Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Daredevils of the Desert deals with Aussie cavalrymen in 1917 Palestine

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Daredevils of the Desert
Formats Available: VHS (1999)

DVD (2007) Chapter 15: The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Daredevils of the Desert (Disc 8, Volume Two – The War Years)

Written by: Frank Darabont

Directed by: Simon Wincer


Palestine: October 1917:

Having completed several intelligence-gathering assignments in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, young Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flanery), known to his superiors in the Belgian army as Capt. Henri Defense, has been reassigned to the Middle East to assist the Allied war effort there.

As in the African theater of operations, the Anglo-French endeavors in Arabia and Palestine are considered a “sideshow to the main show” of the battlefields in Europe; Britain wants to protect the Suez Canal and her links to India from interference by  the Central Powers, while France seeks to expend her sphere of influence in the region, aided and abetted by her British allies.

To accomplish these strategic goals, the British and French have helped to instigate a revolt in the Ottoman Empire’s Arab provinces.  The Turkish-controlled Ottomans are allied with Germany, so naturally the Allies wish to fight in the outer fringes of the enemy’s huge territory and knock Turkey out of the war. 

However, with the bulk of the Allied armies fighting – and dying – in the trenches of France and Belgium, the Anglo-French strategy is to use the Arabs as proxies, giving them some weapons, assigning a few elite units to bolster the natives’ ranks and sending “military advisors” like Maj. T.E. Lawrence (Douglas Henshall) to train and guide the rebels.

The British commander-in-chief in the Palestinian front, Gen. Allenby (John Vine) wants to make a bold move from Gaza all the way to Jerusalem and capture the famous city by Christmas of 1917.  Not only will this move weaken the Turks’ hold on the region and give Allied morale a huge boost, but it will also earn Allenby an enhanced reputation as a great military leader and strategy.

But before Allenby’s mostly-British force can strike north toward Jerusalem, the Allies must capture the wells of Beersheba, where precious water supplies for men and beasts of burden are stored.  Most of the surrounding area is desert, and any army moving from Gaza to Jerusalem must have access to water, or else many soldiers, horses and even camels will die of thirst in the hot, sandy wastes.

Indy’s job is to assist an Australian light horse regiment by posing as an Arab merchant who deals in trinkets, household items and – in this particular case – a belly dancer named Maya (Catherine Zeta-Jones).  Using his knack for languages and with Maya at his side, the intelligence operative must cross the desert, infiltrate the Turks’ defenses at Beersheba and prevent the destruction of the wells so the Aussie lighthorsemen can capture the city – and the precious stores of potable water.

Indiana Jones: What's it like, the desert?

T.E. Lawrence: It's like nowhere else on this Earth. It's the most terrible place there is. And the most wonderful.

My Take:

Though T.E. Lawrence is perhaps the best-known of all the historical figures featured in Daredevils of the Desert, his role here is not to act in a major, dominating role.  Instead, he is to Indy what Obi-Wan Kenobi is to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars – a friend and mentor who gives sage advice but doesn’t directly intervene in the young hero’s path to self-discovery.

The movie itself is essentially an expanded version of the unaired October, 1917 episode which was to have been part of the original series’ third season had the show not been canceled by ABC or the Family Channel. 

Its script was written by Frank Darabont, who had penned several other Young Indiana Jones episodes and would later become known for his three Stephen King adaptations (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist) for the silver screen.

Darabont obviously had fun with Indiana Jones’ character; the scenes where Sean Patrick Flanery has to act like an Arab flim-flam man are full of comedic delight yet mixed with a certain sense of jeopardy, and his depiction of the long-standing friendship between Indy and “Ned” Lawrence lends credibility to  the relationship between the fictitious future archaeologist and the legendary Lawrence of Arabia.

Many of Flanery’s scenes of Indy-as-Arab-merchant are shared with Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is stunningly gorgeous as Maya, a young woman recruited by the Allies to assist in the capture of Beersheba.  She is alluring, sexy and perhaps a bit dangerous, as was Alison Doody’s Elsa Schneider in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

If Daredevils of the Desert’s scenario involving the Australian cavalry seems familiar to war movie buffs, it’s because director Simon Wincer – an Aussie filmmaker – had directed The Lighthorsemen,  a 1987 feature film based on the Palestine campaign depicted in this adventure.   

Not only does Wincer provide the episode with a steady and narratively-sound sense of direction, but the finale’s showpiece cavalry charge is actually footage edited from The Lighthorsemen itself, which not only looks great on TV and lends Daredevils of the Desert a feature film-like sense of scale, but it also seems to have been a budget-saving move, since one of the reasons the series was canceled was its huge – for TV, anyway – costs.

It’s a pity that Daredevils of the Desert was not seen as part of the original series during its network run; it gives viewers a rousing, old-fashioned war movie-like adventure while cannily sneaking in some educational material about World War I, the Middle East and some of the military and political decisions which shaped that volatile region’s destiny.

© 2012 Alex Diaz-Granados.  All Rights Reserved