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Indiana Jones
"The Phantom Train of Doom"
(0:00-51:16
on the Phantom Train of Doom
DVD)
Written by Frank Darabont
Story by George Lucas
Directed by Peter MacDonald
Original air date: June 5, 1993
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Indy hooks up with the 25th
Royal Fusiliers in East Africa.
Read the "November 1916" entry of the
It’s Not the Years, It’s the Mileage Indiana Jones
chronology for a summary of this episode
Notes from the Indiana Jones chronology
This episode takes place in German East Africa, early November
1916.
Didja Know?
The title I've used for this episode ("The Phantom Train of
Doom")
comes from the title of The
Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: The Phantom Train of Doom,
a TV movie packaged for the Family Channel originally from two
scripts of the Young
Indiana Chronicles,
"German East Africa, Early November 1916"
("The Phantom Train of Doom")
and "German East
Africa, Late November 1916" ("The Kidnapping").
Here, Indy is reintroduced to the British hunter Frederick
Selous. Selous
(1851-1917) was a real world hunter and army captain in WWI who
was the inspiration for H. Rider Haggard's popular adventure
character Allan Quatermain appearing in a series of novels and
short stories from 1885-1927, who in turn was one of the
inspirations for George Lucas' character of Indiana Jones.
Selous previously meet up with Indy in
"Safari Sleuth". The actor
portraying Selous, Paul Freeman, also plays Rene Belloq in Raiders
of the Lost Ark.
Notes from the Old Indy bookends of
The
Young Indiana Chronicles
There were no Old Indy bookends for this episode.
Notes from
The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones
The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones is a 2008 publication
that
purports to be Indy's journal as seen throughout The
Young Indiana Chronicles
and the big screen Indiana
Jones movies. The publication is also annotated with notes
from a functionary of the
Federal Security
Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, the successor
agency of the Soviet Union's KGB. The FSB relieved Indy of his
journal in 1957 during the events of Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
The notations imply the journal was released to other
governments by the FSB in the early 21st Century. However, some
bookend segments of The
Young Indiana Chronicles
depict Old Indy still in
possession of the journal in 1992. The discrepancy has never
been resolved.
The boxed set of DVDs of the complete
The
Young Indiana Chronicles
TV series has notations and drawings in the storage slot for
each disk that suggest they are meant to be excerpts from Indy's
journal. Most of these notes and drawings do not appear in the
The Lost Journal of Indiana Jones book. Here is the
slot image for this
episode:
The events of this episode are not covered in the journal. The
pages jump from August 1916 ("Trenches
of Hell") to November 1918 and the end of the war (The
Treasure of the Peacock’s Eye).
Characters appearing or mentioned in this episode
Indiana Jones
Remy Baudouin
Belgian troop major
Belgian troop lieutenant
train station conductor
Mr. Golo
Birdy Soames
Zoltan
Captain Frederick Selous
Donald Parks
General Jan Christiaan Smuts
Henry Jones, Sr. (mentioned only)
Major Richard Meinertzhagen
Bill "Big Mac" MacMillan
General Tom Boer
(mentioned only)
German sentries
huge German captain
German soldier card players
German captain
Schultz
Didja Notice?
The Kenyan fort seen in the opening of the episode is actually
Çeşme Castle in
Çeşme,
Turkey.
Indy and Remy have been reassigned to eastern Africa and are
promoted to the rank of lieutenant. They arrive by ship in the Kenyan city
of Mombasa
and are told to ship off to Lake Victoria, but the pair get on
the wrong train, heading towards
Moshi,
Tanzania (while they should be heading towards
Nairobi).
Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa, occupying portions
of the nations of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
On the train ride, Remy sees Mt. Kilimanjaro passing on the
wrong side of the train if they were heading to Nairobi, cluing
him in they are going in the wrong direction.
Mt. Kilimanjaro is a dormant volcano and the highest
mountain in Africa.
When Indy is proven wrong about the direction they were heading,
arriving in Moshi, Remy sarcastically scolds him, "'Trust me,'
he says. Mr. Boy Scout with his map." Indy was a member of the
Boy Scouts
of America, attaining the highest rank, Eagle Scout.
In Moshi, a train station conductor tells Indy and Remy to take
the train to Longido, then to Nairobi and Lake Victoria.
Longido is a small town in Tanzania.
At 3:10 on the DVD, notice that the badge on the conductor's cap
is impressed with the letters and numbers upside-down! It seems
the badge was attached to the cap both upside-down and
backwards.
After the conductor gives the pair guidance, Indy says,
"Asante." This is Swahili (the national language of Kenya)
for "thank you."
Indy and Remy again jump on the wrong train. The conductor
shouts after them that the train they're on goes to Sabella. As
far as I can tell, the only Sabella in Africa is a private
retreat in the country of South Africa, over 2,000 miles away.
At 4:33 on the DVD, Remy says "Mon Dieu." This is
French for "My God."
At 6:44 on the DVD, Indy and Remy hear Rossini music playing in
the distance, soon discovering it comes from the camp of
the 25th
Royal Fusiliers. Gioachino Rossini
(1792-1868) was an Italian composer. The 25th
Royal Fusiliers was a British Army unit composed of mostly older
men of various talents known for their daring and success
against the enemy.
When Indy and Remy start to hear the Rossini, they are carrying
the usual Lee-Enfield No.1 Mk.III rifles seen in the hands of
Belgian soldiers throughout the series. But earlier in the
episode, as they crossed the veldt, they carried different
rifles with a longer barrel.
When Indy and Remy are brought into
the Fusiliers camp at gunpoint by Golo, at 8:28 on the DVD
notice that a man in clown make-up and costume walks among them.
This is later revealed to be a man called Zoltan, whom Captain
Selous says is "...an ace mechanic, expert with knives, best
clown in Europe." Selous calls him by the nickname "Zoly" later
on.
When Donald asks Indy if he speaks German, Indy responds,
"Ich spreche viele sprache." This is German for "I speak
many languages." In "Mask of Evil", Indy says he speaks 27
languages.
The Fusiliers' staff car is a 1929
Ford Model
A...13 years too soon!
The trucks seen at 12:32 on the DVD appear to be custom made for
the production.
General
Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870-1950) was a South African military
leader and statesman from the British Cape Colony. He served the
British in its attempts to conquer German East Africa during the
war as depicted here.
Richard Meinertzhagen (1878-1967) was a British soldier,
intelligence officer, and ornithologist. While initially
celebrated for his strategies and espionage against the enemy,
later evidence of fraud, false claims, scientific
misrepresentation, and even the possible murder of his wife have
greatly stained his legend.
Meinertzhagen appears briefly again in
"The Kidnapping" and Daredevils of the Desert.
When Captain Selous meets up with General Smuts at the beach,
the captain expresses surprise that the man is not in Morogoro by
now.
Morogoro
is a city in eastern Tanzania.
After Captain Selous tricks Indy into "volunteering" for the
mission to find the big German gun, Indy tries to object that
he's not even supposed to be there, as he's in the Belgian Army.
Selous responds, "All the more laudable. I'll write a letter of
commendation to your general, Tom Boer." As far as I can find,
there was no General by the name of Tom Boer, Belgian or
otherwise, in WWI.
Birdy remarks that the good lord created the world in six days,
so how hard can it be to find and blow up a cannon in that time.
According to the Old Testament of the Bible, God
created the world in six days.
As far as I can find, the "phantom train" with its massive
cannon in use by the Germans during WWI in East Africa is
fictitious.
As Selous and his men are riding off on horseback on their
mission, he shouts, "Tally ho!" This is a British phrase used
during a fox hunt to announce sighting of the prey.
As Indy and the Fusiliers sit around a campfire on the first
night of their mission, Indy is frustrated by their
lackadaisical attitude towards how they're going to accomplish it
and he asks what's wrong with making a plan. Selous tells him,
"Nothing. So long as you're willing to adapt when they don't
work out. He who survives is he who thinks on his feet." Indy
retorts, "Oh, make it up as you go. Oh, boy, that's great
advice." This foreshadows (and calls back to) his line in
Raiders of the Lost Ark when Sallah asks him how he's going
to catch the Nazi truck that is carrying the ark and he
responds, "I don't know. I'm making this up as I go."
Big Mac tells Indy that he wound up in Africa when he won a used
up ruby mine in a poker game in Abilene.
Abilene is a
city in Big Mac's home state of Texas.
Selous has a few of his men singing "O Tannenbaum" drunkenly in
order to fool the German sentries into letting them pass on to
their tents. "O Tannenbaum" is a German Christmas song inspired
by an earlier folk song.
Though Donald refers to it as a Daimler (and so does Selous
later), the car he and Indy steal from the German motor pool is
a 1929
Chevrolet International Phaeton.
As Birdy looks through the field glasses at the retreating
German train as he rides the flatcar pumped forward by Indy,
notice that the view through the glasses isn't moving even
though the flatcar is!
At 30:24, Zoltan flashes Birdy and Indy a message in Morse code
using a mirror. Morse code is a method of communicating via a
series of on-off signals such as flashes, tones, or clicks,
invented by Samuel Morse (1791-1872).
Birdy remarks that real toilet paper in the East African theatre
of war is about as rare as snowballs in Kalgoorlie.
Kalgoorlie
is a desert city in southwestern Australia.
As the Fusiliers enter the phantom train base, Selous cocks his
sidearm, an
FN Model 1910 pistol.
At 33:41 on the DVD, the German guards are playing cards in a
room with a door labeled SIGNALE ZIMMER. This is German for
"Signals Room".
During the train chase, the German troops appear to use
Mauser
M1916 Guardia Civil short rifles. Members of the Fusiliers also
appear to have them, possibly picking them up in the phantom
train base before hopping the train.
The mounted machine gun on the train fired by a German soldier
at 41:41 on the DVD is unidentified. It may be a custom job for
the production.
As they are under fire on the train at 41:49 on the DVD, Selous
tells Donald "a googly is in order." In the bat and ball game of
cricket, a googly is a type of delivery by a right arm leg spin
bowler where the ball swerves in one direction and breaks in the
other. Occasionally, the term is applied to unorthodox maneuvers
in various disciplines.
Big Mac shouts to Zoltan to uncouple the train car and get the
hell out of Dodge.
The phrase "get out of Dodge" is generally attributed to the
long-running (1955-1975) TV series Gunsmoke,
a western set in Dodge City, Kansas. But Mac could not have seen
the series yet in 1916...not to mention that television did not
exist yet!
At 46:02 on the DVD, Big Mac fires a
mounted Russian Maxim machine gun.
As the train pulls away from the German soldiers, Big Mac
shouts, "Adios, boys!" Adios is Spanish for "goodbye".
After the Fusiliers hijack the train, as Big Mac rides along,
seated behind the Maxim gun, he screams, "Yeee-haw!" This may be a
nod to the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, which has a scene
of the character Major T. J. "King" Kong, played by Slim
Pickens, riding a nuclear missile to its detonation in the USSR
as he hoots.
The sharpshooter rifle Selous uses to blow the dynamite at a
distance of 500 yards is unidentified. He uses the same rifle
briefly in "The Kidnapping".
Memorable Dialog
you don't mess around.mp3
the wrong train.mp3
we're going to have to play a little dodge-ball.mp3
the good lord made the world in six days.mp3
it's a phantom train.mp3
make it up as you go.mp3
leave no outhouse unplundered.mp3
a message in Morse code.mp3
a tremendous boon for our intelligence purposes.mp3
well done then.mp3
the Belgians will shoot us both for desertion.mp3
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