As of July 2026, NOVA Season 5 aired in 1978 with 21 episodes — streaming now on Hoopla. Full episode guide and where to watch below.

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NOVA Season 5

1978 21 Episodes Documentary ⭐ 7/10

NOVA Season 5 has built a real following on and among viewers who want documentaries that actually inform. A single, tightly-focused season means there is plenty to get through without ever feeling padded. 140 viewers have already rated it on TMDB — the kind of consensus that does not happen by accident. Rigorous in a way documentary storytelling does not always commit to. There is no real reason to keep putting it off.

NOVA Season 5 is not trying to be everything to everyone, and that focus is exactly what makes it work. NOVA Season 5 approaches its subject with the rigour that makes documentary storytelling worth taking seriously. Season 5 of NOVA includes 21 episodes. It aired from January 1978 to June 1978. Episodes include "In The Event of Catastrophe", "The Green Machine", "Blueprints in the Bloodstream". It was aired in 1978. NOVA Season 5 lets its subjects speak for themselves rather than shaping them into a predetermined narrative. It knows exactly what it is, and does not try to be anything else.

NOVA Season 5 is the kind of documentary you immediately want to recommend to someone else. It does not lean on comparisons to make its case. The complete run is available and best experienced without too much prior knowledge of where it goes. Rigorous in a way documentary work does not always commit to. Not background viewing — it rewards your full attention.

📡 Where to Watch NOVA Season 5

🇦🇺 Australia

🇺🇸 United States

PBS America Amazon Channel

PBS Documentaries Amazon Channel

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

PBS America Amazon Channel

🇨🇦 Canada

PBS Documentaries Amazon Channel

🇳🇿 New Zealand

🎬 NOVA Season 5 — Episode Guide

In The Event of Catastrophe

Can a nuclear war be survived? Some members of the defense community say yes. NOVA explores the possibility.

The Green Machine

Botany is a neglected science and plants are all around us, but unfamiliar. NOVA examines our state of knowledge of how plants work: growth hormones, responses to light and shade, photosynthesis, root mechanisms and twining responses.

Blueprints in the Bloodstream

It has been known since the turn of the century that there are four human blood groups, based on different red cells and serum characteristics. NOVA looks at the more recent discovery that the different white cell types, as determined by a variety of different molecular markers on the cell surface, ...

Part one of a two-part series on the subject of man in space, NOVA examines the history of NASA—from the origin of the space race through the triumph of the Apollo programs. By tracing the history of three key programs—Mercury, Gemini, Apollo—we show how the basic challenges surrounding space flight...

The Final Frontier

Second of the two-part series on space programs, NOVA looks ahead to the future, post-Apollo and the role that man in space will play, including the possibility of space colonization—huge orbiting space stations where people live and work in an earth atmosphere under artificial gravity.

BaMiki BaNdula: Children of the Forest

In the rain forests of Zaire, in the heart of Africa, live the Mbuti Pygmies. The Pygmy way of life has always been extraordinarily difficult to capture on film, though many have tried. NOVA presents a rare portrait of an elusive people, made by an independent filmmaker who lived with the Pygmies an...

Trial of Denton Cooley

In a dramatic docudrama, NOVA reconstructs the controversial lawsuit raised against renowned heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley when one of his patients died after heart surgery, and examines the legal and moral issues this raises in the practice of modern medicine.

The Great Wine Revolution

A science-based revolution in the making of wine is underway. NOVA traces the secrets of the aging process and science's involvement with the predicting of mass production high-quality vintage wines.

The Case of the Ancient Astronauts

NOVA investigates the theories of von Daniken and others that the Earth has been visited by intelligent beings from outer space. Among claims examined are: that the building techniques used in the Great Pyramid of Cheops are so advanced that only an extraterrestrial intelligence could have built it;...

The Mind Machines

Today's scientists may be creating their own successors. Work being done in Artificial Intelligence (AI), a branch of computer science, only suggest that in the not too distant future, machines will outpace their creators. NOVA examines the possibility.

Icarus' Children

In the summer of 1977 Paul MacCready, a California scientist and businessman, won the coveted Kremer Prize. His achievement was to design and build an airplane which completed, unaided, a one-mile figure-eight course entirely under the power provided by the pilot himself. This is the story of those ...

NOVA shows a year in the life of a beaver pond and includes almost every life form that exists in, on, under, around and above the water, from the microscopic plant life of summer to the eagles feeding on carcasses of deer that collapsed on the winter ice.

Battle for the Acropolis

The fortified plateau above Athens known as the Acropolis is the site of some of the most remarkable architecture in the world: its marble structures built in the fifth century BC, including the renowned Parthenon, represent the artistic peak of classical Greek architecture. NOVA examines how the he...

The Road to Happiness. : The Life and Times of Henry Ford

Henry Ford, a great friend of Edison, was a film enthusiast who amassed some one and a half million feet of film during his lifetime. Deposited in the National Archives and known as the Ford Film Collection, it covers not only the Ford family and Ford Motor Company but also contains newsreels, and g...

Laser : Light of the 21st Century

When first invented 18 years ago, lasers were called "a solution looking for a problem;" nobody could think what to do with them. But in fact research scientists immediately began to exploit their pure colors and near-perfect focusing ability. Today lasers have grown into a billion-dollar business. ...

Insect Alternative

In a world that each year loses up to 40 percent of its crops to insects, some form of pest control is desperately needed. But chemical pesticides have backfired. Pesticide-resistant insects frequently develop, and previously harmless insects have become devastating infestations. Farmers have found ...

The Desert's Edge

For thousands of years people have managed to live in deserts all over the world. But in recent years, a growing population and the demands of the international market have put more stress on these poor and easily exhausted lands. NOVA examines the consequences and possible solutions to desertificat...

The Tsetse Trap

NOVA explores Bovine sleeping sickness. Spread by a fly, it is a deadly disease that poses a threat to Africa's cattle.

Memories From Eden

Traditionally zoos were designed neither for people nor animals; barred cages taught people more about their separation from nature than about an animal and its habitat. But just as man has realized that he has all but destroyed much of the world's wilderness and its wildlife, he is realizing that t...

A Whisper from Space

In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two radio astronomers at Bell Telephone Laboratories, discovered faint, but ever-present, microwave signals from space—the most ancient and most distant signals detected by man: the oldest "fossils" in the universe. NOVA explores the current surge of cosmolog...

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