January - December 1988

Top Gun and Beyond
Today's sophisticated fighter jets can almost fly themselves, but well-trained pilots are still needed to win air battles. NOVA looks at how planes and pilots are adapting to high technology.
Original broadcast date: 01/19/88
Topic: technology/aeronautics & flight

How to Create a Junk Food
Julia Child introduces NOVA's behind-the-scenes look at how science aids in the creation of snack foods.
Original broadcast date: 01/26/88
Topic: technology/engineering

Buried in Ice
Scientists investigate the frozen remains of members of the 19th century Franklin Expedition to the Canadian Arctic and ask why all perished.
Original broadcast date: 02/02/88
Topic: medicine/forensic

Why Planes Burn
Airplane fires are often deadly. NOVA looks at efforts to make fires aboard planes less likely and more survivable.
Original broadcast date: 02/09/88
Topic: technology/aeronautics & flight

Battles in the War on Cancer: A Wonder Drug on Trial
In part one of a two-part special presentation, NOVA reports on the trials to determine whether the new drug Interleukin-2—the first to make use of the body's own disease-fighting strategy—will live up to its promise as a pivotal cancer breakthrough. Jane Pauley of NBC News hosts and narrates.
Original broadcast date: 02/23/88
Topic: medicine/disease & research

Battles in the War on Cancer: Breast Cancer—Turning the Tide
Breast cancer claims the lives of four American women every hour. Jane Pauley of NBC News hosts and narrates this NOVA report on stepped-up efforts to reduce the death rate from this all-too-common killer.
Original broadcast date: 03/01/88
Topic: medicine/disease & research

Mystery of the Master Builders
Princeton professor and author Robert Mark tracks down the engineering secrets of some of the beautiful buildings in the world including Notre Dame in Paris, St. Paul in London and the Roman Pantheon.
Original broadcast date: 03/08/88
Topic: technology/engineering

Whale Rescue
It was a blustery day in December 1986, and the New England Coast was in the midst of a winter storm, accompanied by strong on-shore gales and an unusually high tide—conditions perfect for stranding whales in the confined shallows of Cape Cod. NOVA recounts this tragic episode and the happy suprise ending for the young whales who survived after being nursed back to health by the New England Aquarium in Boston.
Original broadcast date: 03/15/88
Topic: animal biology/behavior

Man Who Loved Numbers (The)
NOVA explores the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a poor clerk from India who astounded mathematicians in the 1910s with his brilliant insight into the world of numbers.
Original broadcast date: 03/22/88
Topic: biography

Race for the Superconductor
NOVA charts an electronics revolution in the making as Japan and the United States race to develop a material that will conduct electricity at room temperature with zero resistance.
Original broadcast date: 03/29/88
Topic: technology/engineering

Can You Still Get Polio?
Most cases of polio in this country are caused by the vaccine designed to prevent it. NOVA examines the controvery surrounding the nation's vaccine policy.
Original broadcast date: 04/05/88
Topic: medicine/disease & research

Brutal Craft: Pioneers of Surgery (The)
Part one of a four-part series on the pioneers of modern surgery relives the early days, when surgery was practiced without the benefit of anaesthesia or antisceptics and patients usually died.
Original broadcast date: 09/06/88
Topic: medicine/health care & surgery

Into the Heart: Pioneers of Surgery
Once unthinkable, open-heart surgery is now an everyday miracle. NOVA looks at the brave doctors and patients who make it possible.
Original broadcast date: 09/13/88
Topic: medicine/health care & surgery

New Organs for Old: Pioneers of Surgery
From kidneys to hearts, NOVA examines the daring attempts to replace diseased organs with transplanted ones.
Original broadcast date: 09/20/88
Topic: medicine/health care & surgery

Beyond the Knife: Pioneers of Surgery
Surgeons have always been eager to help patients, even at the risk of killing them. NOVA looks at some of the excesses of surgery, and at how new drugs and technologies are rendering some operations obsolete.
Original broadcast date: 09/27/88
Topic: medicine/health care & surgery

Can the Vatican Save the Sistine Chapel?
Science meets art in the controversial effort to restore Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel frescoes.
Original broadcast date: 10/14/88
Topic: technology/engineering

Can the Next President Win the Space Race?
Thirty years after Sputnik, the United States space program is mired in uncertainty, while the Russians, Europeans, Japanese and others sprint onward and upward.
Original broadcast date: 10/11/88
Topic: astronomy/space exploration

Do Scientists Cheat?
NOVA examines the troubling question of scientific fraud: How prevalent is it? Who commits it? And what happens when the perpetrators are caught?
Original broadcast date: 10/25/88
Topic: science/methods, ethics & education

Who Shot President Kennedy?
Using previously unavailable technology, NOVA probes the available evidence surrounding the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Original broadcast date: 11/15/88
Topic: medicine/forensic

Light Stuff (The)
Reliving a Greek myth takes an effort of mythic proportions, as NOVA reveals in its behind-the-scenes report of a human powered-flight across the Aegean Sea, a journey that symbolically recreated the mythical flight of Daedalus. NOVA follows the epic journey of the human-powered plane Daedalus 88 from the early prototypes to its dramatic landing in the surf after a 74-mile flight from the island of Crete to Santorini.
Original broadcast date: 11/22/88
Topic: technology/aeronautics & flight

All-American Bear (The)
The life of the shy, intelligent black bear in the wild—foraging, mating, playing and constantly preparing for its remarkable hibernation—is captured for the first time on film by NOVA.
Original broadcast date: 12/06/88
Topic: animal biology/behavior

Can We Make a Better Doctor?
NOVA embarks on a 10-year project to profile—in its entirety—the education of a doctor. In the premiere episode, we follow a handful of students as they start their freshman year at Harvard Medical School under a revolutionary program emphasizing early clinical contact with patients.
Original broadcast date: 12/13/88
Topic: medicine/health care & surgery