We regularly hear that casts of long-running tv collection grow to be quite a bit like household. After they’re capturing a season, actors spend way more time with their co-workers than they do their very own households, which may get sort of tough relying on how joyful everyone seems to be on set. If relations are strained between sure events, or if the collection merely is not performing as much as expectations, that dynamic can simply flip dysfunctional.
Although it hasn’t at all times been a totally harmonious surroundings (per Pauley Perrette), the set of CBS’ long-running procedural “NCIS” has largely been freed from main drama all through its 22 seasons. And whereas actors have come and gone over this time interval, some, like Sean Murray and Brian Dietzen, have hung round in a single capability or one other for your complete run.
If anybody actor served because the spine to “NCIS,” it was undoubtedly David McCallum. The veteran performer, who rocketed to tv stardom within the Sixties as Illya Kuryakin within the NBC spy collection “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” discovered a profession second wind in 2003 when he was forged as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard, the historian and chief medical expert of NCIS. McCallum was 70 when he joined the collection, and although he aged remarkably nicely over his time on the present, he ultimately needed to in the reduction of his workload as he received on in years. He was nonetheless thought of a collection common when he handed away on September 23, 2025 on the age of 90, which left the forged and crew of “NCIS” mourning the lack of a cherished work member of the family. So it solely felt proper to present Ducky a fond, full-episode send-off, which the collection did to its followers’ teary-eyed satisfaction.
Ducky helped the NCIS crew resolve one final thriller
On the outset of the season 21 episode “The Tales We Go away Behind,” Brian Dietzen’s Dr. Jimmy Palmer discovers that his longtime colleague Ducky died in his sleep. The NCIS crew is rocked by this information, however nobody takes it tougher than Jimmy, who counted Ducky as each a mentor and an expensive good friend. As everybody strikes by means of the grieving course of, Jimmy receives an surprising go to from a indignant teenage woman. That is Serena Zawadski (Olivia Sanabia), the daughter of a slain U.S. Military soldier whose dying is getting used to spice up the election marketing campaign of a shameless politician. Olivia had sought out Ducky’s help in serving to her clear her father’s title, which has grow to be not simply an emotional drain however an obstacle to her future as she applies to high schools.
All of a sudden, the NCIS crew has one final thriller to unravel with the help of their beloved Ducky — and so they come by means of for his or her good friend whereas taking time to share private remembrances that vary from touching to hilarious.
Evidently, everybody who labored on “NCIS” beloved McCallum, however, as within the present, Dietzen was significantly near the actor, which led him to participate within the writing of the farewell episode. McCallum’s dying additionally occasioned a cameo from former star Michael Weatherly, whose beloved Anthony DiNozzo makes a shock look, his first in eight seasons, on the finish of the episode.
For the “NCIS” devoted, “The Tales We Go away Behind” was an extremely worthy goodbye to the nice David McCallum. Ducky could also be gone, however, because the episode makes clear, he’ll by no means be forgotten so long as everybody retains his reminiscence alive by way of their tales of his kindness, wit and experience.
