NOVA: Season 9
Season 9 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 8.
- 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 9 Progress Shield
Salmon on the Run
Jan 10, 1982 · 55 min
NOVA captures the breathtaking power and determination of these amazing creatures and examines how business and technology are changing the fishing industry—and the salmon itself.
Test-Tube Babies: A Daughter For Judy
Jan 17, 1982 · 55 min
NOVA presents a dramatic, exclusive film of the first "test-tube" baby born in America, Elizabeth Jordan Carr. NOVA follows the pregnancy from the start, presenting the only view o
Field Guide to Roger Tory Peterson
Jan 24, 1982 · 55 min
NOVA takes an intimate look at Roger Tory Peterson, the man whose best-selling guide books to ornithology have played a pivotal role in turning birdwatching into a mass sport.
The Hunt for the Legion Killer
Jan 31, 1982 · 55 min
One of the biggest investigations in medical history began when a mysterious killer disease broke out during independence celebrations in Philadelphia in 1976: Legionnaires' diseas
Finding a Voice
Feb 7, 1982 · 55 min
What is it like not to be able to communicate with others? NOVA explores the severest of speech disabilities with Dick Boydell—born with cerebral palsy, confined to a wheelchair an
The Television Explosion
Feb 14, 1982 · 55 min
NOVA explores the past, present, and future of American television including the potential of cable, the Columbus, Ohio, two-way TV experiment, the array of new techniques and thei
Life: Patent Pending
Feb 28, 1982 · 55 min
NOVA shows how scientists go about creating new forms of life, and investigates the impact of the gene bonanza on industry, medicine, and the universities themselves. NOVA reveals
Palace of Delights
Mar 7, 1982 · 55 min
NOVA visits San Francisco's Exploratorium—part laboratory, part school, part three-ring circus—run by an unlikely collection of physicists and high school students.
Animal Impostors
Mar 14, 1982 · 55 min
In this vivid study of mimicry and camouflage NOVA shows dramatically how snakes, butterflies, fish, turtles and many other kinds of animals, both predators and their intended vict
Aging: The Methuselah Syndrome
Mar 28, 1982 · 55 min
What is aging? Why does it happen? Can it be stopped? NOVA presents a startling report on research into the processes which make us age and how to control them.
The Case of the UFOs
Oct 12, 1982 · 55 min
For the first time on television a rigorous, scientific investigation into the fact, fiction, and hoax of Unidentified flying objects. With vivid film and accounts from several eye
The Fragile Mountain
Oct 19, 1982 · 55 min
The Himalayas, highest peaks in the world, are crumbling. People are making them crumble, and people are the victims, as NOVA reveals in this breathtaking documentary.
Here's Looking At You Kid
Nov 9, 1982 · 55 min
Of the 70,000 Americans hospitalized annually for severe Burns, one-third are children. NOVA tells the story of extraordinary personal resilience in an 11-year-old boy's fight to r
Adventures of Teenage Scientists
Nov 16, 1982 · 55 min
NOVA introduces some of the winners of the 1982 Westinghouse Science Talent Search: high school students whose interests range from silkworms to solar cells. With education facing
The Cobalt Blues
Nov 23, 1982 · 55 min
An investigative report on US dependence on foreign sources of strategic minerals, vital to the aerospace and steel industries, which examines and questions Reagan Administration p
Goodbye Louisiana
Nov 30, 1982 · 55 min
NOVA reports on the staggering water problems of Southern Louisiana—where the mighty Mississippi is threatening to change its course, and where last year 49 square miles of coastli
Whale Watch
Dec 7, 1982 · 55 min
NOVA follows the great grey whales along their annual marathon migration from the Arctic to the Mexican coast and reveals little known facts about the mating and feeding habits of
Tracking The Supertrains
Dec 14, 1982 · 55 min
While America's passenger-train service deteriorates, trains in Japan and Europe are speeding ahead at over 150 miles per hour. NOVA reports that the super-fast trains are finally
The Making of a Natural History Film
Jan 4, 1983 · 55 min
To celebrate its 10th broadcast season, NOVA repeats the very first NOVA program every aired, a fascinating and delightful program about how wildlife films are made.