An episode of NCIS (season 12: episode 14) called “Cadence” aired this week featuring a DS that becomes a prominent part of the story line. The producers may have wanted a DS, with its unique appeal to stand out in the episode, but their choice of our beloved classic Citroën over an old Mercedes, Peugeot, Volvo etc, proved to be a fatal one for the show’s credibility.
Michael Weatherly (pictured centre)
One of the investigation characters, DiNozzo, (played by Michael Weatherly) returns to the military academy he attended as a teen when a murdered Marine, who was an alumnus of the school, is found at the beginning dumped near a road in a wooded area clutching the photo of a current student.
Then, later in the show, the discovery is made that it was a DS that was used to drive the body there because the NCIS lab was able to match the two tire tracks at the scene to a tire used on a 1972 Citroën DS. Except that… (as those of us who know Citroëns probably have deduced by now) if a DS had been the car, there would have been four tire tracks not two because the DS tire track in the front is wider than in the rear. OOPS!
In this case, any other car of the era fitted with similar Michelin tires could have worked for the script. Forget all the looking up back in the lab as to the type of tire, to be correct using a Citroën DS in the show, just looking at the proper tire tracks at the crime scene at the very beginning, they would have been able to know right away that it was a Citroën! (Then they could have written some interesting scenario whereby they look for the few old Citroën DS that are still licensed and track one down that belongs to someone at the military academy. How cool would that be for a clever crime solve on a TV show?)
Too bad the Hollywood writers weren’t knowledgeable about Citroën’s DS for this one.
And by the way, whoever’s DS they used needs a left rear fender side marker light!
