Caitlin Todd
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| NCIS character | |
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| Caitlin "Kate" Todd | |
|---|---|
| Rank | Special Agent (NCIS & Secret Service) |
| Gender | Female |
| Hair color | Black |
| Actor | Sasha Alexander |
| First appearance | Yankee White |
| Last appearance | Kill Ari (Part 2) (Killed in the line of duty in Twilight) |
Special Agent Caitlin "Kate" Todd is a fictional character from the NCIS television series by CBS Television, portrayed by Sasha Alexander.
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[edit] History
Caitlin Todd is introduced as a Secret Service agent assigned to Air Force One and helping to guard the President. When the naval officer aboard the airplane dies mysteriously, she finds herself unwillingly helping Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs and the NCIS team in uncovering the reason for the man's death. During the investigation, Todd confesses to Gibbs that she is having a romantic relationship with another naval officer who is also assigned to Air Force One. That man is later killed as a byproduct of a terrorist attempt to assassinate the President. Following the successful resolution of the situation, Todd resigns from the Secret Service after having broken the rules by becoming involved with an officer. Gibbs, who had been impressed with Todd's resourcefulness, immediately offers her a position with NCIS.
She grew up in Indiana and has three brothers, whom she mentions are "practically insane". Tony believes she has "unresolved issues" with them. She also has a sister living in Miami whom Kate always lists as her emergency contact. They do not, however, appear to get along very well; even Tony knows that Kate rarely returns her sister's phone calls. Her mother at least is alive (seen at Kate's funeral), and she has a cousin named Maureen Ingalls who lives at 620 Niagara St. in Alexandria, VA.
At the very end of season two, Caitlin Todd was killed in the line of duty; the date is given as the 24th of May. She was shot by a sniper, Ari Haswari, a renegade Mossad operative who was alleged to be on a personal mission to assassinate Gibbs. The NCIS team had several run-ins with Ari prior to this, and in fact during her first encounter with Ari in the episode "Bête Noire", in which he held her hostage, Todd had the opportunity to kill the man with a scalpel, yet chose not to (The episode ends with the suggestion that she might have experienced a minor case of Stockholm syndrome which prevented her from taking action). When Ducky asks her corpse in "Kill Ari, Part 1", why she didn't kill him, she says "his eyes", similar to her response to Gibbs in the last episode of the first season. When Gibbs asks her why she didn't stab him, she tells Gibbs that "he had kind eyes". The way in which she died - shot through the head - is foreshadowed in the first season finale, "Réveille", in which Gibbs has a dream in which he sees Todd's dead body in the morgue, a bullet hole in her head.
After Todd's death, the character reappeared as a "ghost" at the very start of the third season, in a story thread that saw the various NCIS members come to terms with her loss. Her apparitions were, of course, only in the minds of the other characters. Her death was extremely hard on Gibbs, who believed he was responsible for her death. She appeared to him telling him the only way he could stop Ari's killing spree was to kill himself, although she later comforted him at her grave site.
In her appearance to Abby, she does reveal that she does indeed have a tattoo on her butt. She was replaced on the NCIS team by Mossad operative Ziva David after David helps track down Caitlin's killer; while cleaning out Todd's desk, David finds her old sketch pad and gives it to Gibbs. It is full of sketches of the team.
Kate was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for going above and beyond the call of duty in which she successfully prevented a terrorist attack in the United States.
[edit] Personality
Todd often questions authority, including her immediate boss, Gibbs. She is often referred to as "Kate" or "Caitlin." She bonded extremely well with forensics specialist Abby Sciuto, as they are the only two women on the regular team . Todd usually serves as a crime scene photographer, and is also called upon to use her criminal profiler skills during interviews and interrogations.
Caitlin had a love/hate relationship with teammate Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. She and Gibbs were also shown subtly flirting on a few occasions, though in one early episode Gibbs makes it a point to stress to Caitlin that relationships between NCIS agents never work out (a probable reference to Gibbs' own relationship with Jenny Shepard which was confirmed in the third season). Mid-way through season 2, Todd and DiNozzo's bickering got to be so bad that they sought counseling from NCIS's Medical Examiner Dr. Ducky Mallard.
She is a talented sketch artist; an early episode showed she had drawn accurate caricatures of the team: showing Tony lusting after a pretty girl and Abby as a bat (Episode Marine Down). Her sketch talent was first shown in episode Seadog when she was waiting ex-colleague in a park during investigation.She apparently drew one of Gibbs as well, but managed to change the subject before it was revealed since she had also sketched an accurate likeness of a suspect. In the last episode of the second season, Twilight, McGee saw her as she was drawing Tony, and even if she said it wasn't him at all, it was very obvious that it was actually DiNozzo. In season three when Ziva David joins the team full-time and moves into Kate's cubicle, she presents to Gibbs Kate's sketch pad which is shown to include a sketch of Gibbs.
She is an accurate marksman, dedicated agent, and tries to see the best in people. Like others under Gibbs' command, she does not hesitate to use deadly force when necessary, but during a second season episode, she becomes grief-stricken when she finds herself being used for the purposes of "suicide by cop" by an otherwise innocent individual.
Todd may or may not have a tattoo on her lower body, possibly as part of a bonding exercise with Abby; its existence was suggested during playful banter with Tony and while Tony believed it to be first of a butterfly, then of a rose, Gibbs indicated that it wasn't. Todd, by this point, however, was denying that she ever had a tattoo, but she does reveal later that she has one. Her tattoo is in fact a bow, on her right buttock. (see above).
[edit] Behind the scenes
According to Mark Harmon in the behind-the-scenes featurette "The Women of NCIS", included in the third season DVD set released in April 2007, Lauren Holly was originally considered for the role of Kate Todd. Holly was later hired to play Jenny Shepard after Sasha Alexander left the series.
Sasha Alexander's departure from the series and the death of Caitlin Todd was a very closely-guarded secret that caught many fans by surprise (a rarity in the era of Internet spoilers). Although the decision to kill off Todd angered fans, co-creator Donald Bellisario said that Alexander had asked to leave the series (See TV.com: Fans react with anger at Sasha Alexander's NCIS death, as well as the featurette "Investigating Season 2" on the second season DVD box set). As noted above, however, the fact that her character would be killed (and by Ari) had already been foreshadowed in the series.
Her replacement, Cote de Pablo, was integrated into the show with the same storyline in which Sasha Alexander was written out, and Alexander agreed to make a return appearance - albeit in spectral form - early in the season to allow her character to have a proper farewell.
[edit] External links
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