"Murmuration" (Season 13, Episode 12)

 

This is what's known as a "filler" episode, mainly because there was no case, but there were connections to past and current cases. It's the second episode written by Samantha Chasse, a new writer for the series, and her focus, so far, has been technology. Thankfully, this episode, although it had some problems, didn't have anywhere near the problems that plagued her first solo effort last season, "Imposter Syndrome." It also seems as though the writers are--several years into Gemmill's tenure as showrunner--finally paying attention to events in episodes airing prior to theirs and so providing more continuity.

The episode opens at sea during the training flight of an F-35 pilot. An unknown object or UAP is approaching US airspace and the F-35 pilot is sent to investigate. The object waits for the F-35 to reach it and then seemingly breaks apart. The USS Allegiance loses contact with the F-35, and that makes it an NCIS case which turns out to not be a case, but during the episode several story threads are continued.

After the credits, Kensi and Deeks are in the bullpen discussing preparations for the upcoming visit by children's services to determine if they are a suitable couple to foster a child. Fatima and Rountree join them and then they all head to Ops for a briefing. Shortly after Kilbride joins them to explain the F-35 incident the night before--that a UAP was identified entering U.S. airspace--the scene shifts to the boatshed and Callen and Sam.

We learn that Sam's going to participate in a triathlon and Callen's late arriving. (It's unclear why neither one is at OSP since it's a work day.) Through their conversation we learn that Callen and Anna have spent time in Napa--again--and Callen asks how Sam's dad is doing (Sam was missing from last week's episode because his father had taken a fall). The conversation then switches to the deep fake that Callen saw in action for the first time last week. Callen tells Sam that DARPA, an agency in the DoD, had no recent hits on the deep fake. When Sam suggests that might be a good thing, Callen explains that every time DARPA detects a flaw in the deep fake that identifies it as a deep fake, the deep fake computer program makes a correction--it learns from the flaw. Knowing that Katya will never stop using the deep fake is weighing on Callen.

Back in Ops, Kilbride explains to Kensi, Deeks, Fatima, & Rountree that as the UAP approached US airspace it was identified by the Allegiance and an F-35 was sent to intercept. The F-35 ended up in the ocean, but the pilot was recovered. Their job is to identify the UAP which disappeared over land while Callen and Sam go out to the Allegiance. In the boatshed, before Callen and Sam are sent to the Allegiance, the pilot who encountered the UAP shows up. He's still shaken by the encounter, and for some reason, only Callen questions him. The incident is being officially classified as a bird strike, but even though the pilot can't identify the UAP, he knows it wasn't a bird strike. Later, Callen and Sam arrive on the Allegiance and the XO walks them through what happened. He questions the pilot's account, but doesn't offer a satisfactory alternative. And then Callen and Sam see two members of the Army Futures Command enter the bridge and leave with the XO. This raises questions for both Callen and Sam.

Meanwhile, on dry land, Fatima speculates that the UAP was, in fact, a UAV (drone) swarm. Using geotags from the numerous videos of the swarm, she sends Kensi and Deeks to a location in the local mountains where a damaged drone might have crashed. When they arrive, they find a crash site, but the drone is gone. Piecing together evidence and  the drone hypothesis, Callen tells Rountree to contact a tech company with DoD ties that could help identify a company that could create such sophisticated drones and have someone meet them at the boatshed. Before he and Sam leave the Allegiance, Sam observes that the Allegiance has a leadership problem, and Callen concurs, mentioning the abandoned baby case that brought Kensi and Deeks to the Allegiance (a nod to last week's episode).

Kilbride gives Fatima the task of coming up with a plan to locate and essentially neutralize the drone swarm, and she sends Rountree with equipment for Kensi and Deeks to put her plan into action. Her plan is to gain control of the swarm by hijacking the signal used to control it. If she succeeds, great; if she fails, the swarm could fall out of the sky onto civilians below. Rountree arrives and gives the equipment to Kensi and Deeks, and they head off to get in place so Fatima can intercept and hijack the signal.

In the boatshed, Callen is questioning a scientist from the company that sold the drone technology to the DoD. She's explaining that the drones are autonomous or AI. When Callen asks how to capture them, she explains that that will be almost impossible because even if they were able to catch one, it would share the information with the other drones which would then learn how to avoid capture. This blunt assessment upsets Callen and he asks the scientist why she doesn't take responsibility for the swarm's actions. Meantime, in Ops, Fatima realizes there's no signal to hijack because no one is controlling the swarm; it's acting on its own.

In the end, there really is no case because the swarm is "owned" by the DoD, not an adversary. NCIS is told to stand down and Kilbride then explains the situation to Fatima (and the viewers). Even though it wasn't an actual case, there were still problems with the episode, a few involving the technology, a few with the plot. First, the technology problems. 

At one point, Fatima describes the swarm as "rogue AI." Later, Kilbride explains that the swarm was autonomous and doing what the DoD hoped it would do, but then later, Kilbride says that the DoD "lost the handle" of the swarm. If DoD has "lost the handle," doesn't that mean the swarm has gone "rogue"? And then there's the problem of how the drones communicate with each other. The scientist from the tech company tells Callen that the drones "talk" to each other over their neural network. Since they're not wired together, they have to be "talking" over a frequency, wirelessly using wifi, which means that even though the drones aren't receiving a transmission from a human operator, they're using a frequency that can be identified, and if it can be identified, it can be disrupted or hijacked. Another major problem is that any drone that can travel at mach 1 is a BIG drone (a minimum length of 20'). A swarm of these drones would be HUGE, but even one would likely be detected by the current military technology.

Problems with the plot began with the scene in the bullpen. Deeks is surrounded by boxes filled with toys and merchandise in preparation for the upcoming visit of a social worker as he and Kensi begin the process of becoming foster parents. This was a cute scene, but also a curious one. Kensi's idea of preparation was baby locks on the cabinets and making sharp corners baby-safe while Deeks wants to present a "kid friendly" environment through classic (old) toys and a copy of "Oregon Trail." The disconnect in their approach led me to wonder what age child Kensi and Deeks are hoping to foster because baby-proofing a house and "Oregon Trail" are for children of very different ages. I also wondered why Deeks would have all these items delivered to OSP (or bring them from home) and why no one seemed concerned that Kilbride might be displeased to see boxes of kid's stuff making the bullpen into a makeshift Amazon warehouse. And, the elephant in the room is that Kensi and Deeks are anxious to make a foster child feel at home, but they've yet to have a conversation with the one person they know who's been a foster child and find out what mattered to him when he was a foster child, what made him feel "welcome."

We also learned that Callen and Anna had been to Napa again. Neither Callen nor Anna are wine aficionados, yet they keep driving 400+ miles to Napa when there are so many beautiful places much closer. Why spend 6+ hours driving when they could make it to Santa Barbara in 2 or Carmel in 4 and actually be by the ocean instead of 50 miles away from it? 

Another problem for me was Fatima--a former actor and naval intelligence analyst who, by all accounts, did not graduate with any degree related to computers or technology--expected to have the technological know-how to come up with a plan--on her own--to capture the drone swarm. This is yet one more instance where the absence of Beale and Jones is keenly felt. Ops is essential to the L.A. office and its operations, but that's something the showrunner and writers now ignore and so they gloss over the work done there. (If Beale or Nell were still in Ops, I'd expect them to be checking traffic cams on major roads leading to the crash site or satellite imagery based on the approximate time of the crash or doing something to pin down who took the downed drone because it's not something that would fit in a car's trunk.) I mean, Kensi and Deeks didn't even look for tire tracks at the site or wonder how somebody got the drone from that remote location when they couldn't drive up to it. There just wasn't much "investigating" done, and in earlier seasons, the "investigating" didn't interfere with character development. There's no reason it should now.

Later, after NCIS has been kicked off the case, Kilbride feels he "owes" Fatima an explanation, but not the other NCIS agents. This has the (perhaps unintentional) consequence of showing that Kilbride treats his agents unequally and that's annoying. Fatima will probably share Kilbride's explanation with Rountree, but that might leave Kensi and Deeks knowing only that they were pulled off the case because NRO was taking over. While Kilbride pretends to be more open than Hetty, he's not. He parses out information as he sees fit. Callen and Sam find out that the drone software had been sold to the DoD and that NRO has taken over the case, but that doesn't answer Callen's concerns about what the DoD is doing with the drones or help him get a clear grasp on how to combat the deep fake.

But for me the worst problem with the plot was the podcaster. Why is it that the writers so often create caricatures? We've seen the zombiesque art gallery professional, the eccentric religious guy, the airhead social media star, and others, and here we get the obnoxious podcaster. Is it possible for the writers to create supporting characters who aren't over-the-top caricatures, people who might work in unusual fields but who are, in every other way, "regular" people? Maybe not. Anyway, this guy was obnoxious and his continued presence at what was a scene with national security implications was unbelievable. Certainly, Kensi and Deeks, as federal law enforcement and investigators would have wanted to maintain the scene, question the witness, and then continue their investigation without the presence of a podcaster observing and listening to everything they did and said. Nothing about his presence was comic relief; it was cringeworthy. And the idea that the podcaster would delete recordings of federal agents working a case about UAPs because he was offered a job is a stretch. After all, that might be the most important podcast he's ever made.

The final scenes did show stark contrasts in the continuing storylines: the threat of the deep fake upending Callen's life while the starry ceiling offers the promise of a family for Kensi and Deeks.