Post created by Lauren and Gretchen
Everybody has had dreams about becoming a crime slaying detective. Catching criminals and putting them away behind bars, investigating a crime scene, putting two and two together to solve the case. Crime shows are one of the most popular television programs these days. You have crime shows about the FBI, CIA, and even plain old police departments. Some focus on psychoanalysts, white collar criminals, blacklist agents, and some even focus on the Navy. One of the most popular crime shows that has gotten itself many spin offs, like in LA and in New Orleans, is NCIS. NCIS (Navy Criminal Investigative Service) is a show that brought a whole new look into how the military functions, specifically in the Navy yards. Like any good crime show, NCIS has the base team of detectives, their fearless leader, their director, their medical examiners, and their forensic scientist.
Now more important than any of these facts, is the part where anatomy plays a role. NCIS’s medical examiner Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard, is an old British veteran that has pursued the science of medicine through medical examinations. Ducky and his assistant doctor Palmer have many adventures in the lab performing autopsies on Navy personnel who have passed away under suspicious circumstances. On occasion, preposterous and sometimes twisted things happen. For one example Ducky was left a barrel at Bethesda Hospital filled with human body parts. As they attempted to put the person back together, Ducky and Palmer figured out that there wasn't one, but three bodies in that barrel. As Ducky and Palmer completed the human meat puzzle they slowly began to realize that one of the three victims had his toe placed where the right hand thumb should have been. Ducky remarked when showing Gibbs, the leader of the team, their findings, “In a catastrophic injury, when the thumb is lost, the patient’s hallux, or big toe, is removed and attached to the hand” (3:45, The Meat Puzzle). These findings consistently help the case get solved. Without that information, Dr. Mallard never would’ve realized that he knew the victim, which helped to advance the case significantly.
Each episode explores a different way that crimes can be solved using the expertise of anatomy and physiology and forensic analysis. Each victim is examined in great detail, giving the medical examiners clues as to how they died. When one examines the accuracy of the show itself, they find that, for the most part, it is accurate in its anatomical terminology. Any student of anatomy could watch an episode or two of NCIS and recognize a spattering of terms when either Dr. Mallard or Dr. Palmer speak. This could be harmful or helpful to one’s school career, as it would be easy to make the case to yourself that watching such an anatomically accurate show would be similar to studying. While it (unfortunately) could not be counted as an actual replacement for studying for an anatomy exam, NCIS is written in such a way that it uses terms such as “hallux” and “epidural hemorrhaging” with accuracy that makes and anatomy enthusiasts heart sing.