by Addie Heffernan '30 on October 1, 2026
A&E - Film & TV
When NCIS premiered in 2003, no one expected it to end up being one of the longest-running procedural shows, spanning multiple spin-offs and preparing to enter its 24th season this fall. Yet, more than two decades later, all of this has proven true, but it wasn’t always this way. The first season of NCIS introduced the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a real-life government agency in charge of handling cases related to the Navy and Marine Corps, represented on television by a main cast of five. Abby Sciuto, the resident goth and expert forensic scientist, and Doctor Donald “Ducky” Mallard, the medical examiner with an endless stream of stories, support the Major Case Response Team that Special Agent Leroy Jehro Gibbs leads, backed up by Special Agents Kate Todd and Tony DiNozzo.
This close-knit team officially forms in the pilot, where they foil an assassination against the president and recruit Kate, the Secret Service agent accidentally working with them on the case, after Gibbs, Tony, and Ducky manage to hijack the plane and get it to land back in Washington. Kate, a straight-laced agent, manages to mesh with the often chaotic and rule-bending MCRT, and after resigning from her post due to breaking their code of conduct, she is instantly offered a job by Gibbs. Thus, she becomes DiNozzo’s partner and spends the rest of the season with the team solving murders, drug busts, and managing to work around the FBI to crack cases that they can’t. This case-of-the-week style is threaded through all 23 episodes, with each case bringing new suspects and stakes that send our field agents and their support staff into overdrive to solve. Apart from the main team, a few recurring characters are spotlighted, such as rookie agent Tim McGee, who joins as a main character in season two and has stayed with the show since; FBI Agent Fornell, who foils the team just as much as he acts as comic relief; and one of the show’s most notable villains, Ari Haswari. Haswari first appears in the 18th episode of the first season and appears again in the finale, both times attempting to get at Gibbs through kidnapping Kate, who was first taken hostage by him along with Ducky in autopsy and then again on the street. Gibbs comes close to taking him in during the final moments of that episode but ultimately fails, creating a tense plot that weaves itself throughout the rest of the season and continues on for two more years.
This infamous feud highlights one of the most important themes in the season: family, which the team closely resembles despite their sometimes-clashing personalities and high-stakes duties. Gibbs takes up the mantle of father figure for Tony, Kate, and Abby, while Ducky is more of a wise grandfather wielding a scalpel and donning scrubs. This dynamic is what makes the show so beloved even 20 years later, when the team has predictably been through many changes. Despite Kate and Tony bickering more often than not and Gibbs functioning as a gruff coffee addict, this first season functions to emphasize that at the heart of this procedural is a team that fights for each other both in and out of the field, and that strong foundation is why, even decades later, it is still a must-watch.