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The Worst Episodes of NOVA

Every episode of NOVA ranked from worst to best. Explore the Worst Episodes of NOVA!

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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 Worst Episode
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    NOVA Season 1 Episode 8 - Bird Brain: The Mystery of Bird Navigation
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #1 - Bird Brain: The Mystery of Bird Navigation

    S1:E8

    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, focusing on how they coose routes tat avoid bad weather and make the best of prevailing winds—information that can aid meteorologists.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  2. NOVA Season 1 Episode 9 - Are You Doing This for Me, Doctor?
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #2 - Are You Doing This for Me, Doctor?

    S1:E9

    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 dangerous, and may not be of direct benefit to the subject. NOVA examines how individuals' interests are safeguarded, and asks, under what circumstances experiments should be conducted on children.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  3. NOVA Season 1 Episode 11 - The Case of the Midwife Toad
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #3 - The Case of the Midwife Toad

    S1:E11

    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 inheritance of acquired characteristics. Arthur Koestler joins NOVA in an in-depth examination of Kammerer's infamous experiment.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  4. NOVA Season 2 Episode 2 - How Much Do You Smell?
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #4 - How Much Do You Smell?

    S2:E2

    Many insects and some mammals use smell as a primary means of communication. NOVA explains how, for example, the entire economy of an ant's nest is organized by smell, and how some moths use smell for population control—an ability we is now beginning to understand.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  5. NOVA Season 2 Episode 3 - The Hunting Of The Quark
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #5 - The Hunting Of The Quark

    S2:E3

    Smashing matter into ever smaller pieces in an attempt to find its fundamental building blocks has produced a confused nightmare of particles. NOVA looks at this on-again, off-again story—one of sciences's most mysterious—and, one of the most expensive, involving some of the biggest machines in the world.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  6. NOVA Season 2 Episode 4 - The Secrets Of Sleep
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #6 - The Secrets Of Sleep

    S2:E4

    Most of us spend one-third of our lives in a state of which we understand remarkably little—some people sleep for only a few minutes a night, and function perfectly well, while others declare that eight hours isn't enough. NOVA explores traditional notions about how much sleep we need; looks at effects of the sleeping pill, and, perhaps the most baffling of all aspects of sleep—dreaming.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  7. NOVA Season 2 Episode 5 - Inside the Golden Gate
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #7 - Inside the Golden Gate

    S2:E5

    NOVA joins a team of U.S. Geological Survey scientists on a mission to find out just how San Francisco Bay works: its physics, its chemistry and its biology.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  8. NOVA Season 2 Episode 6 - The Men Who Painted Caves
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #8 - The Men Who Painted Caves

    S2:E6

    Just why did Cro-Magnon man living in France's Dordogne Valley some 15,000 years ago take time out from the desperate business of survival to paint pictures in inaccessible corners of his cave dwellings? NOVA joins French and American archeologists as they piece together the lifestyle of these hunters of the last great Ice Age, and try to interpret the meaning of their cave art.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  9. NOVA Season 2 Episode 7 - Red Sea Coral
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #9 - Red Sea Coral

    S2:E7

    NOVA joins a group of English biologists living literally on a platform in the middle of the Red Sea, who for several years have been studying the crown-of-thorns starfish, notorious for the devastation it has wrought on the coral reefs of Australia and the Pacific.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  10. NOVA Season 2 Episode 12 - The Lysenko Affair
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #10 - The Lysenko Affair

    S2:E12

    NOVA explores T.D. Lynsenko's rise to power in the Soviet Union in the early 20th century, and how it affected plant genetic research in the USSR.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  11. NOVA Season 2 Episode 13 - The Tuaregs
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #11 - The Tuaregs

    S2:E13

    High in the Hoggar Mountains, in the exact center of the Sahara desert, lives Sidi Mohammed and his family: children, grandchildren, cousins and a few former slave women. Their environment, one of the most ungenerous on earth, provides them with almost nothing. NOVA examines the changing lifestyle of Sidi Mohammed.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  12. NOVA Season 2 Episode 15 - The Other Way
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #12 - The Other Way

    S2:E15

    Since the Industrial Revolution, bigger has been better. NOVA profiles E.F. Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful, who thinks that enough is enough; that the time has come for technology to return to a human scale, where the ability to create is returned from the machine to people.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  13. NOVA Season 2 Episode 17 - Will The Fishing Have to Stop?
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #13 - Will The Fishing Have to Stop?

    S2:E17

    Fish is an excellent source of protein; it could help ease the growing international food shortage. But in 1972 the total world fish catch dropped. NOVA explores the possible reasons for this decline.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  14. NOVA Season 3 Episode 1 - Predictable Disaster
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #14 - Predictable Disaster

    S3:E1

    It is now possible to predict earthquakes. At least two successful predictions have already been made in the United States; and the NOVA crew was present and filming while a third prediction was being formulated. NOVA looks at why earthquakes occur, how predictions are made, the threat they pose to cities at risk, and examines the advantages and disadvantages of making an earthquake a predictable disaster.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  15. NOVA Season 3 Episode 2 - Joey
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #15 - Joey

    S3:E2

    NOVA takes viewers into the world of Joey Deacon, 54 years old and a spastic since birth. Joey has lived most of his life in institutions, unable to communicate with anyone until he met Ernie Roberts. The docudrama recreates Joey's story, with remarkable performances by two spastic actors portraying him as a boy and as a young man. Joey and Ernie themselves appear in the final sequences.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  16. NOVA Season 3 Episode 3 - Meditation and the Mind
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #16 - Meditation and the Mind

    S3:E3

    What do singer Peggy Lee, New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath and Congressman Richard Nolas have in common? They all practice a ritual called TM—Transcendental Meditation. NOVA examines the recent phenomenal success of the TM movement in America.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  17. NOVA Season 3 Episode 5 - A Desert Place
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #17 - A Desert Place

    S3:E5

    NOVA explores the mysterious ecosystem of the desert: a snowstorm; a lashing summer monsoon; and the emergence—in a pool created only minutes before—of a pair of adult spadefoot toads. Toads who had been waiting beneath the sand for a year for this brief and fortuitous moment to procreate the next generation...

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  18. NOVA Season 3 Episode 6 - A Small Imperfection
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #18 - A Small Imperfection

    S3:E6

    Every year, some 5,000 babies are born in the US with spina bifida, a congenital abnormality of the central nervous system. NOVA explores the mystery of what causes spina bifida and raises the issues of whether heroic measures should be taken to preserve the life of severely malformed babies.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  19. NOVA Season 3 Episode 7 - Ninety Degrees Below
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #19 - Ninety Degrees Below

    S3:E7

    There's one place on earth where no one will ever catch a cold. And the freezing waters are so bitter there that a fish has been discovered to have developed its own anti-freeze. NOVA explores Antarctica—the coldest desert in the world.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  20. NOVA Season 3 Episode 9 - The Renewable Tree
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #20 - The Renewable Tree

    S3:E9

    Each Sunday edition of the New York Times consumes 153 acres of trees. The paper packs, napkins, paper cups and packing used by McDonald's gobble up 315 square miles of trees every day. NOVA asks if, at this rate, trees can remain a renewable resource.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  21. NOVA Season 3 Episode 10 - The Williamsburgh File
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #21 - The Williamsburgh File

    S3:E10

    NOVA joins chief archaeologist, Ivor Noel Hume, of Colonial Williamsburg, VA, for a fascinating glimpse of the lifestyles of the founders of this country, complete with detailed reconstructions of houses, stores, workshops, gardens, taverns and palaces.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  22. NOVA Season 3 Episode 11 - The Overworked Miracle
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #22 - The Overworked Miracle

    S3:E11

    Today we take antibiotics for granted, and by doing so are steadily eroding their medical value. NOVA examines the problem of resistance to antibiotics in the bacteria they are designed to kill.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  23. NOVA Season 3 Episode 12 - The Transplant Experiment
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #23 - The Transplant Experiment

    S3:E12

    Dr. Norman Shumway of Stanford University has performed more heart transplants than any other heart surgeon. NOVA explores those extraordinary days in 1968-69 when it appeared that everyone with a scalpel was doing heart transplants, and survival of patients was measured in days.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  24. NOVA Season 3 Episode 13 - The Underground Movement
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #24 - The Underground Movement

    S3:E13

    NOVA explores life underground, from foxes and badgers through moles and worms down to the myriad of micro-organisms that make soil the most complex substrate for life on earth. Included in the film is extraordinary footage of a mole burrowing and of roots growing.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  25. NOVA Season 3 Episode 14 - Hunters of the Seal
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #25 - Hunters of the Seal

    S3:E14

    NOVA shows the Netsilik eskimoes of Pelly Bay and their traditional way of life and what happens when Western civilization is imposed upon them.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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Worst Episodes Summary

"Bird Brain: The Mystery of Bird Navigation" is the worst rated episode of "NOVA". It scored /10 based on 0 votes. Directed by Unknown and written by Unknown, it aired on 4/21/1974. This episode scored 0.0 points lower than the second lowest rated, "Are You Doing This for Me, Doctor?".