Driven (NCIS)

Infobox Television episode | Title = Driven
Colour =
Series = NCIS
Season = 4
Episode = 11


Airdate = December 12, 2006
Production = 4x11
Writer = Richard C. Arthur
Director = Dennis Smith
Guests = Brian Dietzen as Jimmy Palmer Peter Giles as Torsten Engler Lawrence Pressman as Dr. Russell Pike Kevin Alejandro as Jaime Jones
Episode list = Episode chronology
Prev = Smoked
Next = Suspicion

"Driven" is the 81^st episode of the drama television series "NCIS".

Plot

A female Navy lieutenant Roni Seabrook was testing out the system of a 2nd generation artificial intelligence driven vehicle in the morning and is killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. At the same time the NCIS team except Ducky are stuck in a seminar about sexual harassment in the workplace, causing Abby to worry about her habit of hugging people, an excuse for Ziva to annoy and alarm Tony and an excuse for Tony to slap McGee on the back of the head, causing McGee to elbow him in the stomach, until Gibbs receives a phone call that allows them to escape it and turn their attention towards the aforementioned dead Navy lieutenant.

The team learns that the prototype is constructed for a contest of AI driven vehicles held by the US Navy thus the company working with it ("Azeon") are very reluctant to offer any help for they fear the prototype might get damaged. The team meanwhile speculates why the Navy lieutenant might been killed. They consider sabotage by a competitor when they stumble upon security footage which shows the chief mechanic Jamie Jones sexually harassing the lieutenant the night before. All videos of the time of her death though have been erased which leads them to conclude that she was definitely murdered.

Ducky meanwhile is performing an autopsy on the dead body, confirming Palmer's assumptions that she has been murdered with carbon monoxide poisoning. Additionally he confirms traces of male genetics on the body, strengthening the assumption that Jamie Jones is responsible. The team splits up, McGee and Abby are to find out how the vehicle was used to kill the lieutenant and Tony and Ziva are to check the lieutenant's apartment (on the way to it Tony visits his girlfriend in the hospital she is working in). Gibbs revisits the company's garage and talks to the owner. Tony and Ziva are surprised to find Jamie Jones in the lieutenant's bedroom tied to her bed. Down in the NCIS lab, Abby gets trapped the same way the lieutenant did and is rescued at the last second by Gibbs who returned to check on them.

McGee is tasked to find out how the car was reprogrammed to act the way it did while Gibbs and the others confront Jones who is surprised about the lieutenant's death and claims to have dated her with all the harassment scenes being role playing in the relationship. When Jones is completely freaked out by her death Gibbs understands that maybe they got the wrong suspect. McGee meanwhile figured out how the car was used to kill the lieutenant: The killer used a SD-card to flash a program into the car's computer to be executed when certain conditions where met (i.e. when the victim tries to unbuckle the seat belt). Tony is called to the director and gets an unrelated task surveying three suspects NCIS is tracking for some time). Back in the lab McGee and Abby find the SD-card and Jones helps them to reassemble the car.

The Azeon team arrives at NCIS to assist and they are shocked when they find out the car drove off on itself (someone accessed it to send it away). The team (with Jones' help) traces the car back and finds it empty, the SD-card missing. Abby finds out that the command was sent from inside Azeon. The team arrests Engler (one of the technicians) when they find out that his computer was used to send the command to steer Otto but they trick Dr. Pike, Azeon's owner, to reveal himself as the real killer.