a weird show, "Trenches" is one of the more entertaining episodes.  Unlike earlier episodes, I was compelled to watch it more or less straight through rather than having to take breaks out of boredom.  That said, I honestly have no idea where this series is going or what is coming next - it remains as unpredictable (and inconsistent) as ever. 

Indy Rating: 7/10