Bookends

The Bookends were the segments in each The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode taking place in the modern time, in this case, the early 1990s. The Bookends showed the 90-year old Indiana Jones meeting several individuals mainly across New York City and telling them stories of his past, sometimes changing their way of seeing things in comparison to Indy's past experiences, like his adventures in World War I, for example.

Behind the scenes
The earliest incarnations of the concept which evolved in the Bookends was when author Rob MacGregor intended to begin and end the novel Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi (and the series which followed) with the appearance of a ninety year old Indiana Jones narrating the story. He was told that no one would be interested in seeing Indy as an old man, so the idea was dropped. As the concept later resurfaced in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV show, MacGregor believes that George Lucas was responsible for nixing his idea for the novel. The Bookends were featured in every episode of the television series, which ran from 1992 to 1993. As such, the Bookends took place in the same year in which their respective episodes aired. During the bookend segments, Indy told stories to other people, sometimes even members of his family, while Sean Patrick Flanery and Corey Carrier played the young Indiana in his stories. Though Indy was known for being the only character to appear both in the bookends and main stories of the episodes, an exception was made with Vicky Prentiss, played by Jane Wyatt. The actor selected to play the older Jones was the late Broadway veteran George Hall, who was in reality in his late 70s when he played the role. As such, despite being an older man, Jones was able to move quite differently than 90-year-old people use to move, leading fans to speculate that this happened due the Holy Grail's essence.

Though Hall filmed almost every bookend segments of the series, Flanery and the original Indiana Jones actor Harrison Ford made two bookends: Flanery made the bookends of the episode "Princeton, June 1919" and Ford made the bookends of Young Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues; the latter an attempt to boost ratings and re-launch the series, leading to cut Hall's Bookeends originally filmed for that episode.

In 1996, George Lucas and editor T.M. Christopher re-edited the series into 22 feature-length episodes known as "chapters", which make up The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. For unexplained reasons, all of Hall's Bookends, including Flanery's, were removed for later DVD releases except the one featuring Ford. Many fans had made the assumption that Lucas cut the Bookends because there was the possiblity that Jones might be killed in the then untitled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but it's unlikely as Lucas re-edited the series in 1999, when a fourth Indiana Jones film was just a rumor. When asked about the matter, Indycron continuity database keeper Leland Chee stated that Hall's Bookends are still considered canonical in "some degree", but how this degree fits in the canon is still unknown.

Appearances

 * Every episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles