NCIS Season 21 Announces A Big Change To The Opening Credits After David McCallum's Death

Extra care is taken with the latest episode of "NCIS" out of respect for one of its legendary stars, David McCallum, who passed away in 2023 at age 90. "NCIS" Season 21, Episode 2, "The Stories We Leave Behind," marks his final appearance in the opening credits as Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard. The credits also include other respectful alterations. Besides gifting audiences with the return of Michael Weatherly's Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo to pay his respects to Ducky, a slower version of the theme tune is included, paying homage to a star that has been a staple on the show for 20 seasons. 

Long-time star of the show Brian Dietzen, who plays Dr. Jimmy Palmer, co-wrote the episode with Scott Williams and expressed how McCallum's passing was factored into the handling of the credits. "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," he told TV Insider. "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." 

Dietzen further broke down the show's aim to pay its respect in just the right way.

As with any loss, a balance needs to be found that involves both grieving and remembering the person's great impact while they were here. It was this fine line that Dietzen kept to when addressing the passing of the friend he worked with and the wonderful character he brought to "NCIS" for such an impressive amount of time. Mallard's presence in the world of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service spanned an incredible 459 episodes of "NCIS" and two appearances on "NCIS: New Orleans," all sparking from his debut in "JAG" in 2003.

"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," admitted Dietzen. "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."