David McCallum credited as playing...
Donald Mallard
- Commander Janice Byers: Ducky?
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: Yes, it was something I was tagged with in school in my youth. I used to resent it. Now I quite like it.
- Commander Janice Byers: So do I.
- Jimmy Palmer: [after Ducky talks to his patient] Does it help you to - talk to them?
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: Well, they're still human. But what we do is so invasive, and impersonal. It helps me to establish a relationship.
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: I thought I'd show her something that revealed who I am. If she gets turned on, we haven't wasted our time.
- Abby Sciuto: You're the man, Ducky... Why can't I find a man like you?
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: Well, if this doesn't work out, I *am* available.
- [last lines]
- Leroy Jethro Gibbs: You can't let any woman affect you like this, Duck. Especially one you didn't know that well.
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: Well, my concerns are more immediate. I have two tickets for the opera tonight. She was going to accompany me. Jethro?
- Leroy Jethro Gibbs: No.
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: I wonder if Kate would be interested. Do you know where she is?
- Anthony DiNozzo: No.
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: [as Dr. Byers arrives] We were finished here, weren't we, Jethro.
- Leroy Jethro Gibbs: [long pause. Gibbs notices Ducky's interest in Byers] Oh, we were, Ducky.
- Anthony DiNozzo: Spontaneous human combustion? It's an urban myth.
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: Actually, Tony, we shouldn't disregard the notion. Stories of the phenomenon go 'way back, to the Bible, in fact, although it wasn't popularized until Dickens.
- Jimmy Palmer: Charles Dickens?
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: Yes. He used spontaneous combustion to kill off one of his characters, Mr. Krook, in the novel "Bleak House." It caused a minor uproar. Dickens was accused of perpetuating the age-old superstition.
- Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard: These were used by army surgeons Joseph Woodward and Edward Curtis at the postmortem of Abraham Lincoln, performed in a guest bedroom at the White House: The Lincoln Bedroom, hence the popular misconception. Lincoln never slept there.