--- name: "Don McGill" canonical: "https://film.one/person/don-mcgill" fi1m_id: "don-mcgill" imdb_id: "nm1453745" tmdb_id: 1218788 wikidata_id: "Q3035841" roles: ["Writer"] born: "18 April 1963" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "writer" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-23T13:36:53.083067+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Don McGill ## Identity Don McGill - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/don-mcgill - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** don-mcgill - **IMDb ID:** nm1453745 - **TMDB ID:** 1218788 - **Wikidata ID:** Q3035841 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_McGill, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3035841, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1453745/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1218788 Writer. Born 18 April 1963 in New York City, New York, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Writer - **Born:** 18 April 1963, New York City, New York, USA - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_McGill, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3035841, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1453745/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1218788 ## Streaming the US now - **Apple TV:** [*NCIS*](https://film.one/tv/ncis.md) (66) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Don McGill > Don McGill wrote down the shape of *NCIS*, a dead sailor, an autopsy, a lab, a table, then left after a falling out early in the run. Twenty-odd years on the hour still follows his blueprint, which is a compliment, and a slightly sad one. An hour of *NCIS* goes like this. A sailor or a Marine is found dead somewhere near Washington, the body goes to autopsy, the evidence goes to the lab, and at the end somebody sits across a table from Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and says more than they meant to. That shape has held for twenty-four seasons and more than 500 episodes, and Don McGill wrote it down first. He co-created the programme with Donald P. Bellisario, introduced it as two episodes of *JAG*, "Ice Queen" and "Meltdown", in 2003, and then wrote a couple of the first episodes proper. The one thing we can point to as his is the lab. Bellisario wanted humour. McGill was a *CSI* fan who liked the lab technician Greg Sanders, and his answer was a quirkier lab character, pushed further. That is where Abby comes from, and it is the part of the formula that gives the autopsy and the evidence somewhere to be funny. He did not stay to see any of it settle. Bellisario had given him his first job, writing on *JAG*; the two fell out during the first season and McGill left, by his own account because Bellisario was the boss and saw things differently. The programme has run since 23 September 2003 without him. He went to *Numb3rs* (2005–2010) as a writer and executive producer, joined *CSI: Crime Scene Investigation* in 2010, ran it as co-showrunner and then alone through its final season in 2015, and consulted on *Bull* (2016–2017). What can be said about his taste, then, is what *NCIS* still shows. The plots are frequently absurd and the people are not, and we have more than once switched on an episode meaning to watch ten minutes and stayed for the interrogation, because Gibbs at that table is worth waiting for and the hour is built to get him there. That is McGill's structure doing its job. The honest caveat is that we cannot point to a scene and say this is his and not Bellisario's or one of the many writers who came after. His career since has been inside other people's formats, keeping *CSI* running rather than making it anything new, and nothing we have seen argues for a style of his own. The one programme he built from the ground up is the one he left first, and it has outlasted *CSI*, which he stayed to run to the end. Somewhere in that there is a better story than most of the ones on the show, and nobody has written it yet. ## Biography Don McGill is an American television writer and producer. He was born on 18 April 1963 in New York City. McGill wrote for *JAG* (1995) and co-created its spin-off *NCIS* (2003) with Donald P. Bellisario, for which he also wrote episodes. He contributed writing and producing credits to *Numb3rs* (2005) and served as executive producer on *CSI: Crime Scene Investigation* (2000) for its later seasons. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *NCIS* (2003), Fi1m 66, Writer, Teleplay, Creator — [page](https://film.one/tv/ncis.md) ## Complete filmography (5) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Numb3rs* (2005), series, Writer, Co-Executive Producer, Executive Producer - *NCIS* (2003), series, Writer, Supervising Producer, Teleplay, Creator — Fi1m 66, [page](https://film.one/tv/ncis.md) - *CSI: Crime Scene Investigation* (2000), series, Writer, Teleplay, Story, Executive Producer - *JAG* (1995), series, Writer, Story - *The Cube* (1969), as Professor --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/don-mcgill