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The Best Episodes of NOVA Season 9

Every episode of NOVA Season 9 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of NOVA Season 9!

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PBS' premier science series helps viewers of all ages explore the science behind the headlines. Along the way, NOVA demystifies science and technology, and highlights the people involved in scientific pursuits.

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Episode Rankings

  1. #1 Fan Favorite
    NOVA Season 9 Episode 1 - Salmon on the Run
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #1 - Salmon on the Run

    S9:E1

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  2. NOVA Season 9 Episode 2 - Test-Tube Babies: A Daughter For Judy
    8.0/10(8 votes)

    #2 - Test-Tube Babies: A Daughter For Judy

    S9:E2

    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 on American TV of the extraordinary medical procedures used to remove and fertilize the egg, and of the historic birth, 28 December 1981 in Norfolk, VA.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  3. NOVA Season 9 Episode 3 - Field Guide to Roger Tory Peterson
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #3 - Field Guide to Roger Tory Peterson

    S9:E3

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  4. NOVA Season 9 Episode 4 - The Hunt for the Legion Killer
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #4 - The Hunt for the Legion Killer

    S9:E4

    One of the biggest investigations in medical history began when a mysterious killer disease broke out during independence celebrations in Philadelphia in 1976: Legionnaires' disease. NOVA traces the search for a cause and cure—a search bedeviled by false trails, accusations of incompetence and cover-up, and increasing urgency as the death toll mounted.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  5. NOVA Season 9 Episode 5 - Finding a Voice
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #5 - Finding a Voice

    S9:E5

    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 and unable for 30 years to say more than "yes" or "no" and investigates some of the new technology that gives the speechless a "voice."

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  6. NOVA Season 9 Episode 6 - The Television Explosion
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #6 - The Television Explosion

    S9:E6

    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 their potential social impact. Will the new video technology let people see what they really want, rather than what the networks want?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  7. NOVA Season 9 Episode 7 - Life: Patent Pending
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #7 - Life: Patent Pending

    S9:E7

    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 that other countries are plowing far more resources than the US into the burgeoning industry.

    Director:Robert Zalisk
    Writer:Robert Zalisk

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  8. NOVA Season 9 Episode 8 - Palace of Delights
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #8 - Palace of Delights

    S9:E8

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  9. NOVA Season 9 Episode 9 - Animal Impostors
    7.8/10(9 votes)

    #9 - Animal Impostors

    S9:E9

    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 victims, use remarkable forms of deception to achieve their goal: to eat, or avoid being eaten.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  10. NOVA Season 9 Episode 10 - Aging: The Methuselah Syndrome
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #10 - Aging: The Methuselah Syndrome

    S9:E10

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  11. NOVA Season 9 Episode 11 - The Case of the UFOs
    7.9/10(10 votes)

    #11 - The Case of the UFOs

    S9:E11

    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 eyewitnesses including astronauts, NOVA sifts the evidence for and against the existence of UFOs.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  12. NOVA Season 9 Episode 12 - The Fragile Mountain
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #12 - The Fragile Mountain

    S9:E12

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  13. NOVA Season 9 Episode 13 - Here's Looking At You Kid
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #13 - Here's Looking At You Kid

    S9:E13

    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 recover from burns suffered over 73 percent of his body.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  14. NOVA Season 9 Episode 14 - Adventures of Teenage Scientists
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #14 - Adventures of Teenage Scientists

    S9:E14

    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 a deepening financial crisis, will this year's group of well-trained young scientists be among the last of the best and the brightest?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  15. NOVA Season 9 Episode 15 - The Cobalt Blues
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #15 - The Cobalt Blues

    S9:E15

    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 policies toward those international sources.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  16. NOVA Season 9 Episode 16 - Goodbye Louisiana
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #16 - Goodbye Louisiana

    S9:E16

    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 coastline disappeared into the Gulf of Mexico.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  17. NOVA Season 9 Episode 17 - Whale Watch
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #17 - Whale Watch

    S9:E17

    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 the gentle giants.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  18. NOVA Season 9 Episode 18 - Tracking The Supertrains
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #18 - Tracking The Supertrains

    S9:E18

    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 coming to America.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  19. NOVA Season 9 Episode 19 - The Making of a Natural History Film
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #19 - The Making of a Natural History Film

    S9:E19

    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.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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Season 9 Ratings Summary

"Salmon on the Run" is the best rated episode of "NOVA" season 9. It scored /10 based on 0 votes. Directed by Unknown and written by Unknown, it aired on 1/10/1982. This episode is rated 8.0 points higher than the second-best, "Test-Tube Babies: A Daughter For Judy".