A dramatic new episode of NCIS aired on Monday night, with the team being forced to deal with terrorists aboard a civilian research vessel.
The episode started out innocently enough, with a ship in the North Atlantic performing research on undersea mineral deposits.
As the security detail joked about how boring it was, a boat came up along the side of the vessel with men claiming to be from the Navy.
A man saying he was a chief petty officer from the boat told the men aboard the ship that there was an injured soldier on board and then the opening titles ran.
NCIS Season 19, Episode 11 recap
Back at the office, Agent Knight was capturing photos with a paper doll for her niece’s grade school class. That doll would later take the trip with Knight and the rest of the team on their mission.
While Director Vance was checking in with Alden Parker on how things had been going with the team, a report of a distress call from the research vessel came in. The information that NCIS was given was that a black ops team had been taken on board by the ship and that one of them had died.
The NCIS team (Parker, Knight, Torres, and Dr. Palmer) was sent by helicopter out to investigate the death of the man, but there was a lot of mystery surrounding why a black ops team was operating in the Northern Atlantic.
Terrorists on the open sea
Back at the offices, McGee went to meet with the NCIS cyber team in the hopes of digging into files and figuring out why the black ops team was out on the water. That’s where we met new members of the NCIS cast, Tess Aubert as Piper and Stephen Friedrich as Sid. They figured out that there was chatter intercepted by the NSA about Russian weapons deals.
When the rest of the NCIS team arrived at the ship, Parker spotted blood on some cargo and asked one of the supposed petty officers about it. Only it turned out that this wasn’t a black ops team at all, and the man pulled a gun on Parker. As Parker created a diversion, the NCIS personnel ran for cover while they were trailed by bullets fired from two of the men already on board.
The two pilots from the helicopter ended up getting shot by the terrorists, with one of them dying and Palmer helping to keep the second one alive. Knight and Torres split off to find the hostages (crew), and Parker worked to create an antenna to get a call out for help.
After rescuing a crewmember, Knight and Torres got taken hostage by the terrorists. They were then tortured for information about where everyone else was on the ship, but they didn’t give up any details. Meanwhile, Parker led the terrorists away from the room where Knight and Torres were being held by teasing the terrorists with the helicopter keys.
A few moments later, Torres and Knight heard the helicopter taking off, and it turned out that Parker had allowed them to leave in order to protect the team, but that he had also stowed away in a storage compartment on the helicopter to try to take down the terrorists once they were away from the ship.
It turned out that the mission for these terrorists was to steal the helicopter itself, so everything leading up to that was planned to get that result. But once they landed the aircraft, Parker got out, sent out a radio distress call using music over the radio, and the cavalry came in to save the day.
Knight and Torres finished up the episode pretty beat up, while Parker finally referred to them as his team when speaking to Director Vance. This was a clear indication that he is ready to take over for the long term.
More news from the NCIS family of shows
A few of the cast members have revealed some details about the NCIS crossover that is coming up soon. The night will be shared with NCIS: Hawai’i in a two-hour crossover event that will take place after the upcoming winter break.
NCIS: Los Angeles is airing a double-feature this month, giving fans of the other spin-off something exciting to look forward to. It’s going to be a fun night for the show, but NCIS fans need to know that it starts earlier than usual.
NCIS airs Mondays at 9/8c on CBS.