The BEST episodes of NOVA season 34
Every episode of NOVA season 34, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of NOVA season 34!
Helps viewers of all ages explore the science behind the headlines.
#1 - Cuttlefish: Kings of Camouflage
Season 34 - Episode 3 - Aired 4/3/2007
NOVA explores the lives of cuttlefish. Not actually fish, these cephalopods can change their shape and color, they can put on dazzling light shows, and they're surprisingly intelligent.
#2 - Percy Julian: Forgotten Genius
Season 34 - Episode 1 - Aired 2/6/2007
Against all odds, African-American chemist Percy Julian became one of the greatest scientists of the 20th-Century.
#4 - Marathon Challenge
Season 34 - Episode 11 - Aired 10/30/2007
13 amateurs train for the 26.2 mile Boston Marathon.
#5 - Sputnik Declassified
Season 34 - Episode 12 - Aired 11/7/2007
Using previously classified documents, NOVA uncovers the secret history of U.S. space programs in the 1950's and how those aspirations were given a boost in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I.
#6 - The Last Great Ape
Season 34 - Episode 2 - Aired 2/13/2007
Scientists return to the jungles of Congo to further explore the peaceful lives of bonobos.
#7 - First Flower
Season 34 - Episode 4 - Aired 4/17/2007
In the remote mountains of China, scientist come closer to understanding the origins of flowers.
#8 - The Great Inca Rebellion
Season 34 - Episode 8 - Aired 6/26/2007
In collaboration with National Geographic Television, NOVA explores new evidence about the last days of the Inca Empire.
#9 - Ghost In Your Genes
Season 34 - Episode 10 - Aired 10/16/2007
Experts investigate how a mysterious "second genome" helps determine our biological fates.
#10 - Bone Diggers
Season 34 - Episode 7 - Aired 6/19/2007
NOVA follows a group of paleontologists to a cave in southwestern Australia where the fossils of a meat-eating marsupial lion, and other extinct giant animals, have recently been discovered.
#11 - Master Of The Killer Ants
Season 34 - Episode 14 - Aired 11/20/2007
The Mofu people of northern Cameroon have a close relationship with insects, in particular, the red driver ants which they use to combat termites.
#12 - Missing In MiG Alley
Season 34 - Episode 15 - Aired 12/18/2007
In the early 1950s, epic battles unfolded in the skies over North Korea as American and Russian fighters faced off in history's first jet war. This program explores the Korean War's aerial tactics, technology, and grim aftermath for downed pilots, many of whom disappeared without a trace. The Korean War pitted the two most advanced fighters of their day, the American F-86 Sabre and the Soviet MiG-15, in furious air battles in North Korea's notorious "MiG Alley." With the help of dramatic reconstructions, rare archival footage, and interviews with veteran American and Soviet pilots, NOVA puts viewers in the cockpit to experience the lethal split-second duels that erupted in MiG Alley.
#13 - Saved By The Sun
Season 34 - Episode 5 - Aired 4/24/2007
NOVA explores solar energy and its contribution towards getting humanity off of fossil fuels.
#14 - Pocahontas Revealed
Season 34 - Episode 6 - Aired 5/8/2007
The recent archeological discovery of the Native American Powhatan village of Werowocomoco, sheds new light on the Jamestown story of Pocahontas.
#15 - Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial
Season 34 - Episode 13 - Aired 11/13/2007
In this two-hour special, NOVA captures the turmoil that tore apart the community of Dover, Pennsylvania in one of the latest battles over teaching evolution in public schools. Featuring trial reenactments based on court transcripts and interviews with key participants, including expert scientists and Dover parents, teachers, and town officials, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" follows the celebrated federal case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District. This program was coproduced with Paul G. Allen's Vulcan Productions, Inc. In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students suggesting that there is an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution called intelligent design–the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The teachers refused to comply. Later, parents opposed to intelligent design filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state. "There was a blow-up like you couldn't believe," Bill Buckingham, head of the school board's curriculum committee, tells NOVA. Buckingham helped formulate the intelligent-design policy when he noticed that the biology textbook chosen by teachers for classroom use was, in his words, "laced with Darwinism." NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as "What is evolution?" and "Is intelligent design a scientifically valid alternative?" Kitzmiller v. Dover was the first legal test of intelligent design as a scientific theory, with the plaintiffs arguing that it is a thinly veiled form of creationism, the view that a literal interpretation of the Bible accounts for all observed facts about nature. During the trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs showed that evolution is one of the best-tested and most thoroughly con