The BEST Episodes of NOVA
Every episode ever - ranked by fan votes!
Last Updated: Aug 22, 2019
Seen in more than 100 countries, NOVA is the most watched science television series in the world and the most watched documentary series on PBS. It is also one of television's most acclaimed series, having won every major television award, most of them many times over.
#1 - Where Did The Colorado Go?
Season 1 - Episode 2
NOVA explores the mighty Colorado River which today has become the life-blood of the Southwest, providing water and electricity to the farms and cities of California, Nevada, and Arizona. The program examines the political expediency and technological over-optimism that has led to some major miscalculations of the river's capacity.
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#2 - Sinking City Of Venice
Season 29 - Episode 14
Experts struggle to save the City of Canals before it vanishes beneath the waves.
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#3 - Galileo's Battle For The Heavens
Season 29 - Episode 12
In this two-hour special, NOVA celebrates the story of the father of modern science and his struggle to get Church authorities to accept the truth of his astonishing discoveries. The program is based on Dava Sobel's bestselling book, Galileo's Daughter, which reveals a new side to the famously stubborn scientist—that his closest confidante was his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun.
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#4 - Marathon Challenge
Season 34 - Episode 11
13 amateurs train for the 26.2 mile Boston Marathon.
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#5 - Secrets Of Lost Empires: Medieval Siege
Season 27 - Episode 3
In the film, which is a part of the NOVA series Secrets of Lost Empires, a team of timber framers and other specialists design, build, and fire a pair of trebuchets, a devastating engine of war popular in the Middle Ages.
10.00 #6 - Whales, Dolphins, And Men
Season 1 - Episode 3
NOVA explores the impact of whaling and the goods it produces for the industry, verses the grace and beatury of this intelligent mammal of the sea.
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#7 - Fusion: The Energy Of Promise
Season 1 - Episode 12
Nuclear fusion offers the promises of an unlimited, clean source of energy. But achieving fusion has proved one of the most difficult and elusive goals of the physicist. NOVA tells the story of the twists and turns and the international competition along the road toward the achievement of fusion; and details the recent breakthroughs which seem at last to have brought it within reach.
10.00 #8 - The Miracle of Life
Season 10 - Episode 5
From inside the human body and the miracle of developing life to an insects world seen from the point of view of the insect, cinematographer Lennart Nilsson shows us the world in new ways. Part I, "The Ultimate Journey", moves from fertilization to birth of the human child, with excursions into comparative embryology. "The Unknown World" explores fur beetles and book worms and viruses among others - you will not be able to look at a fur coat the same way again. And in "The Photographer's Secrets" the technical people who developed the instruments he used explain how the cinemagic is done - a kiss from the inside, an opera singer's vocal cords, a tractor as seen 'over the shoulder' of an emerging worm. Mikael Agaton (additional writer)
10.00 #9 - Is Anybody Out There?
Season 13 - Episode 16
Could there be life beyond Earth? Only recently has it become possible to scan the skies in a systematic attempt to find out. NOVA joins the search with guest host Lily Tomlin.
10.00 #10 - The Last Journey of a Genius
Season 16 - Episode 2
NOVA looks at the bongo-playing scientist, adventurer, safecracker and yarn-spinner Richard Feynman, most recently famous for his role as gadfly of the Presidential Commission investigating the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
10.00 #11 - Design Wars!
Season 16 - Episode 13
NOVA examines the entries put forward by five architects and their teams, in a tough competition to choose a design for the new Chicago Public Library. The show gives viewers a chance to see the variation between the designs, as well as taking a closer look at the winning plan.
10.00 #12 - Can Bombing Win a War?
Season 20 - Episode 2
The Gulf War was fought in 38 days of non-stop bombing and four days of swift ground action. Did bombing win it? NOVA looks at the history of strategic bombing and asks whether bombing has now achieved preeminence in warfare.
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#13 - Pocahontas Revealed
Season 34 - Episode 6
The recent archeological discovery of the Native American Powhatan village of Werowocomoco, sheds new light on the Jamestown story of Pocahontas.
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#14 - Saved By The Sun
Season 34 - Episode 5
NOVA explores solar energy and its contribution towards getting humanity off of fossil fuels.
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#15 - Surviving the Tsunami
Season 38 - Episode 12
The earthquake that hit the northern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, was recorded at magnitude 9.0 the worst ever recorded in Japan. It generated an unprecedented tsunami, obliterating coastal villages and towns in a matter of minutes. In some areas, the tsunami climbed above 100 feet in height and traveled miles inland. Amazingly, amateur and professional photographers captured it all on video, including remarkable tales of human survival, as ordinary citizens became heroes in a drama they never could have imagined. As the waves rush in, a daughter struggles to help her elderly mother ascend their rooftop to safety; a man climbs onto an overpass just as the wave overtakes his car. These never-before-seen stories are captured in video and retold after the fact by the survivors who reveal what they were thinking as they made their life-saving decisions. Their stories provide lessons for how we should all act in the face of life-threatening disasters.
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#16 - Ghost In Your Genes
Season 34 - Episode 10
Experts investigate how a mysterious "second genome" helps determine our biological fates.
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#17 - The Orchid Hunter
Season 29 - Episode 15
For nine months in 2000, Tom Hart Dyke was a captive of guerrillas who seized him while he was collecting wild orchids in the Colombian rain forest. Now Hart Dyke is at it again in the most orchid-rich and one of the most politically unstable parts of Irian Jaya, the western half of the island of New Guinea.
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#18 - Infinite Secrets
Season 30 - Episode 10
A battered manuscript turns up after 1000 years revealing the mind of the Greek genius Archimedes
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#19 - The Deadliest Plane Crash
Season 33 - Episode 13
On March 27, 1977, on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, two fully loaded 747 jumbo jets collided on a fogbound runway, killing 583 people in what is still the deadliest crash in aviation history. NOVA looks back at the crucial final hours before the disaster. Despite new technology to improve runway safety, near-misses on the ground are still the leading cause of deadly aviation accidents.
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#20 - Underwater Dream Machine
Season 33 - Episode 17
Follow one man's dream to engeneer a submarine with panaramic views.
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#21 - Great Escape
Season 31 - Episode 17
Archeologists excavate Stalag Luft 3, the site of the greatest WWII prisoner escape. Prisoners of the camp are also interviewed.
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#22 - Dying To Be Thin
Season 27 - Episode 20
The film examines a disturbing increase in the prevalence of debilitating and sometimes life-threatening eating disorders, particularly anorexia and bulimia.
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#23 - Lost Tribes Of Israel
Season 27 - Episode 10
At the heart of Jewish tradition lies the haunting mystery of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Ever since their defeat and banishment by the Assyrians in 722 BC., the Lost Tribes fate has inspired countless claims to Jewish ancestry by groups scattered on every continent. But now, surprisingly, new advances in genetics are dispelling myth and fantasy, and raising a curtain on the forgotten reality of the dispersal that happened so many centuries ago. This story will follow the first attempt to use the new tests to investigate a seemingly improbable African candidate for a Lost Tribe. It will dramatize a scientific quest that leads from the gene labs of London to the remote bush country of Zimbabwe and the lunar-like desert wilderness of southern Yemen.
9.00 #24 - Bird Brain: The Mystery Of Bird Navigation
Season 1 - Episode 8
Birds migrate in search of perpetual summer, sometimes traveling as much as 20,000 miles every year. NOVA uses radar to track and identify migrating birds that travel at night, focusing on how they coose routes tat avoid bad weather and make the best of prevailing winds—information that can aid meteorologists.
9.00 #25 - A Small Imperfection
Season 3 - Episode 6
Every year, some 5,000 babies are born in the US with spina bifida, a congenital abnormality of the central nervous system. NOVA explores the mystery of what causes spina bifida and raises the issues of whether heroic measures should be taken to preserve the life of severely malformed babies.
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