The 50 Best Sci-Fi TV Shows Ever

Launched by the legendary Hanna-Barbera animation studio as the the Space Age equivalent of The Flintstones, The Jetsons was a lighthearted comical take on the future that originally ran for just one season and 24 episodes between September 1962, and May 1963.

Far from being cancelled because of its quality, The Jetsons premiered when less than 3 percent of households had a color television, so most viewers were unable to appreciate the beautiful, bright visuals of the futuristic world.

The Jetsons actually did a pretty good job of predicting the future, too. Sure, aliens aren’t our neighbors and we’re not zooming around in flying cars (yet), but we do communicate on video chat and robots are taking humans' jobs every day.

As the years went by, The Jetsons became more and more of a cult commodity, so much so that it eventually returned for two more seasons in 1985.

Now we know what will happen if we put all of our nuclear waste on the far side of the Moon. It will ignite somehow (through a higher power?) and catapult the moon on a tour through space.

From the British producers of Thunderbirds, Space: 1999 starred Martin Landau and Barbara Bain leading a group of eggheads trying to figure out how to get home. From the Eagle shuttles to the Moon City uniforms, Space: 1999 perpetuated the notion that the future would look white, smooth, and clean. There's no doubt Steve Jobs was inspired just a tad by this aesthetic.

Like all great sci-fi shows it had casting changes and a premature cancellation. Rumors of a movie version or a reboot continue long after the year 1999 has passed.

Frank Spotnitz’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel, which is set in a parallel universe where Germany and Japan won World War II, is so biting and timely that it has already made a huge impact.

Propelled by superb performances from Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans, and Rufus Sewell, The Man in the High Castle manages to mix provocative storytelling with complex plots, while always remaining absorbing and continuously building its beguiling, yet horrifying, dystopian world.

Sure, it might have suffered a minor stumble with its uneven second season, but the third perfectly set up the show's upcoming farewell, while also incorporating even more science fiction.

From Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, The Leftovers takes a science fiction (or maybe religious?) event and runs it through all its "what if this really happened" stages. Two percent of the world's population vanishes in a Rapture-like "Sudden Departure," leaving everyone else (including split families) left wondering what the heck to do next.

Our peek into this world begins with a suburban American family, moves to a Texas town apparently immune to the Departure, and, in a bold third season step, years into the future for the 7th anniversary of the event.

Most critics agree that The Leftovers only gets better as it gets going, leading some to wonder if its perfect conclusion was constructed as a response to fans who remain less-than-enthused about the ending to Lost. Considering how the show deals with sorrow, loss, and the desire to reconnect with the past, this is as workable a theory as any.

An impressive import from across the pond, Misfits revolves around a group of young offenders who accidentally obtain supernatural powers from an electrical storm. In addition to captivating audiences with its blend of action, humor and special effects, it also introduced the acting prowess of Iwan Rheon, Robert Sheehan, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, and Joseph Gilgun to a mainstream audience.

But while most British shows end up only lasting for one or two seasons before bowing out (a la The Office and Fleabag) Misfits didn’t just make it to 37 episodes over 5 seasons—it actually managed to improve as its cast changed and the show evolved, and eventually concluded in a well-rounded and deeply satisfying manner.

While nothing could ever top Orson Welles at the Mercury Theatre in 1938, this TV version picks up where the other leaves off. The invaders from Mars (switched to a distant planet Mor-Tax in this version) didn't just die out, but went into stasis. The government hid them in secret facilities and a widespread disinformation campaign eventually led to people forgetting that the attacks actually happened.

That is, until a pesky leftist domestic-terrorist group accidentally irradiates the aliens and awakens them. The aliens then possess the bodies of the terrorists and begin a plan to prepare the Earth for a full invasion and occupation by a massive fleet coming from Mor-Tax.

An elite counterforce of mismatched souls is the only thing that can stop the rubbery E.T. from taking over. Our heroes include a mystical astrophysicist with a touch of the action hero whose parents were killed in the first invasion, a by-the-book biologist, a paraplegic computer genius, and a conservative Native American military man. Yeah, it sounds like a hodgepodge of 80s TV show clichés, but the show gelled into a fun interstellar A-Team for two seasons.

The fact that Cold Lazarus is helmed by writing luminary Dennis Potter and stars acting titan Albert Finney immediately makes it a must-see for any television aficionado, especially as it was one of the last pieces to be written by a dying Potter, eventually being broadcast in 1996, two years after his death.

As such, the writing is particularly deep and poignant, with Finney’s Daniel Feeld basically Potter himself. A companion piece to the fantasy drama Karaoke, Cold Lazarus is a fully-fledged sci-fi masterwork that is set in 24th century dystopian Britain. While its pacing might be rather slow for a modern audience at first, it challenges before ultimately rewarding those who stick with it.

Those who think TV is no place for hard sci-fi need to remember the mid-1990s' Space: Above and Beyond, which focuses on a band of fighters known as the Wildcards. In the show, Earth must defend its colonies against the marauding Chigs, aliens that have limited access to faster-than-light propulsion while Earthers make do with maps and timetables of known wormholes.

In addition to the typical flyboys (and flygirls, like Kristen Cloke's Captain Vansen), Space: Above and Beyond did what all good sci-fi is supposed to do: use far-out concepts to tackle difficult subject matter. The scientifically enhanced in-vitros of its universe are bigger, stronger, and faster, but treated like second-class citizens because of how they are created. Further down the chain are the Silicates, rebellious AIs who may have more to do with the Chigs than we first realize.

Space: Above and Beyond lasted only one season—further proof that it is terrific.

Originally created by Terry Nation, who wrote for Doctor Who, created the Daleks, and devised Blake’s 7, Survivors is a post-apocalyptic drama about a group of, surprise surprise, survivors who avoid a plague accidentally released by a Chinese scientist that kills 99 percent of the population.

But while Nation left the show after the first season due to a dispute with a producer, Survivors still ultimately went on to run for 38 episodes over three seasons. Throughout its tenure it remained smart and thought-provoking, covering various political and social subjects and themes, while always entertaining with its ambitious and adventurous action and plotting.

As it expanded, Survivors somehow managed to repeatedly add to its huge ensemble and make sweeping changes without ever skipping a beat.

Now it's time to get into some hardcore nerd stuff. Spanning two universes and countless worlds, Lexx featured the strangest crew ever assembled.

On board the Lexx are a low-level security-guard-turned-captain, a mystical undead assassin, a half-cluster lizard love slave, a sentient plant that projects humanoid images, and a robotic head. Don't forget the ship itself, which is the size of a city and can destroy planets. Together, they must evade the nefarious Divine Shadow as well as the Insect Civilization.

Lexx is the kind of show in which the main characters can go into cryogenic sleep for a duration of 2000 years and still pretty much pick up where they left off. The struggle between the Insects and mankind rages across the light and dark zones, as well as a somewhat ridiculous planet called Earth. The show's four seasons are big, beautiful, ridiculous, and, unless we're forgetting something, the finest-ever collaboration between Canadian and German television producers.

What’s not to love about watching J.K. Simmons in a dual role? Especially when the two incarnations of Howard Silk he portrays in Counterpart are so different and captivating.

The first Silk is an underachieving Interface employee at a Berlin-based spy agency who discovers a secret parallel dimension. In that world, though, Silk is one of its most accomplished agents, while the two soon realize they can only trust each other.

Of course, Simmons makes Counterpart endlessly watchable and riveting. But its plot grows so thick that it's always intriguing, while packing a surprising substance and depth that makes it truly resonant. Bummer it was canceled after just two seasons and unable to find a home for its third.

The post-Star Wars years saw a boom for existing science-fiction franchises. The era launched Star Trek into the movies and brought this well-loved character back from comic strips, film serials, and early television.

Glen Larson, who was also working on Battlestar Galactica at the time, reimagined Buck Rogers as a NASA Astronaut in the then-future year of 1987. While on a mission into deep space, an accident sends him into cryogenic stasis and returns him to Earth five centuries later. The planet he finds has had to rebuild from World War III, and while sentient computers and buddy robots catch him by surprise, the biggest surprise this swaggering flyboy faces is the tough-as-nails Colonel Wilma Deering, played by Erin Gray.

Despite some really cool tech on display, this was a show aimed more at kids, but recurring threats from invaders and appearances from a hawk-humanoid species kept things energetic.

Utopia should be too bizarre and complicated to work, as it revolves around a group of online friends who discover a graphic novel that has predicted the world’s worst disasters of the past and present. This discovery means that they're then tracked down by a mysterious and cruel organization known as The Network.

But while Utopia is most definitely sci-fi, it thrives because it also jumps into the action, thriller, and conspiracy genres with aplomb, while always remaining genuinely hilarious and socially conscious. David Fincher was so impressed he planned to make an American version for HBO, only for its spiraling budget to stop the project. Luckily, Amazon has since picked up the rights.

Based on the Swedish sci-if drama Real Humans, the British series might have halved the title, but still manages to honor the original while appealing to a mass audience.

In fact, it was Channel 4’s highest rated drama in 23 years, as viewers were compelled by its story of a suburban family bringing robotic assistant Anita into their home. Packed full of ideas, Humans manages to delve into its cavalcade of sci-fi themes without ever feeling indulgent or cliched.

Instead, it mixes thrills, suspense and even pathos, all at a pace that makes it ridiculously entertaining. It also helps that it boasts one of the best acting ensembles on British television, too.

People spend a lot of time giving Voyager grief, and while it did have a rocky launch, the series became some quality adventure spacefaring once things got in a groove (goodbye Kes, hello Seven of Nine).

Voyager took a handful of Federation crew members and some Maquis rebels and flicked 'em way, way out in the Delta Quadrant, where coming home would take seven decades at top speed. Luckily Captain Janeway, one of the greatest leaders in all television, isn't going out like that. She takes risk after risk, battling the Borg, Species 8472, and alternate realities during Voyager's journey.

Yes, there are some clunkers in here. But there are also a lot of really innovative stories and great characters. Let Neelix fix you up a plate and come along for the ride.

Some TV shows don't give us any goofy voices to mimic. Lost in Space gave us two. The booming, stentorian Robot ("Danger, Will Robinson!") and the cowardly, histrionic Dr. Smith ("Oh, the pain!") are fully ingrained in pop culture, and rightly so.

Lost in Space is a daffy, energetic romp through absurd scenarios and cheesy sci-fi tropes. It's an interplanetary Swiss Family Robinson that lasted 83 episodes, long enough to watch Penny Robinson transform from moppet to teen heartthrob.

The trials and tribulations of the eternally ill-fated Jupiter 2 got goofier as the show progressed. As far as we're concerned, though, the show didn't hit its stride until the Robot was asking rock-jawed Major Don West things like "What am I, chopped liver?"

This desperate fleet of survivors looking for a new home is probably the best thing to come out of the immediate post–Star Wars science-fiction revival.

From its opening musical fanfare to its deep mythology of sentient robots, religious elders, traitors to mankind, and hotshot pilots, Battlestar Galactica is big. Despite lasting only one season, the original series resonated with a legacy of eternal reruns, lunch boxes, board games, and kids racing around jungle gyms shouting "By! Your! Command!" in fake electronic voices.

The show's creator, Glen Larson, took elements of his own Mormon beliefs, mixed them with Greek and Roman myths, added in some Old Testament stuff and shot it into orbit. The result is a meaty fictional universe that was too cool for just one show.

Released all the way back in 1953, The Quatermass Experiment marks the first appearance of Professor Bernard Quatermass, who would go on to appear in a number of films and shows over the next 50 years.

Over the course of these six episodes, Quatermass oversees the first successful flight into space, only to discover that an alien presence entered the spacecraft during the flight and is intent on destroying the world.

Writer Nigel Kneale made sure to populate the series with subtle digs at post-War Britain. In the process it laid the foundations for the genre to flourish and be taken seriously in the U.K., and even though it often gets overlooked in favor of Doctor Who, it's just as influential.

This genre mash-up anime from the mind of Shinichro Watanabe came out of Japan in the late 1990s. Its 26 episodes continue to loop on late-night cable to this day.

In 2022 (not that far away anymore), early usage of hyperspace gateways destroys the moon and makes Earth almost uninhabitable. Mars becomes the new center of the solar system, with colonies on other planets and satellites. With a dispersed government, an Old West style of private law enforcement springs up, and that's where the ragtag team of bounty hunters (called cowboys) aboard the ship Bebop comes into play.

Mixing cybernetic martial arts masters, teen hackers, a sexy pilot with a debilitating gambling addiction, and a hyper-intelligent dog (yes, you read that correctly) Cowboy Bebop snaps its fingers to its own beat, mixing up the conventions of Westerns, samurai films, film noir and tech-heavy hard sci-fi. Recommended viewing for 3 a.m.

Gene Hunt. That’s it. That’s all you need to know to either watch or re-watch the supernatural, sci-fi police procedural, which saw policeman Sam Tyler hit by a car in 2006 only to wake up in 1973.

Philip Glenister and John Simm excel in the leading roles of Hunt and Tyler, respectively. Life On Mars’ time-traveling hook makes you come back for more and let your guard down so the show’s thematic depth can really land.

At just two seasons and 16 episodes long, Life On Mars’ conceit never outstays its welcome, although its conclusion is still regarded as one of the most divisive in recent history. Which just makes it all the more interesting.