For two decades, NCIS has been keeping viewers entertained with its signature mix of humor and high-stakes drama. The CBS series about a team of agents with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service premiered in 2023 and is heading into its 21st season (just as soon as the cast can get back to work). It’s also spawned multiple spinoffs, including a first-ever international version, NCIS: Sydney, debuting later this year. But the show – and by extension, the entire NCIS universe – could have looked very different if the series creators initially envisioned came to fruition.
‘NCIS’ is a ‘JAG’ spinoff
Given how long NCIS has been airing, it’s easy to forget that it’s a spinoff of another long-running series. Yes, NCIS is similar to Law & Order, but that’s not how the show originated.
JAG was a legal drama focusing on the lawyers working in the office of the Navy’s Judge Advocate General. It aired for 10 seasons, first on NBC and later on CBS. Two episodes of JAG Season 8 served as a backdoor pilot for NCIS and introduced key characters such as Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), Anthony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherley), and Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette).
“I took two JAG episodes and worked NCIS into that. JAG was the springboard for it,” JAG creator and NCIS co-creator Donald P. Bellisario explained to The Hollywood Reporter for a recent oral history of the latter show.
‘NCIS’ was supposed to be ‘Law & Order’ in the Navy’
JAG was a successful show. And on rival network NBC, Law & Order was in the middle of its 20-year run. So, perhaps it’s not surprising that NCIS was first envisioned as a show combining JAG‘s legal drama elements with a police procedural.
“The show was originally pitched as Law & Order in the Navy,” Mark Horowitz, JAG director and NCIS executive producer, said. “First, there’d be some crime, and the NCIS agents would investigate it — the cops of the Navy — and then the JAG people would come in and try the case.”
However, Bellisario eventually decided that approach wouldn’t work for NCIS.
“Don played with that idea for a little while, and then he just said, ‘We’re not going to do that. It’s going to be two completely separate shows,’” Horowitz recalled.
According to NCIS and JAG executive producer Charles Floyd Johnson, the decision to focus on the investigative aspects came from the very top at CBS.
”When the two-parter was finished, the strength was really the first half-hour with the investigation. And Mark Harmon just made a big impression,” he explained. “They started testing it, and the first half-hour tested so well that [then-CBS head] Les Moonves said, ‘Why don’t we just make it all investigation?’ So that’s how it came about.”
‘NCIS’ used to be called ‘Nacy NCIS’
The NCIS creators soon realized they’d struck gold with their new formula. But there was one slight problem with the show. CSI, another procedural on CBS, had a confusingly similar name and a focus on forensic investigation. There were apparently fears audiences would confuse the two shows.
“In that first year, understandably so, the CSI folks were not too happy about us bringing out a show called NCIS — a crime show with forensics,” NCIS co-creator Don McGill said. “So it was decided that, at least in that first year, to differentiate, it was called Navy NCIS, which is a little bit redundant. But it assuaged the concerns of the folks at CSI.”
Bellisario wasn’t a fan of the awkward name.
“I fought that idea all the way,” he told the New York Times in a 2005 interview. Ultimately, he got his way. The Navy NCIS name only lasted one season, and the show eventually became known as NCIS.
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