‘NCIS’ tribute to David McCallum brings back fan favourite

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Long-running procedural NCIS bid farewell to its last original cast member David McCallum Monday night.

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McCallum, who played eccentric chief medical examiner Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard since the show’s debut in 2003, died Sept. 25 at age 90. His TV career stretched all the way back to the 1960s when he appeared on The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

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But it was Ducky, a bookish pathologist for the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, an agency dedicated to solving crimes involving the Navy or the Marines, that modern-day TV fans loved to watch.

McCallum’s goodbye episode was co-written by Brian Dietzen, who portrayed Ducky’s protege Dr. Jimmy Palmer for two decades.

“We wanted to honour a life well-lived, 60 years in this business and 20 years on our show,” Dietzen told USA Today. “This allows fans to grieve with us. We’ve all experienced this loss.”

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Dietzen told the outlet that while McCallum’s castmates are grieving, McCallum loved life.

“Both his TV family and his real family are feeling pain and grief right now,” said Dietzen. “The small comfort all of us can take is David was 90, and lived so many lives to the fullest within those 90 years. He took advantage of every last breath.”

The episode, titled The Stories We Leave Behind, began with Jimmy arriving at Ducky’s house to find his mentor dead in his bed.

“Dying quietly in your sleep isn’t the worst way to go,” Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) said back at the NCIS offices.

But as the team uncovered details surrounding a case Ducky was investigating, they decided to pursue clues he was following involving a dead soldier.

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“The best way of honouring Ducky was to have him solve one last case with the team,” said Dietzen. “Even posthumously, he’s the one that cracks the case.”

“The name of this episode is The Stories We Leave Behind,” Dietzen added in a separate interview with Variety. “So that’s what I wanted to do to honour him, to recognize that those stories are earned and meaningful. You add ’em up altogether and you have a very full life, and that very full life is all we really leave behind to affect people; once we’re gone, those stories become our legacy.”

The episode featured clips of Ducky from over the years, including flashbacks with Leroy Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette), but the biggest surprise came when Michael Weatherly, who left the series in 2016, returned as Special Agent Tony DiNozzo near the end.

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With the case wrapped up, DiNozzo and Palmer are about to head out to Ducky’s memorial.

“He had a good friend in you,” DiNozzo tells Palmer as he hands him a Ducky-inspired bow tie.

“We all realized that DiNozzo is the perfect character for this last scene,” Dietzen told USA Today. “So getting to write a Tony DiNozzo scene was an absolute treat.”

Before the gang gets in an elevator, Palmer flicks the light off in Ducky’s autopsy space.

“With the passing of Ducky and David, it’s important by the end that we show that the stories we leave behind are not everything,” said Dietzen. “The people he left behind will continue. That’s his legacy. It’s what Ducky has meant to them that will push them forward and make the next chapters.”

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