Whatever other problems he may have, George Lucas does not do things in a small or half-hearted way.  His stories are big, his visuals are big, and his characters are certainly larger than life.  Even when his characters are small, they are big.  Thus, no one should be surprised that The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume 1, is a big boxed set of DVDs.  There are 12 discs in all, 7 of which contain feature length (roughly 90 minute) films, and the rest are filled with special features.  The features focus on Henry Jones Jr. (Indiana to you and me) between the ages of 8 and 10 (roughly) and then again at about 15 to 17 (depending on the exact year the episode takes place).  The younger Jones, who is featured in more of the episodes, is played by Corey Carrier, whereas the teenager is portrayed by Sean Patrick Flanery.

The DVDs represent roughly one third of the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which has presumably been retitled so as to better fit the theatrical films' boxed set, which is called The Adventures of Indiana Jones).  Additionally, it is important to note that the sequence of films included here, while they may go (almost) chronologically through Indiana's life, are not in the order the were presented on television.  In fact, from the television debut of the series to the present DVD release many things have changed.  I will not go heavily into the differences here, but it is important to note that they do exist.  The changes mainly deal with pulling apart stories that originally aired together (for instance a Carrier story with a Flanery one) and putting two more chronologically similar pieces together.

All of the episodes, filmed throughout the world, bring not only the history of Indiana Jones to life, but a version of the history of the world too.  Carrier, as Jones, goes around Europe, Africa, and Asia with his father (Lloyd Owen), mother (Ruth de Sosa), and tutor, Miss Seymour (Margaret Tyzack).  Indy repeatedly finds himself making the acquaintance of innumerable famous people of the day.  While it may sound silly to say this, these meetings are all too improbable.  Though one of the main points of the series was to help make history fun and exciting, the idea that Young Indy meets T.E. Lawrence, Picasso, Degas, Norman Rockwell (these last three at the same time), Archduke Ferdinand, Tolstoy, and Freud (just to name a few) is a little too farfetched.  Surely there was a way to make Indy's life interesting without him causing an international incident by sneaking off with Archduke Ferdinand's daughter.  It certainly is all fun and amusing, but after Indy does things like sneaking out of his room at night to attend a party at Picasso's with Norman Rockwell, one has to believe that his father would have sent the young lad home to New Jersey.

The Carrier episodes have a completely different flavor than the Flanery ones.  Flanery, as an older version of Indiana Jones certainly makes the acquaintance of several famous people, and while he gets himself into deep trouble on more than one occasion, he is far more aware of what he is doing.  Consequently, Flanery's episodes are more enjoyable because his Indy, unlike Carrier's, has a sense of what is taking place around him.