![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/1ed6f7ac6e8ebb74afdc46dc2d87995f-1024x683-2-768x512-1-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NCIS season 21 spoilers follow.<\/p>\n
NCIS star Brian Dietzen has explained how David McCallum\u2019s death radically changed season 21.<\/p>\n
McCallum passed away at age 90 last year while planning for the new season was still underway. As a result, producers decided to create a special episode to write out his character, Ducky, and pay tribute to his impact on the show.<\/p>\n
The production team turned to McCallum\u2019s long-time co-star, Brian Dietzen \u2014 who plays chief medical examiner Dr. Jimmy Palmer \u2014 to co-write the episode \u201cThe Stories We Leave Behind\u201d with Scott Williams.<\/p>\n
In this emotional episode, the NCIS team comes to terms with Ducky\u2019s death by working on one of his unsolved cases, involving a woman\u2019s father who was dishonorably discharged from the Marines.<\/p>\n
While Brian has written for the show in the past, he explained to TVLine that he was not planning on writing for the abbreviated season 21 until McCallum\u2019s untimely death.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore David passed, we had that work stoppage with the WGA and SAG strikes, so I had said to Steven Binder and David North, our showrunners, \u2018I don\u2019t need to write this year,\u2019 because we only have 10 episodes,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to insert myself. But then when David passed away, Scott Williams, my co-writer, volunteered to do this episode and he said to me, \u2018I thought it was only right that you co-write with me.\u2019 And then everybody in the room said, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s perfect. That\u2019s what should happen.\u2019 And I said, \u2018Absolutely, I\u2019d be honored to.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The episode will center around Jimmy\u2019s reaction to his colleague\u2019s untimely death, including the revelation that it was Jimmy who\u2019d found Ducky dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince Jimmy worked so closely with Ducky for a couple decades, it made sense that a lot of the story would be retold through his eyes and his memories,\u201d Brian said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd certainly, McGee had been there with him as well, but what was really important to Scott and me, and to the whole crew, was that we honor Ducky\u2019s relationship with the larger team. Not just the current team of Parker, Knight, Torres, McGee, and Kasie, but also the teams that came before.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NCIS season 21 spoilers follow. NCIS star Brian Dietzen has explained how David McCallum\u2019s death radically changed season 21. McCallum passed away at age 90 last year… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":794,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions\/794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}