NOVA: Season 21
Season 21 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of NOVA Season 20.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 21 Progress Shield
Codebreakers
Jan 18, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA delves into the history of secret communications and the people who wrack their brains to decipher them. The program probes the most celebrated of all cryptographic coups: the
Dinosaurs of the Gobi
Jan 25, 1994 · 55 min
Velociraptors and primitive birds are among the fabulous fossil finds as NOVA accompanies an American Museum of Natural History expedition to the Gobi Desert. The trip relives the
Daredevils of the Sky
Feb 1, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA follows members of the US Aerobatic Team as they prepare for and compete in the 1992 World Aerobatic Championship. The sport, as precisely choreographed as gymnastics-except t
Journey to Kilimanjaro
Feb 8, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA explores ice-capped mountains-on the equator. These African giants are magical islands of life towering above the scorched plains. Giant forest hogs, bearded vultures, the elu
Can Chimps Talk?
Feb 15, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA covers exciting and controversial research with chimpanzees who have been trained to express themselves with human symbols. Are they speaking their minds? Or are they just api
In Search of Human Origins, Part One
Feb 28, 1994 · 55 min
In the first of a three-part series, noted anthropologist Donald Johanson probes the earliest ancestors of the human species - reaching back more than three million years to a stra
In Search of Human Origins, Part Two
Mar 1, 1994 · 55 min
Anthropologist Donald Johanson looks at how our human ancestors of two million years ago made their living. Contrary to popular myth, scavenging was a more lucrative living than hu
In Search of Human Origins, Part Three
Mar 2, 1994 · 55 min
At what point did our distant ancestors become anatomically like us? And, more importantly, when did they begin to act like us? Anthropologist Donald Johanson looks at what it is t
Can China Kick the Habit?
Apr 12, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA visits the most cigarette-addicted nation in the world-China. Western advertising and trading practices have exacerbated the fatal romance with smoking in the world's most pop
Aircraft Carrier!
Apr 19, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA experiences the relentless, round-the-clock life aboard the US Navy aircraft carrier, Independence-where every day is a constant drill of launching and landing aircraft atop a
The Great Wildlife Heist
Oct 11, 1994 · 55 min
Polly wants a crackdown when it comes to the illegal trade in the world's most beautiful and intelligent birds: parrots. NOVA goes undercover with a US government sting that breaks
Secret of the Wild Child
Oct 18, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA profiles "Genie," a girl whose parents kept her imprisoned in near total isolation from infancy. When social workers discoverd her as a teenager, Genie had not learned to walk
Haunted Cry of a Long Gone Bird
Oct 25, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA explores the legacy of the great Auk, a magnificent flightless bird that was hunted to extinction over a century ago. In a journey retracing its migratory route, host Richard
What's New About Menopause
Nov 1, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA tackles the long-taboo subject of menopause, profiling new research and examining the medical and ethical controversies that arise when science enables women to postpone menop
The Tribe that Time Forgot
Nov 8, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA travels deep into the Amazon wilderness in search of a mysterious tribe- a tribe that dismembered and partially ate three prospectors in 1976. Locating the group, NOVA lives w
Killer Quake!
Nov 15, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA probes the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. Even as the city struggles to repair itself from the tragedy, seismic pressure continues to build. Scientists fear that newly discovere
Buried in Ash
Nov 29, 1994 · 55 min
Ten million years ago, an enormous volcanic eruption buried much of what is now Nebraska in up to 10 feet of ash, preserving countless skeletons of prehistoric big game animals. NO
Rescue Mission in Space
Dec 6, 1994 · 55 min
Hobbled by defective eyesight because of its original, bungled prescription, the Hubble Space Telescope was recently repaired in a dramatic Space Shuttle mission. NOVA follows the
Journey to the Sacred Sea
Dec 20, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA travels to Lake Baikal, the world's oldest and deepest lake, containing one-fifth of all the fresh water on Earth. Investigating Baikal from above, below and all around, NOVA
In Search of the First Language
Dec 27, 1994 · 55 min
NOVA explores the common threads that link the more than 5,000 languages of Earth, including a controversial theory that claims to reconstruct words from a time when only a handful