My Top 100 Sci-fi/Space Adjacent TV Shows
And as a companion to my top movies list, here's my list of top TV shows. Again, it's a little larger than 100, so there's room to make some changes after our inevitable disagreements. I've put *** beside the best ones (in my opinion).
3 Body Problem
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Alien: Earth***
American Gods
Andor***
Angel
Arcane
Ash Vs Evil Dead
Attack on Titan
Avatar the Last Airbender (Animated)***
Babylon 5***
Battlestar Galactica
Being Human
Black Mirror
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Common Side Effects
Counterpart
Cowboy Bebop (Animated)
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
DanDaDan
Dark
Death Note
Delicious in Dungeon
Devs
Doctor Who
Doom Patrol
Dr. Stone
Extraordinary
Fallout
Farscape
Firefly
For All Mankind***
Foundation
From the Earth to the Moon
Futurama
Future Man
Game of Thrones
Good Omens
Halo
Hellbound
His Dark Materials
House of the Dragon
Invincible***
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Lazarus
Legion
Loki
Love, Death and Robots***
Macross
Marvel's What If
Monster
Murderbot
Neon Genesis Evangelion
One Piece (Animated)
One Piece (Live Action)
One Punch Man
Pantheon
Peacemaker
The Penguin
Planetes
Pluribus***
Pluto
Preacher
Primal
Red Dwarf
Rick & Morty
Scavenger's Reign***
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
Secret Level
Severance
Silicon Valley
Silo
Solar Opposites
Star Blazers
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate SG1***
Stargate Universe
Star Trek
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Star Trek: Next Generation
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Star Trek: Voyager
Station Eleven
Stranger Things
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
The Boys
The Expanse***
The Good Place
The Handmaid's Tale
The Last of Us
The Legend of Korra
The Legend of Vox Machina
The Man in the High Castle
The Orville
The Sandman
The Tick (Animated)
The Walking Dead
The Witcher
The X-Files
Upload
Wandavision
Watchmen
Westworld
What We Do in the Shadows
Wonder Man
Comments (28)
Lots of great stuff, but no Altered Carbon and Dark Matter? Gave Scavenger's Reign a try when it came out, but just don't see the attraction. Felt like things were happening not for any logical reason, just more to show something weird.
Away!
That quite a list. A Iot I know and a lot could be new to me.
I've thought about it and thought about it, and just don't understand how STNG doesn't get ***. So the first two seasons ... yeah, I get it. But after that, some of the best television ever done. Hugh? So darn good. Overall fantastic list.
If you haven't watched Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, then you have missed one of the best anime ever produced. 50 episodes of highest quality, most moving and best produced Science Fiction animation.
I love it that your list of top 100 shows is up to 105...
Altered Carbon? Season 1 is awesome. The original Ghost in the Shell SAC Anime? 2 seasons of amazing cyberpunk. Cyber City Oedo 808. Not on the same level as GitS but may be worth a spot if you watch it, especially as Edgerunners is a knock-off of it.
Anything Yoko Kanno and friends did the music for is a strong recommend. GitS: SAC is classic. Cowboy Bebop is classic. Wolf's Rain is classic, although I also admit to a very personal connection with it. Altered Carbon is also an absolute trip. I was kind of blown away by it far exceeding my expectations, and I found the writing very smart. After playing EVE Online for such an unreasonably long time, it was fascinating to see the phrase "infomorph psychology" brought to life in another piece of media.
Which Battlestar Galactica? The original, or RDM's 2003 reimagining? I have really strong feelings about that one (2003) because it hit at a formative moment in my life, but it doesn't reach everyone the same way. To me hardly anything else in television or fiction achieves the same sense of mythopoesis. Bear McCreary did things with the music I haven't felt since -- music without which the series could not have existed. It's my understanding that there was a mixed reception to its ending, maybe? No spoilers from me in case it's still unknown to anyone; but I think it did exactly what it had set out to do from the start and I think it still holds up. Caprica, the successor prequel, was also set to take a really big, ambitious bite into the worldbuilding of that setting but it was sadly cancelled after its second season.
There are many who hated the ending, but I *really* liked it.
Surprised by the lack of *** by the expanse, I wonder if that’s related to the execution or the story itself
Oh, oversight. I was there originally. It's back.
I'm a very picky TV watcher, as in, I've watched only about 15% of your list. I gotta applaud for Andor, Bebop, Firefly, Futurama (!). For Star Trek, I like TOS and NG, but I have not tolerated any of the others, except maybe Enterprise. Seems like a lot of series turn dark halfway in: Enterprise did that, and The Sandman. In Sandman, I particularly like the episode where he meets up with the guy in the pub once a century. Well imagined and executed. Finally, you mention From the Earth to the Moon. At first I thought you meant The First Men in the Moon - but that's a 1960s scifi flick which I like, wondering if you've seen that?
From the Earth to the Moon was an amazing docudrama that told the story of the struggles, and the the amazing success of the race to put a man on the moon in the 1960's. The tens of thousands of people that put their hearts and souls into what was probably the greatest engineering feat of all time are shown in the spotlight of history. If that flame that burned so bright had been allowed to continue after those few moon landings, who knows where we would be as a race now.
Lots of variability in Doctor Who... you have: * the original run (pre-2005), * the 2005-2023 (pre-Ncuti Gatwa) revival, and * the seasons with Ncuti Gatwa. The last couple of seasons left me thinking that it might be time to give Doctor Who a bit of a rest until they can come up with some good scripts. RTD was a great show runner but the seasons with Ncuti just fell flat.
Have you watched The Magicians? I've read the first book and liked the treatment of existential emptiness in a post scarcity society, but did not continue it for some reason and though later learned about the tv series, didn't put myself to checking it out either.
Murder Bot was clearly better in book form so no *** for the series here.
I really enjoyed the show. But these have to be ranked on their own, not if they did a good job of capturing the book.
Firefly is coming back. Woohoo
Curious if you forgot to add Earth: Final Conflict, or just didn't care for it. I thought that was a well-done series. There are so many shows on this list that I have not seen and some I haven't even heard of. I totally agree on the highlighted Star Gate SG-1 and Babylon 5...I am still watching those shows now, SG-1 is my all-time favorite by far.
Watching Babylon 5 when it first came out: There's no way people could be this stupid! Watching Babylon 5 now: They told us, they fucking told us, and we did it anyways. Why are we this stupid?!?
I've tried several times and couldn't get into Babylon 5. I don't think I ever got past episode 3... So it gets better, eh?
Orphan Black? (Original series) technothriller I recommend to Buffy fans, and random people at bus stops.
Hmm. I didn't love it, especially near the end.
I can't believe Blake's 7 isn't in there somewhere!
I've never actually seen it. I'll chase it down.
This is a completely awesome list; the kind of sci-fi nerdery that highlights kindred spirits. I would be hard pressed to add much beyond Red Dwarf!
D'oh! You're totally right. Added