The episode began with Dr. Jimmy Palmer, played by Brian Dietzen who also co-wrote the episode, bringing coffee to Dr. Mallard at his home. Except when he arrives Palmer discovers Ducky has died in his sleep.
Rather than abruptly cut to the NCIS opening, the show slowly fades into the opener with a slower version of the theme song we’ve been hearing for the past two decades.
The decision to slow down the opening was a deliberate one, albeit a slightly difficult one.
“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,” Dietzen 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.”
I think slowing down the intro was a beautiful way to start such an emotional episode. There’s nothing I would have changed about the tribute to David McCallum and his character Ducky. It was so well done.
