The 20 greatest sci-fi shows of all time – ranked

Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock in Star Trek - Getty Images

We could all do with some escapism. And how better to leave the everyday world behind than by blasting off into deep space? That is the special magic of science fiction – a genre that engages with the challenges of life but in a way that makes the viewer feel lifted up other than beaten down. Whether it’s zinging lightsabers, roaring monsters or time-travelling nasties, science fiction has something for all tastes.

How did we select our 20?

We’ve explored the entire history of the genre on screen, albeit fixing our focus on shows that have also found their way to streaming. In our hunt, we’ve tried to encapsulate the breadth of science fiction programming, looking into the worlds of anime, decades-old BBC teatime favourites and French steam punk, along with the genre’s biggest beasts. So, hold on tight as we beam down...

The 20 greatest sci-fi shows of all time

20. Sapphire & Steel (1979-82), ITVX

Joanna Lumley and David MacCallum in Sapphire & Steel - Shutterstock

Filmed on a shoestring and all the eerier for its held-together-with-sticky tape quality, this wonderfully weird ITV drama from the early Eighties features Joanna Lumley and David MacCallum as supernatural guardians of the flow of time. One week, they are rescuing an 18th-century family after a “time fracture” steals the parents; the next, they’re at an abandoned train station tangling with the uneasy ghost of a World War One soldier. Lumley has become a national treasure – but Sapphire & Steel showcases her ability to chill rather than thrill her audience.

19. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023-present), Apple TV+

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters - Apple TV+

Is Godzilla science fiction? Does it matter when the famous lizard is stomping across the screen, as he does when he puts in a cameo in Apple’s gripping series? Legacy of Monsters chronicles the origins of the Monarch organisation, which tries to keep Godzilla and his fellow “Titans” on their best behaviour. Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt play the same character, separated by decades in a spin-off full of heart, soul, and giant rampaging beasties.

From our review: A TV show with “Monster” in its title lives or dies by the liveliness of its leviathans. In that respect, Monarch acquits itself decently

18. For All Mankind (2019-present), Apple TV+

How might history have unfolded had the Soviets put a man on the moon before the United States? That is the “what-if” wrestled with in Apple’s under-the-radar alternative history drama, which gives us a late 20th century that never was and combines the period verve of Mad Men with Arthur C Clarke/Isaac Asimov levels of interstellar wonder.

From our review: Blessed with pockets deeper than the bags under Boris Johnson’s eyes, Apple TV+ can afford to let its shows mature in their own time rather than chase quick success.

17. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94), Paramount +

Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: The Next Generation - CBS

When it is bad, it’s awful – see any episode concerning the romantic life of First Officer Will Riker. But when this sequel to Gene Roddenberry’s boundary-busting space caper clicks, it serves up some of the best science fiction in television history (ie, all those storylines involving the terrifying, mind-melding Borg). Plus, it made Patrick Stewart a star as the masterful Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

16. 3 Body Problem (2024-present), Netflix

3 Body Problem

Crawling out of the wreckage of the final two seasons of Game of Thrones, showrunner wunderkinds David Benioff and DB Weiss had a lot to prove. And they just about succeed with their competent adaptation of Liu Cixin’s mind-bending space odyssey. The show is at its best when it faithfully transposes the scenes from the novel set during the horrors of China’s Cultural Revolution. It fares less well in relocating the present-day action to London from China, with results that are more Shaun of the Dead than Close Encounters. Still, when the aliens turn up, it all clicks into gear – and a second season will hopefully build on the promise of series one.

From our review: Forget dragons, this is about something far scarier: maths.

15. Foundation (2021-present), Apple TV+

Foundation - AppleTV

Isaac Asimov’s century-spanning space opera was long regarded as unfilmable. The makers of Apple’s lavish adaption appear to agree. They have chucked out much of the original story, kept the names of several key characters, cast a scenery-munching Lee Pace as Emperor Cleon (a minor figure in the later Asimov novels) and dialled up the melodrama. Foundation is full-on – loud, camp, action-packed and outrageous. But cranking things up to 11 captures the spirit of the mid-20th century science fiction Golden Age in which Asimov operated. So weirdly, it turns out to have been faithful to the books after all.

From our review: Foundation is science fiction with rocket jets cranked to the maximum – and benefits from gorgeously evocative special effects which have the camp charm of a 1970s prog rock album cover

14. Battlestar Galactica (2003-09), Amazon Prime Video

Battlestar Galactica - Justin Stephens

The original 1978 Battlestar Galactica was a silly and shameless Star Wars rip-off. For his early 21st-century reboot, Ronald D Moore goes off in another direction entirely – dialling into post-9/11 angst and anxiety over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to deliver a powerful tale of human civilisation fleeing humanoid robots who have turned on their creators.

13. Blake’s 7 (1978-81), ITVX

Cheap as micro-chips but electrified by a commanding turn by Gareth Thomas as space-going dissident Roj Blake (though he left after just two seasons) and Paul Darrow’s wonderfully amoral renegade engineer, Blake’s 7 is the BBC’s most successful sci-fi series that doesn’t have the words “Doctor” or “Who” in the title. Created by esteemed novelist and screenwriter Terry Nation, it is infused with a Cold War chill and the sense of onrushing doom that was ever present in the early 1980s. It also gave us one of the best space-ship designs in the form of Blake’s spiky, swooping Liberator. And one of TV’s more memorable final scenes.

12. Fallout (2024-present), Amazon Prime Video

Fallout

Prime Video’s adaptation of the gonzo video game Fallout is perfect binge material. A dark comedy set in a post-apocalyptic United States, it features Ella Purnell as naive “vault dweller” Lucy, forced to go above ground in order to come to the assistance of her father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan). Walton Goggins has fun as a zombie cowboy, while Aaron Moten steals his scenes as an acolyte member of the “Brotherhood of Steel” – a monastic order of soldiers which owe a lot to the Space Marines from Warhammer 40K.

From our review: It’s enjoyably juvenile – less Death, the destroyer of worlds than a cartoonish time-killer piled high with outrageous violence.

11. The Expanse (2015-22), Amazon Prime Video

The Expanse

It is rumoured that Prime Video bankrolled the later seasons of this SyFy channel series because Jeff Bezos’s daughter was a fan. If true, she should be commended for her taste. With an emphasis on realism, The Expanse chronicles the struggle for power in a future solar system where Earth competes for resources with colonies in the Asteroid Belt and on Mars. This is space as we’ve never seen it before – combat scenes play out in the eerie silence of the vacuum and navigation between planets is a complicated and potentially deadly process.

10. Severance (2022-present)

Severance - Apple TV+

We all need a work-life balance, but the corporate baddies in Ben Stiller’s Severance take it to extremes. Adam Scott and Zach Cherry are white-collar workers whose memories are wiped as they clock off every day—and vice versa when they present for their duties in the morning. Stiller directs, and brings a spooky vibe that could not be further removed from his comedic screen persona.

From our review: Severance is part workplace satire, part dystopian thriller – a combination that is hard to pull off, but writer Dan Erickson has managed it

9. The Mandalorian (2019-23), Disney +

The Mandalorian - Disney+

Rumours of Star Wars’ demise were revealed to be exaggerated when Pedro Pascal’s tin-can bounty hunter teamed up with Baby Yoda for adventures across the galaxy. The wheels came off after season two (and the disastrous Book of Boba Fett spin-off), but the early exploits of this space-going odd couple pulsate with a pulpy snap and crackle that hark back to the original George Lucas films.

From our review: The Mandalorian is confirmed to be the series we’ve been looking for.

8. Black Mirror (2011-present), Netflix

The Black Mirror episode USS Callister

What if your smart-speaker was trying to kill you? That is the vibe of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology show, which started as a sort of dark British satire on Channel 4 but, following a move to Netflix, made the most of the steamer’s resources to spin heartbreaking tales of love in virtual reality (San Junipero) and serve up gleeful Star Trek parody (USS Callister). Brooker even pays homage to the squidgy-keyed world of ZX Spectrum video gaming in the 1980s with interactive episode Bandersnatch.

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7. Dark (2017-20), Netflix

Dark - Netflix

A twisting, turning time-travel adventure set in a remote German town which plays out like the thinking person’s version of Stranger Things. It’s 2019 and children are vanishing from picture-postcard Winden, located in the a dark forest straight out of the Brothers Grimm. It turns out that similar disappearances occurred in 1986 and 1953 and that the lives of those previous victims are intertwined with the kids in 2019. It’s brain-frying entertainment that moves back and forth across the decades – but even if you can’t always follow the story, the atmosphere is riveting (as is the haunting Apparat theme tune).

Our review: The shadow of Stranger Things hangs heavy over Dark, a new Netflix series about wide-eyed kids sucked into a supernatural conspiracy in a sleepy small town

6: Andor (2022-25), Disney +

Since acquiring the Star Wars franchise in 2012, Disney has often been accused of dumbing down George Lucas’s Galaxy from Far, Far Away and has indeed inflicted its share of sub-par sci-fi – hitting rock bottom this with the atrocious The Acolyte. But to its credit, the Mouse House has given Tony Gilroy the freedom to make the fantastic Andor, a sequel to gritty 2016 spin-off movie Rogue One which tracks the early years of the Rebellion against the Empire. Diego Luna is charmingly gruff as Andor, a rogue who discovers he has a heart of gold when he joins the struggle against Darth Vader.

Our review: Tony Gilroy’s series completely defied expectations, giving us a compelling tale of rebel spies and the richest Star Wars world-building experience since the original trilogy.

5. Arcane (2021-24), Netflix

Arcane

This beautiful French-made animation is adapted from the super-violent video game League of Legends. Set in a steam-punk sci-fi universe, it tells the story of sisters Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell) as they become drawn into a vast conspiracy involving forbidden magic and the tension between the wealthy and the downtrodden in the city of Piltover.

4. Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96)

Considered among the most essential Japanese “anime” cartoons, this Nineties series about giant robots battling alien “angels” has influenced modern filmmakers such as Guillermo del Toro and Jordan Peele. Shinji Ikari is a grumpy teenager pressured by his aloof, scientist father to take command of an “Eva” – a huge mechanical being that “bonds” with its pilot in order to repel the mysterious angels attacking earth. Del Toro’s Pacific Rim borrows heavily from Neon Genesis – but lacks the eerie majesty of a sci-fi classic.

3. Stranger Things (2016-present), Netflix

Stranger Things

The Duffer brothers gleefully rifle early Eighties pop culture for their Netflix blockbuster. Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, The Goonies, Ghostbusters, Dungeon and Dragons, and Alien are all chucked into the mix in a pulpy love letter to pre-internet entertainment. For all the nostalgia, it is with Gen Z that Stranger Things has truly struck a chord—it even introduced them to an obscure singer named Kate Bush when Running Up That Hill featured in series four.

Our review: Stranger Things is a 1980s Americana theme park, and it is all the better when it embraces that fact.

2. Doctor Who (1963-present), BBC iPlayer/Disney+

Doctor Who - PA

That famous theme. The Tardis whooshing through time and space. Daleks losing their cool whenever the Doctor emerges from his interstellar police box. Doctor Who is not only the BBC’s biggest global brand – it is one of the most beloved franchises in science fiction. True, the show has struggled recently, with the Jodie Whittaker-Chris Chibnall years suffering from atrocious plots while an alliance with Disney + for the new Ncuti Gatwa incarnation of the character failed to deliver the hoped-for stellar ratings. Yet Doctor Who remains singular, and its best episodes – Blink, An Unearthly Child, Genesis of the Daleks – rank as among the best in science fiction.

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1. Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-69), Paramount+

Star Trek: The Original Series - Getty

Science fiction at its best should fuel the viewer’s sense of wonder while also making them sit up and think. No show has pulled off that balancing act better than Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek, in which we join Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, Doctor McCoy and the gang as they explore strange new worlds. Optimistic about mankind’s future – its multiracial cast was groundbreaking in the Sixties – but also silly and pulpy, Star Trek is small-screen sci-fi at its most exciting.

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