‘NCIS’: Brian Dietzen Explains Change for Last Opening Credits With David McCallum

Meredith Jacobs February 20, 2024, 1:01 am

David McCallum in 'NCIS' — Sonja Flemming/CBS

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS Season 21 Episode 2 “The Stories We Leave Behind.”]

NCIS pays tribute to the late David McCallum and his character, Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard, in the latest episode, which also marks a significant last for the show: his appearance in the opening credits.

TV Insider has confirmed that’s the last time McCallum will be part of that sequence. The opening credits had a twist for his tribute episode, co-written by Scott Williams Brian Dietzen (whose Dr. Jimmy Palmer started out as Ducky’s assistant and is now the chief medical examiner), who features in our NCIS aftershow, NCIS: Case Closed, to break down everything that happened, including that surprising ending.

Rather than the usual theme we’ve been hearing for now over 20 seasons—and you can dance to—the music was slowed down for this special tribute episode.

“We were struggling with that, I’ll be real honest, because coming out of that cold open, it didn’t really feel very fitting to [have] all of a sudden our wonderful opening credits that our people do, our post-production people do an amazing, amazing job on,” Dietzen tells us. “It usually sets the table and gets people’s energy up for, this is what we’re about to do, and there’s explosions, and there’s fighting, there’s gunshots and stuff. It felt like tonally it wasn’t right for this episode.”

'NCIS' Aftershow: Inside [Spoiler]'s Return for Ducky Tribute

When it came to the episode, “When you lose someone very close, you can fall into just crying and mourning continually, and while we wanted to pay homage to him, we didn’t want that to be it,” Dietzen explains. “We wanted to celebrate the fun times as well, and we wanted to celebrate the amazing work that this great actor did on our show and also honor the character that he created. And I think both those people, the character and the actor, would love to see us continuing on and honoring him through continuing to do good work.”

NCIS, Mondays, 10/9c, CBS