Directed by Scott Brazil
Written by Donald P. Bellisario & Don Mc Gill
Season 8, Episode 21
Meltdown
The trial for the murder of Lt. Singer continues, but Gibbs loses interest because terrorists are planning an attack on U. S. Navy assets in the Mediterranean. Part 2 of the NCIS backdoor pilot. The JAG core cast become guest stars on their own show.Unbeknownst to Commander Rabb, Lt. Commander Faith Coleman (Alicia Coppola) is assigned to be his defense counsel. Rabb asserts his right to choose his own military lawyer, but reluctantly agrees to be defended by Coleman.
Coleman shows up at JAG headquarters and urges everyone, most of all Admiral Chegwidden, to stay at arm's length. Chegwidden assigns Coleman to Manetti's office, and the prosecutor, Major McBurney (Michael Muhney), to Rabb's office (which has been emptied by NCIS).
Petty Officer Coates (Zoe McLellan) testifies that she has never seen Rabb hit a woman, but McBurney gets Coates to admit that Rabb displayed a level of rage at Singer that night at Benzinger's comparable to what she saw in her abusive father as a child.
Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) is nervous about testifying in front of all those "uniforms" but is nevertheless unshaken in her assertion that Singer died two hours after going to Benzinger's with Rabb.
Dr. Mallard (David McCallum), despite his tendency to drift into irrelevant anecdotes, establishes that Singer's skull hit the railing but she died of drowning in the river. (Also that Singer had a tattoo).
Agent Gibbs (Mark Harmon) now has some doubts that Rabb is the killer; for someone so knowledgeable, he made a lot of dumb mistakes. Gibbs visits Rabb in holding. When the court-martial resumes, Rabb urges Colemann to ask Gibbs if he thinks Rabb is the killer.
Of course McBurney objects, but the judge allows the question. Gibbs says that by his gut, no. Abby has by now been able to resolve the smudged tag on the male officer's cover (hat) found with Singer: it is Rabb's.
But DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), taking a cue from Gibbs, urges Abby to dig deeper. Indeed Abby is bothered by the fact that the item is soiled with silt, "a spring look" — suggesting that it was planted several weeks after Singer's death.
DiNozzo tells Gibbs this over videophone. Gibbs orders DiNozzo to look through the JAG HQ security log for someone with an ax to grind. DiNozzo finds Commander Ted Lindsey (W. K. Stratton), and Rabb confirms that Lindsey switched covers right in front of him.
At NCIS headquarters, DiNozzo interrogates Lindsey and gets him to he saw Singer die, though he claims it was an accident. The NCIS team still don't know who the father of Singer's baby, only that he is not Harm, not Sergei, nor Lindsey. But Gibbs declares it doesn't matter.
Throughout the court-martial, Gibbs is more preoccupied with a planned terrorist attack against a Navy asset in the Mediterranean. Moroccan terrorist Amad bin Atwa (Faran Tahir) is being brutally interrogated by the CIA aboard the USS Chattanooga, yielding no usable information about the plot.
Stateside, Gibbs orders Vivian Blackader (Robyn Lively) to dig up personal information on bin Atwa, such as his cuisine preferences. Done with his testimony for the Rabb court-martial, Gibbs flies over to the Chattanooga to wine and dine bin Atwa, getting the terrorist to reveal his itinerary prior to being picked up.
Intelligence is then able to trace the money and discover the details of the terrorist plot: to buy a deep sea submersible and use it to attack a U. S. Navy ship docked on the Spanish coast.
Gibbs, Blackadder and DiNozzo go to the dock and confirm they have found the terrorists using facial recognition technology. Blackadder nearly botches the sting by making too much eye contact with a terrorist. Gibbs shoots up that terrorist as he drops a grenade. Gibbs survives falling down some stairs on the ship.
Tropes
- Accidental Murder: Lindsey claims that Lt. Singer slipped and hit her head on the metal railing, but that instead of calling 911, he assumed she had died instantly and - seeing an opportunity to hide what he thought was evidence of his adultery (her baby, which turned out not to have been his) - threw her over the railing and into the river, where she drowned and was frozen in ice for three months. He's convicted (offscreen) of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to eight years' confinement.
- Clear My Name: Gibbs suspects that Rabb is innocent. He's right.
- Flashback: When Rabb is told that his hat was found near the crime scene, but months after the occurrence of the crime, he flashes back to when Lindsey visited him near that time. In a Blink-and-You-Miss-It, Lindsey is seen swapping his hat for Rabb's.
- Imagine the Audience Naked: Although she's done it before, Abby's nervous about testifying in court. McBurney's advice is to picture everyone naked, himself included.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Lindsey makes the leap from acting unprofessionally to take revenge on Admiral Chegwidden for passing him over for promotion (in 'Second Acts'), to committing involuntary manslaughter, in an astonishingly short space of time. An ignominious end for a character who started as the acting Judge Advocate General and Mission Control for Rabb and his partner.
- Last-Second Word Swap: While testifying in court, Abby does this.
- Abby: I ran a whole slew of sh... stuff on that.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Viv blows the operation to take out bin Atwa. This is implied to get her fired.
- Tony: I still like you.
- Poorly Disguised Pilot: Part two of the NCIS backdoor pilot. Notably, once Rabb ceases to be a suspect in Lt. Singer's murder, the JAG cast are not seen in the episode again and the remainder of the runtime is given over to Gibbs and his team's mission to take down terrorists.
- Previously on…: Mark Harmon begins the episode by saying "Previously on JAG..." to preface a summary of "Ice Queen”. It would be the first of many “Previously On’s” from Harmon as he would continue to fill this role on NCIS throughout his time on the show.
- Shout-Out to National Geographic: The magazine has a deep sea submersible in the area, but is quickly ruled out as a suspect in the terror plot.
- Walk and Talk: Aboard the USS Chattanooga, between Gibbs and some guy from the CIA. This one is noteworthy because of a couple of cuts to go through hatches.
