Dissecting DiNozzo Session 2: Compare and Contrast

Sorry I have been AWOL as of late, I have been in the middle of an NCIS inspired muse overload and am trying to work on 17 fics at once.

I am not sure if you are aware of it or not but one of the fics I am currently working on is and NCIS/Dark Angel epic crossover saga where Tony and Logan are the same person.

I have watched every episode of the two (very different) Michael Weatherly shows multiple times and while I have been writing the fic entitled New World (Dis)Order I have come to a realisation about the two characters that, seperately would not have an impact, but when they are morphed into one character becomes a factor that is making it hard to write the story at times.

If you have ever watched Dark Angel then you will be aware that Michael Weatherly's character of Logan Cale gets shot in the first episode leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and dependant on a wheelchair (and later on an exoskeleton and then healed).

You see the journalist and freedom fighter sturggle to accept his fate in many episodes, one in particular where he pulls out a gun and is prepared to kill himself, so it is definitley not been an easy transformation from being able to work to have someone, as he says, 'do the legwork' for him.

Michael Weatherly's performance is absolutely amazing and heart wrenching at times in the two seasons but when I thought of Logan as also being Tony my heart seemed to break.

Over the seven seasons, and two JAG episodes, of NCIS we have established the Tony DiNozzo is a very energetic and athletic guy whose major at college was PE (and was on numerous sporting teams). In Twilight when Tony returned from sick leave after the plague he said to Gibbs that he had to return early because he was getting bored at home. DiNozzo is a man that constantly needs to be doing something whether it is chasing suspects or chasing (as Gibbs put it once) 'a tight ass'.

For Tony to end up in a wheelchair as Logan did would be a massive blow to not only his physical pursuits but also to his state of mind.

This is where my discovery came in. We have known Tony for (as of next week) 150 episodes of NCIS as well as 2 bonus JAG episodes, where as we have only known Logan Cale for a few scenes in Dark Angel before he gets his spinal cord damaged. While it is sad that this character can no longer walk we haven't really gotten to know him and so it is a bit difficult to know the impact it will have on him physically, mentally and emotionally.

I think it (the shooting, blown out spinal cord and the aftermath) has a bigger impact on the audience if we imagine the same thing happening to this character we have known for the better part of seven seasons.

Another scene in Twilight is something Ducky says about Tony after examining him following the car explosion: He is unnaware of his own limitations*. If Tony was the one that ended up in the wheelchair those limitations would suddenly come crashing into his focus and another set of limitations would be added to the pile that were already there.

With Logan we learnt these things about him as the series went on AFTER the shooting so the impact and ramifications were drawn out over multiple episodes as opposed to being aware ot them the moment we saw him go down.

For anyone, in real life or on screen, it would be difficult to have to learn you will never walk again but I think that out of these two Michael Weatherly characters Tony's pain, struggle, etc. is a lot more sudden.

What I am basically saying is that if it takes me a while to write New World (Dis)Order it is because my heart breaks for Tony and not his new identity of Logan.


Peace... Out....

*Ducky's prognosis of Tony is much longer than in the ep and I may be mistaken as to what he actually said, but as it is 5.33am here I can't really be bothered looking for the exact comment. However the basic idea is the same.