I: BACKROUND AND GENERAL ARGUMENT

With the arrival of cinema, roughly 50 years before T.V., people could enjoy films related to the detective genre and also the 'perils' genre, such as the silent films about the 'Perils of Pauline', usually lampooned as having a heroine tied to railway tracks, a train approaching and the hero having to reach her and release her in the nick of time.
Private Eye (Private Detective) films featuring cool, tough leading men, such as Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, were a feature of the black&white film era (the client/baddie was bound to be a sultry, sexy leading lady, such as Lauren Bacall). Some thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock, including Notorious, Rebecca, Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Psycho and others were key in establishing an American genre of mystery/suspense/action/plot twists/characterisation with excellent cinematography and attention to detail: they set a standard.

In the post-WW2 era, the international terror genre was picked up in a suave style with the first James Bond films with Sean Connery (these became spoofs in the Roger Moore era andreturned to the gritty/hard style in the 21st century version). Clearly, television did not invent the cop show/mystery show/forensic tricks genre.

But I really think that it was when the little screen came out that the stories became so popular as they are today: detective series, spy series and others start coming, some of them became great classics like Mission Impossible, Hawai Five0 and The Man from U.N.C.L.E (where David McCallum a.k.a. Donald "Ducky" Mallard plays the Russian spy named Ilyia Kuriakin). These series became so popular that there were even those who made comedic versions, such as "Murder She Wrote" with Angela Lansbury (who is an American version of Agatha Christie's "Miss Marple") or Get Smart (which was a satirical view of the CIA in the cold war: the CIA agency was called "CONTROL" and the KGB equivalent was called "KAOS").

Science-led and physical clues-led detective work featured in various TV shows over the years: Quincy ME (starring Jack Klugman) was an extremely popular show in the 1980s. That was preceded by Colombo (starring Peter Falk, the detective in the crumpled raincoat) who always spotted the obscure physical clue in the style of Sherlock Holmes and who used crime scene reenactment as a staple for catching the bad guy.
In 1996, the BBC created a pathologist-led detective team when Amanda Burton starred in Silent Witness, based on a novel of the same name by former police officer Nigel McCrery. That was followed in around 2000 when big T.V. companies like CBS backed shows that focussed on crime/science, that then became known as "forensic and crime shows". Their unique selling point was the use of computer generated graphics to show, not tell, the science and show the seemingly impossible detail of what happens to humans in murders.

The really first popular product of this new genre was CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which left old Sherlock Holmes school and started dealing with fingerprints, DNA, rubber gloves, and other real life topics like kidnapping, terrorism threats, rapings, and of course the classical murder, presented in various ways.

The first CSI was so successful that the producers started making other CSI´s in different locations of the U.S., like CSI Miami with David Carusso and CSI New York with Gary Sinise. Due to the amazing commercial success (and thus oversupply) of these shows, the quality of the stories in each episode began going down, or becoming equal to other episodes, finally, the three CSI´s became more "action and cool shows" than mystery and crime shows: this makes them so commercially successful. (It´s cooler to see David Carusso jumping away from a blast or Gary Sinise shooting at a band of people). It should be noted that the CSI genre does not attempt to represent real-life investigators (CSI is a fictional title and the powers of investigators on CSI far exceeds those of a normal Scene of Crime Officer).

However, from 1995, there existed a show, "JAG", that came from the mind of Donald P. Bellisario (known for the hit show, "Magnum P.I.", the quirky "Quantum Leap" and, in 2003, with Don McGill, the creation of NCIS). JAG relates to NCIS in two ways: both shows cover topics related to crime in the U.S. Navy or Marine Corps, and had story arcs of thriller and mystery with an emphasis on character-driven storylines. JAG, standing for Judge Advocate General, featured navy lawyers in navy uniforms with many scenes on ships: the demographic of the target audience was skewed towards older, conservative audiences.

In 2003, JAG ended and NCIS arrived, presenting fictional characters that shift the focus off lawyers and onto special agents and forensic experts from a real-life agency that investigates every type of crime from murder to kidnappings to terrorist threats - Naval Criminial Investigative Service, aka NCIS. NCIS is a genuine agency in real life, which owes its existence to the Posse Comitatus Act which historically served to prevent the US military from acquiring civilian power (but this has now been broken with the Patriot Act). NCIS in real-life deals with a wider array of investigations than an ordinary metropolitan police department and its work is international.

Therefore, it can be argued that NCIS is sui generis (forms its own genre) and is a more a dramatic show about different characters, with thriller, crime, forensics, anti-terrorism, international operations, military secrets, federal inter-agency rivalry and a mixture of CSI/James Bond/Silent Witness/Dirty Harry.

It can also be argued that an important element of the NCIS new genre is the Bellisario delight in comedy, even in the most serious situations: the comedy can be slapstick (headslapping, superglue, practical jokes, school-kid humour), satirical (interagency banter with Fornell, straight-faced subversion or stooge of the system by all the team), situational (elevator-as-office, the boat-in-the-basement, the luddite-in-the-digital-world, the dapper doctor who talks to his (dead) patients), sexual (the detective-celebrity who can access places that warrants cannot reach, the undercover agents who get under the covers) and anarchic (the goth scientist who defies social convention, the Mossad assassin who has to uphold the law, the sniper who solves homicides). The closest comedy precursor to NCIS is probably M*A*S*H*, set in the Korean War featuring doctors who like to break military rules whilst remaining serious in their professional duties, but using wisecracks, jokes and subversion whenever possible.

Now that we have the background and general argument, let's move on to the characters:

II: CHARACTERS

a) Main Characters

Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) - Harmon plays the lead and probably most intriguing character of the show. Leroy J. Gibbs is a unique team leader and an outstanding investigator and person for most people. Harmon described Gibbs as someone you would want in your foxhole but you might not want to go to dinner with him.

Gibbs can and will do anything to get his job done, without taking into account any rules and costs. When investigating, he is generally guided by his gut instincts and by what he reasons. He "reads" people to detect their lies (mostly by observing their eyes). Gibbs has his own set of rules for being an agent and about discipline in job, including "don't apologize, it's a sign of weakness", "always carry a knife", "don´t relate romantically with work partners", and many more: he says there's about 50 rules.

Gibbs' past is not well known. As far as we know, he was a Marine sniper who served in Desert Storm and Panama, and won medals like the "Purple Heart" for wounds and valour in battle. He has had four wives: he was widowed once and divorced thrice. He has had an unknown number of girlfriends but it is known that he had a romantic relationship with Jenny Shepard, the director of NCIS (played by Lauren Holly). They worked in Europe together and he taught her to be an agent.

Gibbs worries when someone on his team is in danger, and he has very close relationships with forensic expert Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette), F.B.I Special Agent Tobias Fornell (Joe Spano), and Medical Examiner Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David ). However, and probably due to his past, Gibbs is not a very social person, andmain proof is that he builds a boat in his basement but never removes them from the basement to go sailing (it is unknown how he removes the boats, but he is on his fourth: it is known that he burned the one that was named after ex-wife, Diane.)

Gibbs is good with children (because they do not have the guile to lie and get away with it), animals (they obey him), women (they fall for him), other marines (they are his 'brothers'), plumbing and carpentry (he is skilled at them) and combat (he can run, shoot, climb, fight and out-psych villains). He is not good with politicians, technology, rules made by other people, lawyers, liars, villains who abuse women/children/elderly/the defenceless but nor is he good with wusses. Gibbs is a professional snob (he disdains the work of metro cops and forensic scientists from hick towns). Gibbs adheres to the traditions and values of the Marines (foremost) and, to some extent, the Roman Catholic church (lights candles, prays for the dead, consults padres as marriage counsellors (the latter seemingly singularly misguided, given his divorce rate)).

According to the CBS character info, Gibbs is fluent in Russian and American sign language - he uses the latter to talk to Abbs sometimes (to the annoyance of Tony who's convinced they're talking nasty about him).

b) Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) - DiNozzo is probably the funniest and coolest character in the entire show. He´s currently the Senior Special Agent of the team, and actually had to play leader in some episodes. Played by the amazing Michael Weatherly, we know that he started as a Baltimore cop, and although he comes from a rich and big-class family, he had to take a civilian job because his father and mother disowned him, for fear of what he would do with the money. He studied physical education in College and played basketball. Tony could be considered as a "criminal Don Juan" although many of his girlfriends leave him after the first days because they can't stand his "extremely cool and sexual personality" or he ditches them from a fear of commitment. However, this doesn't appear to be happening with Tony's last girlfriend, Jeanne (played by Scottie Thomspon), with whom he fell seriously, but inappropriately, in love. He's also an amazing expert on movies making constant references to film plots, actors, directors and related showbiz trivia . Even if his personality can get annoying to the viewer sometimes, he's one of the best characters. His mindset is often pitched at the level of high school/College kids but, ironically, he is not good with children.

c) Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) - A Mossad officer that joins the team at the beginning of season three. She's the daughter of the Mossad director and was the half sister of Ari Haswari, the show´s big bad guy for the first two seasons. You could say that Ziva sometimes has a little bit of Gibbs' personality. (Next up, I'm going to talk about Ziva's past and background, such content has SPOILERS THAT MAY BLEW PART OF THE SHOW'S STORY, SO IF YOU WANT, YOU CAN SKIP THIS PART)

d) Timothy McGee (Sean Murray)-You could easily say that McGee (at least in seasons 1-2) sometimes represents everyone's first day on the job. However, he also represents the figure that everyone wanted to be in college (at least in terms of study) He studied in MIT, having a 9.9 final average (since he failed the fencing class in junior year) such great background in computers made him immediate friend and work rival of foresnsic expert Abby Scuitto (Pauley Perrette) He first appeared in Season 1 as a technician and helper of Abby, then he moved to Gibb's team. Probably the best feature in McGee's personality is that it's actor Sean Murray (stepson of Donald P. Bellisario) gets more advanced on the acting, and so does his character. With the changes that happen in the show, McGee builds an each time more stronger and complicated personality. He lives in an appartment with his sister, Sara.

f) Donald ''Ducky'' Mallard (David McCallum):He is the NCIS ME, and is Scottish born and bred. We know by his accent he comes from an upper class family, and as far as we know he has never been married and lives with his 96 year old mother, the only one who dares to call him Donald apart from Abby. Ducky is totally unlike Grissom (CSI) or Scully (X-Files). The first impression is of someone who's not all with it, since he is want to tell anecdotes while performing post-mortems not to mention talking to the corpses, nevertheless, he is extremely methodical in his work, never leaving a stone unturned. Furthermore, he is constantly studying to improve his knowledge, in Season 4 we learnt he obtained a degree in Forensic Psychology, which he thought would come in handy when trying to discover the cause of death.
Although generally affable he has been known to lose his temper if he finds the crime scene has in some way been tampered with before he got there, like the time he pushed somebody over a cliff for moving a corpse before he'd checked it out. Ducky is unlike any other TV ME and listening to his delectable upper class Scottish accent is wonderful, his diction is 100% clear at all times.