‘NCIS’ was originally pitched as a show combing a police procedural with a legal drama, similar to NBC’s ‘Law & Order.’
NCIS has been entertaining viewers with its distinctive blend of humor and intense drama for twenty years. The CBS show, which follows a group of Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigators, debuted in 2023 and is now in its 21st season (as soon as the actors can resume filming). It has also given rise to a number of spinoffs, including NCIS: Sydney, the first foreign adaptation, which will premiere later this year. The series, and hence the entire NCIS universe, would have appeared drastically differently if the original series plan had been realized.
‘NCIS’ is a ‘JAG’ spinoff
It’s simple to overlook the fact that NCIS is a spinoff of another long-running series given how long it has been airing. A legal drama called JAG centered on the attorneys of the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s office. Ten seasons of it were broadcast, initially on NBC and then on CBS. Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), Anthony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherley), and Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) were all introduced in two JAG Season 8 episodes that doubled as a backdoor NCIS pilot.
“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 quickly discovered their new formula was a winning one. However, there was a small issue with the program. Another procedural on CBS, CSI, focused on forensic investigation and had a moniker that was confusingly similar. There were reportedly worries that viewers would mix up 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,” said Don McGill, one of the show’s co-creators. Therefore, it was determined that, for at least the first year, to differentiate, it would be dubbed Navy NCIS, which is somewhat redundant. However, it allayed the CSI staff’s worries.
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.