“Chimera” first aired Tuesday, October 30, 2007.

I would like to say that this Halloween Special lived up to last year’s Witch Hunt, but it cannot be said. What could have been a descent script disintegrates into ravenous particles long before a cogent plot is ever allowed to have normal development.

At NCIS headquarters the agents are twiddling their respective thumbs awaiting some development forcing them to spring into action. NCIS Forensics Specialist Abigail "Abby" Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) bounces in, full of good cheer with tickets for her posse to attend her favorite band, Brainmatter, in concert that evening. Previously, all of the team had promised Abby they would go but were now scrambling in all directions like heretics sought by Dark Age Dominican inquisitors.

Saving the day, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) appears with a job for the team. A US navy ship, the Chimera possesses a dead sailor whose demise is in need of investigation. Special Agent Timothy "Tim" McGee (Sean Murray) checks the US Navy register only to find that no Chimera exists. Abby proves disgruntled by being abandoned by her entourage and Gibbs proves disgruntled with the idea of dealing with an apparent black-operations group. Gibbs and NCIS Director Jennifer "Jenny" Shepard (Lauren Holly) find that they do not get on well with Navy Cmdr. William Skinner (Steven Culp), their contact at Navy.

When the NCIS team debark the copter they quickly notice that there is no one there to greet them. It appears that the entire staff and crew have taken the life rafts and abandoned ship, leaving the Chimera a Ghost ship just in time for Halloween. The chopper pilots question Gibbs on whether he and his team wish o be taken back to headquarters or left on the ship to investigate. Gibbs selects the latter. The team boards the “High Tech Black Ops” boat to find barely a ferry steamer. The boat appears to have been completely occupied with the exception that all of the occupiers are gone. Ostensibly, this does set up for a spooky Halloween. It looks promising, anyway.

And that is about the last time this episode made any sense. The scene is made to appear has having been interrupted in mid-sentence. Unfinished meals, unfinished letters, unfinished chores, it is as if the fable rapture occurred and everyone on board were the lucky ones. Gibbs and NCIS Medical Examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum) ponder why no distress signal was sent or received. All of the lifeboats are gone and the boat appears completely abandoned.

Out of site, McGee is heard retching...turns a corner choking that he "found something." The team enters a nondescript room that appears to be a well supplied laboratory, replete with laboratory rodents in cages and all of the instrumentation one would hope to have when doing biological and chemical research. DiNozzo, Ziva and Tim search the ship’s hold. The laboratory rats concern DiNozzo; the pneumonic plague has put him off them from an earlier episode.