Expanding your streaming content using blockbuster franchises can incur significant costs. Disney joined the streaming competition by launching exclusive new series from the Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar universes. However, this strategy led to declining viewer numbers and box office revenues, or sometimes both. Consequently, Hollywood’s biggest franchises risk becoming nothing more than mere content for audiences. In comparison, Paramount’s strategy with their renowned franchises has seen relatively better results. The “Star Trek” series available directly on streaming platforms and its original films have not diminished audience interest to the same extent. This is especially impressive considering the movie titled “Section 31,” which Looper previously critiqued, was largely seen as the worst ever “Trek” installment by fans. Paramount effectively recognizes that these are supplementary adventures, not essential for understanding future developments on the big screen. This approach contrasts sharply with Marvel’s strategy, which involves producing numerous series and insisting on their importance to the storyline, potentially overwhelming viewers.

“NCIS” is no stranger to spin-offs, and the franchise’s first straight-to-streaming show “NCIS: Tony & Ziva” takes great pride in how inessential it is. You needn’t see it to understand the upcoming 23rd season (!) of the main series, and an extremely brief catch-up at the start of episode one suggests you don’t need to be an “NCIS” die-hard to check in with these fan-favorite characters who haven’t been together in the main cast for more than a decade. Although, I can’t imagine anybody who would go in completely cold to this series — they may have not been together onscreen for several years, but stars Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo return to their roles as if they have never left, which is to say they share the dead-eyed charisma of actors struggling to hide that they’re coasting on autopilot after doing this for so long. For newcomers, this will make “Tony & Ziva” feel just as alien as tuning in halfway through the latest season of “NCIS,” even if it is partially designed to ignore all those years of network TV baggage.

Of course, there will be no newcomers tuning in to “NCIS: Tony & Ziva” with fresh eyes, so the more important question is whether this return is anything more than just fan service for a couple whose will-they won’t-they dynamic peaked at least 15 years ago. The three episodes screened for critics jump between a distractingly COVID-free 2020 and the present day. It starts with Ziva’s (Cote de Pablo) return to Tony (Michael Weatherly) and their daughter Tali (Isla Gie) after she faked her own death, and properly kicks off when Tony’s cybersecurity company gets attacked, with hundreds of millions of euros deposited into the company account to frame him for reasons unknown. Ziva is brought in after this ruse involves an attempt to kidnap their daughter, and their paths directly cross once a Red Notice is placed on their heads by the FBI, leading them with no choice but to head out on the run, finding the most remote spots in Europe to hide out in.

It’s a sufficiently loose framework to ensure that each episode still plays out enough like a stand-alone procedural to not subvert the franchise formula too much, the high-tech conceit occasionally allowing for moments of inspired lunacy — like in the second episode, when the pair must face off against an army of self-driving cars. However, it takes just a quick glance at any comments section where this show is discussed to realize that the main thing fans want to see is the return of the “Tiva” relationship, and the plots do feel reverse engineered to force them into rekindling their romance. The first episode opens with the flashforward tease that Ziva is to imminently marry Boris (“Ted Lasso” star Maximilian Osinski), despite being single at the chronological start of the storyline. It’s the kind of obvious fake out that initially seems to have been created for an awful fan fiction moment where Tony interrupts the wedding to declare his love, although later episodes make it clearer that it’s all part of a covert plan — shamelessly playing fans like a fiddle in manipulating their hopes for the central couple.

Outside of restarting a will-they, won’t-they between two co-parents of a tween daughter who already have a long history, what does “NCIS: Tony & Ziva” offer that adds depth to these characters that a weekly procedural show with a larger ensemble couldn’t? The answer is not very much, and based on the three episodes screened, the stunted growth may very well be by design. Ziva is, of course, a former Mossad agent whose most explosive “NCIS” plotlines revolved around her continued ties to the Israeli intelligence agency — and while her status as the most prominent Jewish Israeli character in American media (despite Cote de Pablo being a gentile Chilean) was the subject of praise in Israel, the show’s far more critical depiction of Mossad operations was not.

Bringing this character back at the current moment in history, when the genocide in Palestine has turned Israel into pariahs in all but a handful of western countries, should feel like propaganda; a strong, unambiguously Israeli character who audiences have long known to have not blindly followed commands from their intelligence unit is the kind of PR the country has been desperate for. But outside of one throwaway reference to her previous employer, that history is omitted from the record here, her past ironed out as much as possible so she can become the uncomplicated action heroine fans have been eager to see return.

Like any long running soap opera, “NCIS” has frequently retconned its own storylines over the years, including several related to how Ziva initially arrived at the agency, which might explain a hesitancy to explore anything beyond her very last storyline in recharacterizing her at this later stage in life. But with many of her storylines revolving around a domineering father who trained her to fight from a young age, shouldn’t this history factor in more now that her own daughter is approaching the same age, and she’s been forced back out on the run? In offering nothing but undemanding fan service, “NCIS: Tony & Ziva” manages to avoid anything dramatically satisfying that justifies its own existence. It’s watchable in the same way the average crime procedural is, and completely disposable in the same way too.

“NCIS: Tony & Ziva” premieres on Paramount+ with its first three episodes on September 4.