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Season guide

NOVA: Season 1

13 episodes Premiered Mar 3, 1974 Updated Jul 18, 2026
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Episodes

S1·E1

The Making Of A Natural History Film

Mar 3, 1974 · 55 min

NOVA premieres on public television with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a nature film. Oxford Scientific Films Unit shows how it tackles such problems as filming a wood-

S1·E2

Where Did the Colorado Go?

Mar 10, 1974 · 55 min

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 A

S1·E3

Whales, Dolphins, and Men

Mar 17, 1974 · 55 min

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.

S1·E4

The Search For Life

Mar 24, 1974 · 55 min

Does life exist outside this planet? The Viking lander will set down on Mars in July 1976 to try to find out just that. NOVA explores how life started on Earth and examines the Vik

S1·E5

Last of the Cuiva

Mar 31, 1974 · 55 min

How does a primitive nomadic tribe of the Amazon basin cope with the encroachment of Western settlers? NOVA looks at both sides of the story, revealing the misunderstandings betwee

S1·E6

Strange Sleep

Apr 7, 1974 · 55 min

Medicine was transformed in the 19th century by the discovery of anesthesia; surgery, until then hasty, bloody and completely unable to deal with internal disorders, subsequently t

S1·E7

The Crab Nebula

Apr 14, 1974 · 55 min

In 1054 AD, the Chinese recorded the explosion of a star so bright that it lit the sky for three weeks, even during the day. It was the explosion of a dying star that was bigger th

S1·E8

Bird Brain: The Mystery of Bird Navigation

Apr 21, 1974 · 55 min

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, foc

S1·E9

Are You Doing This for Me, Doctor?

Apr 28, 1974 · 55 min

The advance of medicine depends inevitably on the testing of experimental procedures on human volunteers from either the healthy or the sick. Yet such procedures are often dangerou

S1·E10

The First Signs Of Washoe

May 5, 1974 · 55 min

Washoe is a chimp more like a person: she talks with her hands. NOVA visits with Washoe and her teachers—Professor Allen Gardner and Dr. Trixie Gardner—to learn more about this unu

S1·E11

The Case of the Midwife Toad

May 12, 1974 · 55 min

When Paul Kammerer committed suicide in 1926, it was taken by most of his fellow biologists as a tacit admission of guilt that he had faked his experiments purporting to show the i

S1·E12

Fusion: The Energy of Promise

May 19, 1974 · 55 min

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

S1·E13

The Mystery Of The Anasazi

May 26, 1974 · 55 min

Who were the people that built the first cities -- complete with apartment blocks -- in North America? They were the Anasazi Indians, who lived in the Southwest for some eight or n