22 Years Later, ‘Tony & Ziva’ Is Completely Changing ‘NCIS’ in One Surprisingly Simple Way

In the grand scheme of things, 22 years isn’t really long enough to classify something as a tradition, but with NCIS, the title definitely feels like one. When the show first aired, it was compelling because the cop procedural focused on military-related cases through the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Every single spin-off afterward began its title with the acronym, whether the franchise was simply expanding to a new location and cast like in NCIS: Los Angeles, or shifting their perspective back in time with NCIS: Origins.

The newest spin-off, NCIS: Tony & Ziva, has already started setting itself apart from the franchise by moving away from a cop procedural structure and adopting a more overarching crime drama approach. But during this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, the team revealed during the Tony & Ziva panel that there would be one more major change. The show’s title may start with NCIS like the other spin-offs, but it would have a different meaning here. This immediately sounded like a risky move, but after the three-episode premiere dropped on September 4, admittedly, they used the change perfectly.

‘NCIS: Tony & Ziva’ Changed the Longest Franchise Tradition

It’s just an acronym, right? How risky could this move really be? NCIS (specifically the acronym, not its extended form) is a household name, recognizable even to those who don’t watch the show. Maybe they associate it with the face of Mark Harmon, or perhaps have seen snippets of Ducky’s (David McCallum) bowtie while flicking through channels; either way, NCIS has been around long enough to make it feel like Tony & Ziva are breaking a beloved tradition. As such, this shift is bound to raise some concerns.

Origins actually does this first, as the spin-off takes place when the bureau was still called NIS. But this approach is more in line with the canon of the franchise, as characters in the show, specifically Gibbs (Harmon), have mentioned that it used to be called NIS. But Tony & Ziva is set in the present, concurrently running with the flagship show in its 22nd season, so we had no idea how they would be able to achieve this alteration while still preserving the sanctity of the tradition like Origins does.

Moreover, Tony & Ziva have already created quite a distance from the original franchise. The only concrete connection is Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo reprising their old fan-favorite roles as the titular characters. Meanwhile, the genre has changed, the location of Europe is completely new for the franchise, and five years have passed since we have seen these characters; there is already so much distance from the franchise we love, so won’t changing the title create more? With all these concerns in mind, we go into the spin-off’s premiere and soon realized our fears are unfounded: the change might have been exactly what the show needed.

‘Tony & Ziva’s Premiere Changed ‘NCIS’ to “No Country Is Safe”

Image via Paramount+

The spin-off’s premiere kicks off with Tony and Ziva striving to live uneventful, civilian lives, but Tony’s questionable decisions drag both of them into trouble soon enough (unlike the acronym, some things never change). One of Tony’s clients at his security firm is Interpol and, upon a major theft, he retrieves a USB dubbed 9.4 that was used to siphon Interpol’s money. He takes it back to the firm, but a handful of anonymous armed men break in to take the technology back. During this confrontation, they threaten Tony and Ziva’s daughter, Tali (Isla Gie), forcing him to comply while showing live footage of her whereabouts.

With some quick thinking and his assistant Claudette’s (Amita Suman) help, Tony manages to covertly send an encrypted signal to Ziva to alert her of the potential threat. When she receives and decodes the encryption, her laptop screen flashes blue, and the timeless acronym appears on-screen. But the words expand, and here, NCIS stands for “No Country Is Safe,” which is also the title of the episode. Essentially, NCIS isn’t just the bureau for Tony and Ziva, but is now also a private code shared between them that alerts them to danger.

This ‘NCIS’ Change Perfectly Captures Tony & Ziva’s Relationship

Counter-intuitively, by changing the acronym, Tony & Ziva actually honor the franchise and their relationship to it in the best way possible. If they want to be an independent spin-off that doesn’t pull in characters from NCIS, the physical bureau itself won’t hold much weight in their European adventure (especially since they become fugitives). But the callback to the letters and the fact it becomes their personal alarm code that only they know pays homage to how important NCIS is to their lives. They first met at the bureau and have a shared personal history there, making them feel secure enough to use as a safety function in the present. What could be more meaningful than that?

Additionally, the words themselves encapsulate the nature of Tony and Ziva’s evolving relationship. When they first met, they were two agents beholden to two different countries, America and Israel, yet the borders couldn’t stop them from falling in love with each other. Additionally, much of Ziva’s story involved threats from Israel, Mossad, and her past, further leaning into the idea of “No Country Is Safe.” As they both cross the border again to Paris and even further during the spin-off, it plays as an obvious reminder to always be diligent and aware, but in a weird way, brings them closer together. It’s almost as if reminding each other that no country is safe pits them against the world, making them the ultimate dream team.

The change also reflects how the spin-off functions in relation to the rest of the franchise as well. Just like the acronym, Tony & Ziva takes two OG characters and relocates them to an entirely new location and genre, where they make the story and the acronym their own. Considering we haven’t seen these two characters on the screen together since Season 11, adding whispers of nostalgia to a novel framework that gives them autonomy is the best way to do justice to their story. Sure, no one can actually replace the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, but Tony & Ziva aren’t trying to do that: they are honoring it in the most intimate and heartwarming way they know how.