From Skywalker Ranch in Marin County — In case you haven't heard by now, Indiana Jones is coming to television. For a month, ABC has been heavily promoting Wednesday's premiere of "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" with fast-cut, triumphantly scored spots featuring the youthful Indy thundering on horseback, fighting in the Mexican Revolution, bravely facing a firing squad and locked in hand-to-hand combat with a tomb robber.

Those rousing promos, however, are a matter of some concern for series producer George Lucas, the architect of the Indiana franchise on film and television. He worries that ABC is whipping up false viewer expectations, that people will be disappointed if they tune in expecting the big-budget, Saturday-matinee cliffhangers that are the hallmark of the "Indiana Jones" film trilogy.

"That's the biggest danger we have on this, the \o7 biggest \f7 danger," he emphasized.

What Lucas has in store for TV viewers instead is the gradual and sometimes tender unfurling of a remarkable child coming of age.

"I told ABC we shouldn't sell this as a big action thing because it's not a big action thing," Lucas said. "They are selling it as a big action thing. They cannot get it out of their mind."

Viewers are advised by Lucas to set aside for now the image of Harrison Ford's rogue archeology professor, whose sharp tongue, quick wits and handy bullwhip have helped him escape ancient booby traps, clammy snake pits and nasty Nazis in three blockbuster movies that accumulated $620 million in American box-office receipts.

"I've taken the Indiana Jones character and made him a liability, is what I've done," Lucas said calmly, sitting on the couch in his office at Skywalker Ranch, the state-of-the-art production facility and 19th-Century estate he constructed in a serene, secluded valley in Marin County. Dressed in blue jeans, a sweater and worn Nikes, the bearded Lucas looked more like the writer and film editor--two grunt jobs in a fashion-conscious industry--he identifies himself as, rather than the imposing figure many in Hollywood perceive him to be.

"The name (Indiana Jones) allowed me to get the show on the air," Lucas continued. "But the downside is I've created a huge liability, because the audience that would probably enjoy the show won't watch it because it's Indiana Jones, and the audience who likes the movies is going to say, 'Well, where are the bad guys and the chases and the jeopardy?' "