NCIS: Tony & Ziva - Season One - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

NCIS: Tony & Ziva - Season One



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
As a long time NCIS fan, and an even BIGGER Tony and Ziva fan (seriously, seasons 3-10 were the absolute best of the show, with their camaraderie being one of the biggest driving forces for that), so when Cote de Pablo left the show for some reason (there have been a lot of reasons thrown around over the year, but we may NEVER know the real cause of her departure) it devastated a lot of viewers, as their strange romance was a huge pull for the show. And the series suffered quite a bit after she left. Series regular Michael Weatherly left the show a few years later, but they retconned Ziva being unceremoniously killed off by Tony learning that he had a daughter, and Ziva was actually on the run. It actually made a really nice send-off for Tony as he learned that he had a child and needed to change career paths to take care of her. But the ending back in 2016 for that storyline was a bit bittersweet, as Ziva was still out there, and Tony and her were not back together (which, very bluntly, is what fans were really looking for). So when it was announced that Tony Dinozzo and Ziva David were coming back with their own NCIS spin-off show, I was over the moon.

The show picks up in 2025, almost a decade since Tony left NCIS, and he and Ziva decided to forge their own path. Instead of being back together, Tony and Ziva are once more living the dysfunctional life. This time in Paris, where Tony is running a private security firm, and Ziva is teaching a voice school while co-parenting their daughter Tali (Isla Gie). After a rogue criminal agent rips Interpol off for about 122 million euros, Tony and his team are called in to stop the transfer and catch the thief, and while they actually capture the hacking device (a maguffin known as “the 9.4 device”), it seems that the criminal element behind the attack is not done. Stealing the device and targeting their daughter forces Tony and Ziva to put aside their old differences and band together once more to take out the criminals BEFORE Interpol decides to take them in as suspected accomplices.

Unlike the “case of the week” structure of NCIS, Tony & Ziva takes a more serialized look at the characters, with a single plot acting as the driving force for all 10 episodes. And the results are a bit of a mixed bag. Maybe it’s my rose colored glasses and looking at the characters through a decade-plus-old lens, but Tony and Ziva felt slightly “off” the whole season. Don’t get me wrong. Tony and Ziva felt very authentic to their old characters, but the dialogue feels a bit forced. Especially in regards to Tony’s wisecracks. Too much time was spent on dealing with Ziva’s PTSD for her ex-life as a Mossad assassin, and by the 3rd episode I was really hoping to see a bit more investigation and a bit less drama regarding Ziva’s insecurities. And let's face it, the modern 25-year history of turning every relationship in a TV show into a broken one at the end has worn out its welcome, by a long shot (think T’Pol and Trip in Enterprise, Han and Leia in the new Star Wars films, etc). Seeing the two still hashing out the “will we work together?” schtick has gotten old fast, really only served as a hindrance for their eventual happy ending (which does happen, spoiler alert).

On the positive side, Weatherly and Pablo fall back into their characters rather effortlessly, almost as if they had played them for years (shocking, I know). The addition of Boris was fantastic for some light-hearted comedy, and the mystery over whether the Interpol agent Henry was behind all this was a really nice addition. Sadly, the show was canceled at the end of the season, so we aren’t going to see any more of Tony and Ziva like this again, BUT it has been confirmed that Michael Weatherly is coming back to NCIS for the 24th season as Tony once more. Though we don’t have enough information to know whether he’s going to be returning for good or just as a recurring guest role for the season. My personal guess is the latter, as I would expect him to come back in the form of his security firm working with the NCIS team, as I doubt he wants to come back as a permanent character. But that’s just my guess.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

Maybe it’s been too long since I’ve last seen a DVD on my TV, but Tony & Ziva’s video presentation was ever so slightly disappointing. The image itself is solid, with decent details, bright colors, and a sandy look that replicates a lot of Middle Eastern war films. That being said, I did notice a goodly amount of compression issues, with wavering distortion here and there, some minor macroblocking, and crushed blacks. I took a look at the DVD and noticed it was hovering at around the 4.5-5.5 Mbps range, so it definitely could explain the compression, being the discs held about 3-4 hours EACH (spread across 3 DVD-9s).







Audio:

The 5.1 Dolby Digital track is quite nice though, giving us a richer and fuller experience than my old NCIS DVDs gave us. Action and gunfights carry quite a punch, and the car chase with “my baby” has some really great use of surround channels. Dialog is the main center of the track, though, and comes through nice and cleanly. Once more, I would have loved to have heard this in lossless, but right now the lossy Dolby Digital sounds solid enough.





Extras:

• Deleted scenes on 2 episodes
• A gag reel
• NCIS: Tony And Ziva: A Global Affair
• Shooting Abroad
• A Dress Worth Waiting For

Final Score: ​

Tony & Ziva was fun, but not AS fun as my internal imagination had made it out to be before it was released. It IS nice to actually wrap up the Tony and Ziva romance arc that frustrated fans for soooooooooo many years, but it did come with downsides. One of those downsides is the fact that Alliance/Paramount decided to put this on DVD instead of Blu-ray or 4K, but still, it’s nice to get the show on physical media at all considering the poor state of TV on Blu-ray/4K these days. The discs look and sound decent, and the extras are pretty good as well. Honestly, while not THE best season we were hoping for, Tony & Ziva works well as a tight miniseries, allowing us to wrap up one of the biggest loose ends out of all NCIS history. Fun watch is my final recommendation.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Michael Weatherly, Cote de Pablo, Amita Suman, Isla Gie
Created by: John McNamara
Aspect Ratio: 2.20:1 MPEG2
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Alliance Entertainment
Rated: NR
Runtime: 437 Minutes
DVD Release Date: July 14th, 2026

Recommendation: Solid Watch

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