Miller will play Walter Simmons, a man who transfers to Horatio’s team from the night shift. The character is from Louisiana, and he is an art theft specialist. Miller was originally added as a guest star, but the network recently picked him up as a series regular.

With the show entering season eight, Donahue and the rest of the creative team behind Miami took the opportunity to bring the show back to its roots, starting with the season premiere. “Out of Time” literally revisits the past as fans get a glimpse of how the team first came together. “[T]he way we approached this season was to go back to basics,” Donahue explained. “That’s why we went back 12 years in time to the beginning in a way to reinvigorate ourselves and then, in turn, our actors loved it and then hope our audience will.”

“It just came to us that way and we all thought it would be so interesting to see this team before they were this team,” Donahue said of the decision to include the flashback. “It’s like when you want to go back and see yourself at your first day of kindergarten or your first day of high school and see who you were and how you met and really how shiny you were back then. Emily Proctor (Calleigh Duquesne) made this choice where she played it so optimistic and brand new knowing that she really hadn’t seen a dead body; she was really so charming. David Caruso (Horatio Caine) was just great because he was discovering science and his character was realizing the science of the future.”

“We also, of course, got to see where his sunglasses came from,” Donahue added. “In the episode, Eric Delko (Adam Rodriguez) is still a tow-truck driver and he and Horatio keep meeting up because there’s so much water in Miami that tow-truck guys are always pulling stuff out of the waterways. Usually a dead body. And Eric keeps telling him, ‘When I pull out a really great pair of sunglasses I’m going to give them to you.’ It’s sweet and charming and we’ve done about 170 episodes and this one, if not the best then it’s one of the best.”

Adding new characters has to be done slowly, Donahue said, and Miami will be introducing a few new faces during season eight. “We actually have two new characters – one being Eddie Cibrian (Jesse Cardoza) and one being Omar Benson,” she explained. “When you mix a cake, you do it slowly and so we show Eddie in the flashback episode… actually I don’t want to call it flashback because it’s not that. It doesn’t feel like a flashback, it feels like a genesis, a beginning. But we see Calleigh on her first day and it’s Eddie Cibrian’s character’s last day. We see him momentarily and then in episode two he is coming back. We see him in the first five minutes of episode two and then a few members of CSI: Miami are taken hostage.”

Cibrian and Benson are joining the cast, and Rodriguez will have a slow exit during season eight. Despite the cast shake-ups, Donahue could not fathom Miami without its leading man. “The show rises and falls on David’s back and I will say with modesty that it’s sometimes the number one show in the world and I think that has to do with David,” she said. “People adore him. I cannot imagine the show without him and I wouldn’t want to.”

Donahue offered a glimpse into some of the cases the Miami team would work this season. “We’re doing one where someone is able to kill someone from 30 miles away,” she shared. “I won’t tell you how but it’s a fabulous mystery and the science is great. We’re doing one with a really interesting phenomenon about food in America. It’s getting to the point where corporations literally trademark our food and they own it… like they own the seeds. There’s a really good mystery where someone gets sick from E. coli and our people push to prove that it’s a form of negligent homicide. Then we do an homage to The Hangover where we have two guys who wake up with blood all over them and the groom is missing.”

As CSI Files previously reported, Miami will also be doing a three-series crossover with fellow franchise members CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and CSI: New York. The episodes will air during the first week of November sweeps. This season, Donahue said, “We’re telling a lot of great stories and a lot of great mysteries.”

In the season seven finale, “Seeing Red”, Delko went missing in the Florida Everglades. The character nearly came out in a body bag when Rodriguez and CBS failed to come to terms with a new contract. The network recommended that producers kill off the character. “But I wasn’t comfortable with that,” Rodriguez said. “And I spoke to [executive producer] Ann Donahue and she wasn’t comfortable about this either.”

“[W]e really wanted to make sure that the character had a proper sendoff,” Rodriguez continued. Donahue petitioned CBS “to make this work”, the actor explained. The result is that Rodriguez will appear in ten episodes over the course of the season.

Rodriguez’s final episodes on the show will be a period of transition for his character. Delko will change professions and examine his relationship with Calleigh Duquesne (Emily Procter). Of the romance between the two CSIs, Rodriguez said, “Like any great love story, I don’t know that the books will ever be closed on them.”

Zuiker saw his first dead body in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1999 when he was in the process of creating the original CSI series. “Now, when a civilian wants to do research with the real CSIs, you have to make submissions to the Public Affairs Office,” Zuiker explained in a blog post on Level26.com. “I did and they granted me ‘eight hours only’ for the year of 1999.” Zuiker knew eight hours was not going to be enough time. “By the grace of God, I went to high school with Monte Spoor who’s a real-life CSI,” he added. “He took me under his wing and we rode along together the entire week, ten hours a day, including midnight lunches at Caesar’s Palace.”

One of the crime scenes Zuiker visited was the home of a man who was mad at the police and tried to burn his house down while he was still inside. The body had been removed before he arrived, but Zuiker described his impression of the scene itself. “I don’t know if you’ve ever been inside of a burnt-down house, but it’s very creepy,” he said. “The smell of burned life is a smell you can never forget in a million years. The way fire enjoys ripping lives apart, turning pictures into ashes, melting children’s toys without a care — it’s so tragic. The one piece of evidence the CSI pointed out was an air conditioning unit that fell from the roof to the bottom floor and hit the victim on top of the head. Ouch!”

Afterward, Zuiker was invited to see the victim’s body. “When I went to the coroner’s office, I met Dr T,” he said, referring to Clark County medical examiner Dr Gary Telgenhoff. “He’s a really cool guy who drives a love wagon (don’t ask) and has a great sense of humor. He also is a musician and we’ve used a song of his on CSI. The song was called ‘I’ll Speak for You.’ It’s a song about a coroner being the voice for the dead after they’ve been killed. You gotta love it.”

“So, when I arrive for the autopsy, I get dressed in a lab coat, face mask, and booties,” Zuiker continued. “Through the window, I can see the burned body curled up on the slab. Nasty. Dr. T said, ‘Wait…’ When you see your first dead body, it’s not that bad. It seems fake really. The skin was black crusted with pink flesh. The hair was burned off. And the hands were clenched in fear. Weird.”

Zuiker described another memorable experience he shared with CSI: Miami showrunner Ann Donahue when they flew to Florida to research the first CSI spinoff. “We had a blast writing the crossover, but the time had come for the pilot episode,” Zuiker explained. “So, like any Executive Producers worth their salt, we did our research with the Miami Police Department. And let me tell you, those guys couldn’t wait to show us a dead body.”

“That night, we went on a ride along with several detectives,” he continued. “These guys were all Latino studs who prided themselves on Cuban food and real talk. They were cool as hell. Anyway, we got a call mid-lunch about a dead body in a residential neighborhood. Apparently, he’d been dead for a week based on the neighbor’s complaint about the smell. We call that a ‘decomp’ (decomposition) in our world. Ann turned extra white. I started getting nervous. Not because of the sight of a dead man, but the detectives were insistent that we ‘meet him.’”

This crime scene was very different than the one Zuiker saw in Las Vegas. “When we turned the corner into the neighborhood, we could already smell the odor,” he said. “It’s hard to describe. Rotting flesh has a way of getting into your clothes and your nasal hairs. There is no way to escape it.” The man was dead in his bedroom. “Ann and I hid behind each other while the captain lit a cigar from outside the house,” Zuiker continued. “He used the smell of the cigar to mask the powerful stench of the body.”

“When we first saw him, he was bloated to the size of a 500-pound man,” Zuiker said. “I asked, ‘Was he a fat man?’ The detective laughed and said he was probably about 180 pounds. Huh? He’s huge. He explained that the bloating was from the gasses stored up inside of his body. Oh, my God. Really?”

“That’s when the Hazmat unit came in,” he continued. “The Hazmat unit (or Crime Scene Clean Up) was made up of three crazy men armed with metal spikes. They sawed open the bedroom window and climbed through. Then, out of nowhere, they started stabbing the man to let out the gasses. I literally saw him go from 500 pounds to 180 within seconds. It looked like a human balloon with a small leak. It was so nasty. Ann and I thought for sure we would be diseased by some airborne virus. We got the hell of out there. Next, a tow truck with a lift arrived and they hoisted him out of there and zipped him up. On the way out, they were talking about showering up and getting a burger. I’m like, ‘Burger??? I don’t think I’m ever going to eat again.’”

“Ann and I went back to the Delano and ordered some water and dinner rolls,” Zuiker shared. “We literally ate in silence and tried not to laugh. She said to me, ‘How did we get here?’ I said, ‘I have no idea. All I know is we’re doing another CSI.’ Ann nodded. I nodded.”

The original blog posts can be found at Level26.com here and here.