Yesterday we had the
announcement and artwork for a DVD release of
JAG spin-off
NCIS. Now we have the announcement and artwork for
JAG itself!
But first I'd like to dedicate this news to my brother, Brian Lambert, who has been patiently waiting for this release for a long time now...and asking me about it almost every time we talked! He joins thousands of TVShowsOnDVD readers who have made this show the 2nd-most wanted unreleased-to-disc television program among the voting at our site!
My brother will be able to get this as a slightly late birthday present, when it hits the stores on
June 20th. This 6-DVD set is subtitled "
The Complete 1st Season, and will run 1010 minutes. We are not sure yet, though, if the set truly IS "complete". You see, after a double-length pilot ("A New Life") aired on NBC, the series began its regular weekly run on the peacock network, airing 19 more episodes before the show was canceled due to low ratings. Stars David James Elliott ("Harmon 'Harm' Rabb, Jr.") and Tracey Needham ("Meg Austin") seemed to be out of a job. But Co-Creator Donald P. Bellisario wasn't ready to let it be over, and soon a different network - CBS - picked up the show for a second season. Something got lost in the transition, though...an entire episode!
The final episode of the first season was to be called "Skeleton Crew", and in the first few minutes of the episode that was filmed, a woman who was Harm's girlfriend got killed. That lady was played by none other than Catherine Bell, and when Needham came off the cast for the second season (the first one on CBS), Bell was brought on as Harm's new partner, "Sarah 'Mac' MacKenzie". But along the way, the "Skeleton Crew" episode was never broadcast until reruns on the USA Network, and the second part of what was intended to be a season-ending cliffhanger was never actually produced! Note, though, that portions of "Skeleton Crew" were used in the Season 3 episode called "Deathwatch"...but "Skeleton Crew" itself was never aired as originally produced during the show's original broadcast run.
Since "Skeleton Crew" is considered to be a "lost" episode of the show, it's not clear if the 1010 minute running time includes that item. Perhaps if it IS on the set, it's as an extra (which isn't counted in the running time) rather than as a "mainstream episode". We already
know that interviews and a commentary track were produced for this release, and you can expect the commentary to be found on the pilot episode. The studio has revealed that Co-Creator (and Executive Producer, Writer and Director) Don Bellisario did the commentary for that.
Patrick Labyorteaux also stars as "Bud Roberts, Jr.", and Jay Leno, Terry O'Quinn, Richard Crenna, Joe Sabatino, Oliver North, John Wesley Shipp, Gail Strickland, Wings Hauser, and Dan Lauria are among the guest stars in the aired episodes from the first season. Here's the box art for this long-awaited release (as you can see, Needham appropriately stands by Elliott's shoulder for this first season package):
