From TV GUIDE (Canada) Sept. 9, 1995, season preview
JAG
STARS: David James Elliott
PREMISE: A cross between "Top Gun" and "A Few Good Men," JAG (short for Judge Advocate General) stars Elliott as a crusading Navy lawyer who investigates the seamier side of military operations, sometimes to the dismay of his superiors.
STRENGTHS: Elliott is a Canadian (remember him from Street Legal?) who comes to this series hot from a supporting role on Melrose Place - the American critics have been swooning over him as the next Kevin Costner or Tom Selleck. The show's executive producer is Donald P. Bellisario, who has been successful at making stars out of relative unknowns like Selleck (Magnum, P.I.) and Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap).
WEAKNESSES: Producers plan to use lots of leftover feature film footage (such as fighter jet shots from "Top Gun" or submarine footage from "The Hunt for Red October") instead of shooting their own action sequences. It'll sure look good, but how many times will we end up watching the same airplane take off?
BOTTOM LINE: No matter how hot Elliott may become, it's always tough to launch a new show on Saturday night - and this one is facing off against a well-established opponent in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
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From TV GUIDE (Canada) March 9, 1996
Naval Gazing by Ellen Vanstone
JAG, starring rising Canadian star David James Elliott and Tracey Needham, moves to Wednesdays this week on NBC.
"We see an opportunity," says NBC entertainment president Warren Littlefield. "There's an older, declining audience for 90210 and comedies on the other two networks. JAG has been a success story on Saturday and it'll work even better on Wednesday."
Elliott agrees. "I've always believed Wednesday night was the right slot for this show," he says of the action drama. "Our strongest numbers have been among young men; now we're aggressively pursuing women."
And a few female fans are returning the favor, sometimes in alarming ways. Elliott has received some "strange" mail, he says. The standard response has been an autographed photo - and no more. "My manager took a course on how to handle fan mail from the LAPD," says Elliott. "Marcia Clark taught it, but that was a couple of years ago, before the O.J. thing."
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From TV GUIDE (Canada) August 30, 1997
David James Elliott:
"We don't let our [four-year-old] daughter watch any overly violent shows. We monitor what she watches. We don't let her watch cartoons on TV. She watches PBS, that's it. We like her to come on the set [of JAG], to help her understand that it's make-believe and that just because it's on TV doesn't make it real. So we hope to educate her. I think it's a parent's role; programming is what it is, and it's not an excuse for parents to be lazy."
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From TV Times (Canada) August 30 - Sept. 5, 1996
Local Heroes - Actors hatch a new Canadian conspiracy in TV shows on both sides of the border
by Eric Kohanik
David James Elliott- NBC grounded his high-flying adventures as a navy lawyer in JAG last season, but the Toronto-born Elliott (once a Street Legal love interest and a FLARE magazine bachelor of the year) got a reprieve when CBS came to the rescue and picked up the show. JAG went back into production Aug. 19; watch for it midseason."The caricature is of DJE as the beaver, symbol of Canada.