NCIS star confirms that Ducky tribute will incorporate old characters

Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum) was a crucial part of NCIS for two decades. He interacted with every character who has been a part of the titular team, and as such, the season 21 episode that will pay tribute to him will do its best to incorporate these characters.

Brian Dietzen, who plays Ducky's protege, Jimmy Palmer, co-wrote the tribute episode, which is titled "The Stories We Leave Behind." He told TV Insider that Ducky's importance to the current NCIS team would be made clear throughout the case, but that he made sure to emphasize how important the character has been to former members like Abby (Pauley Perrette) and Gibbs (Mark Harmon).

NCIS will include flashbacks in the Ducky tribute

That's not to say that Perrette, Harmon, and every NCIS actor who has appeared on the show will come back and make a cameo, but that their characters will be spotted within the episode, whether through flashbacks or photographs.

Dietzen told the outlet that focusing on just one part of Ducky's career would short-change him as a character, and so extra care was put into depicting the changes he went through over the course of his time with NCIS:

"We wanted to see him interacting with people that [aren't] on our current team and also people that are on our iterations of our team, too."

It was also important for Dietzen to fold the Ducky tribute into a case that made sense for the NCIS team to handle. He didn't want to sideline the case-of-the-week format of the show to focus on the late character, he wanted to do both in a way that was emotionally satisfying.

Brian Dietzen says the episode still 'has a case to solve'

The thing that made this doable was avoiding an over-reliance on flashbacks, and making sure the case the current NCIS team is given is compelling on its own. While Dietzen's comments make it sound as though there are a few flashbacks in store, they will be sparingly used:

"It cannot just be some series of flashbacks to prior Ducky Mallard scenes. It was really important for us that we still have a case to solve."

It's terribly sad that McCallum could not appear in the new season, but there's solace to be had in the fact that his co-stars are giving his character the send-off he deserves.