The series premiered on September 23, 2003, featuring an ensemble cast, which has included: Mark Harmon, Sasha Alexander, Michael Weatherly, Pauley Perrette, David McCallum, Sean Murray, Cote de Pablo, Lauren Holly, Rocky Carroll, Brian Dietzen, Emily Wickersham, Wilmer Valderrama, Jennifer Esposito, Duane Henry, Maria Bello, Diona Reasonover, Katrina Law, and Gary Cole.
Following Sasha Alexander's decision to leave the show, Todd is killed in the line of duty (at the end of the episode "Twilight") by Ari Haswari, collateral damage in the terrorist's obsession with Gibbs.
Despite his playboy manner and lighthearted nature, DiNozzo is frequently shown to be very sharp; he is able to coax Mossad Director Eli David into admitting that he ordered Rivkin and Ziva to spy on NCIS.
Mallard is a kind and eccentric character who often talks to the deceased ("their bodies tell me a great deal; it helps to reciprocate"[18]) and rambles to the living with long personal remembrances or historical accounts.
In the season 8 episode "False Witness", Ducky decides to open a Facebook account to keep up with the times, and the interests he tries to list in his profile include etymology, archeology, sociology, fluviomorphology, hymenopterology, and ornithology.
[citation needed] Season seven reveals that Jimmy is in love with a girl named Breena Slater (Michelle Pierce), who work as a mortician in her family's funeral parlor and appears in the episode "Mother's Day".
In "Till Death Do Us Part", prior to a bomb blast at the NCIS headquarters, Palmer and Breena decide to get married on the spot so he can assist the rest of the team in the Harper Dearing case.
In the season fourteen episode "Keep Going", Jimmy confesses to a victim's son that he is now a qualified doctor, having passed his Medical Examiner test (on the third time; he had failed it twice before), but doesn't want the rest of the team to know.
In the episode "Misconduct", while interrogating a girl who claims to be in love with a criminal named Parker James, Bishop puts on the persona of a die-hard romantic, even going as far as to mention that she has someone really special to her with whom she trusts her life, hinting it to be Torres, alluding to their relationship.
Being undercover for so long has given him a range of skills such as close combat training, but his methods are a bit unpredictable: e.g., such as drawing a gunman's attention by jumping onto a poker table with McGee holding them at gunpoint.
Knight is first introduced in Season 18's penultimate episode, “Blown Away”, as she helps the Major Case Response Team (at that time under the lead of Tim McGee after Gibbs' suspension) to catch the one behind the bombing of her teammates.
In a character bio published in Deadline, Knight is described as "a formidable REACT (Regional Enforcement Action Capabilities Training Team) agent who specializes in hostage negotiations and handles daily high-risk operations with skill and precision.
Colonel Merton Bell (Robert Patrick) is a former Army tank unit commander and the President of First Defense PMC, the largest security and bounty hunting firm in the U.S. and the main antagonist of season seven.
She is an ER resident in Washington, D.C., In the episode "Angel of Death", it is revealed that she is the daughter of arms dealer René Benoit and that Director Shepard, during Gibbs' absence at the end of season 3, assigned Tony to an undercover mission to get close to her.
It is implied that both Trent Kort and NCIS Director Jenny Shepard kill him in the episode "Internal Affairs", and in "Judgment Day" (Part 1) Gibbs, reviewing the FBI file, finds evidence that further implicates her while looking at a familiarly marked bullet.
Originally from a small town in Ohio and an only child, Borin served a tour of duty in Iraq as a sergeant before presumably retiring from the Marines and joining CGIS where she later rose through the ranks, eventually getting the opportunity to lead her own team.
Over eight years after his first appearance, Burley returns in the season nine episode "Playing with Fire", where he leads DiNozzo and David in tracking down and thwarting a terrorist who tries to destroy the carrier USS Benjamin Franklin in Naples, Italy, under the orders of businessman Harper Dearing.
Following the aftermath of Kate Todd's death, Cassidy temporarily joins Gibbs' team during "Mind Games" and helps in the case of a serial killer as well as tracking down a copycat who is carrying out similar killings.
First appearing in "Loose Cannons", Grace builds a professional relationship and personal friendship with Gibbs, nicknaming him "Popeye", and often resorting to child psychology (including picture charts) to tap into his psyche.
[56] As it turns out, Kazmi was also assassinated that night, an action blamed on the fugitive Bodner, but really undertaken by the CIA in an effort to "stir the (political) pot" in Middle East affairs involving Israel and Iran (see season 10, episode 24, "Damned If You Do)".
This information allows them to track down Jacob Scott (whom they had believed was the man who murdered Terdei and left Fornell under critical condition at the time) who, much to everyone's surprise, has surrendered to NCIS custody at the Navy Yard.
In his visit to Gibbs' bedside in season three, it is revealed in flashbacks that he warned members of the intelligence community about the threat that Osama bin Laden posed to American servicemen abroad some time before the Khobar Towers bombing.
Following Gibbs' return early on in the season she is transferred to the legal department and is frequently seen delivering warrants to the team, also having a covert intimate relationship with the medical examiner's assistant, Jimmy Palmer.
He appears in several episodes during seasons one and two, but unlike his replacements, Directors Shepard and Vance, Morrow himself is not part of the main cast, and is credited as either a recurring character or a guest star.
In the season 13 episode, "Return to Sender", Morrow is found dead, having been shot in the head by a sniper the team presume is former British spy Jacob Scott, although it is later revealed that the actual killer is former CIA agent Trent Kort.
Paloma has a fascination for the work of Tennessee Williams, citing him on three occasions: twice in "Rule Fifty-One" ("We are all sentenced to solitary confinement within our own skins for life" and "Cruel men consider themselves paragons of frankness") and in "Spider and the Fly" ("Don't look forward to the day you stop suffering for when it comes you'll know you're dead.").
Rivera is assigned by his government to be a liaison with American law enforcement agencies on a special anti-drug project of forming a Mexican-American task force to strike against the drug cartels, notably against Reynosa.
Captain Cyril Taft, M.D., USNR (Jon Cryer) is a doctor who appears in the NCIS Season 13 premiere episode, "Stop the Bleeding" where he performs surgery on Gibbs, who has been left badly injured after being shot by Luke Harris.
In the season 10 episode "Shabbat Shalom", Jackie is shot in a drive-by shooting that kills Mossad Director Eli David, who was having dinner with the Vances at the time alongside Ziva, and dies in surgery.
Lara Macy (Louise Lombard) was a former USMC Lieutenant working as a military police officer, and almost two decades earlier had investigated then-USMC Gunnery Sergeant Leroy Jethro Gibbs' role in the murder of Mexican drug lord Pedro Hernandez.