With Stranger Things Season 4 and Star Wars spinoff Obi-Wan Kenobi dominating TV over the past few weeks, it’s clear that science-fiction TV shows have managed to capture the pop-culture imagination and are going to be a major part of TV offerings for the foreseeable future.
However, when it comes to the best sci-fi TV shows of all time, IMDb’s top picks contains a healthy mix of offerings from several decades of television, many long predating the advent of streaming services. Which classics of this massively-popular genre are the favorites?
Dragon Ball Z – 8.8
An anime about an alien who does not know of his culture until fellow members of his species come to visit him, Dragon Ball Z clearly took some influence from Superman’s origin story when crafting Goku’s even before Dragon Ball Super brought the two even closer. Like Superman has for comics, Goku has become one of the best-known characters in both anime and manga.
However, the draw for Dragon Ball Z has always been the battles toward which the story builds, and the show’s 2D animation is stretched to the limit depicting the spectacle each time, and is dynamic in a way the static medium of manga could never be. The saga-like hero’s journey for Goku also gives his story a mythical quality to it that can’t help but be compelling.
Black Mirror – 8.8
Although it provided Bandersnatch, a great Netflix interactive special, Black Mirror actually kept things pretty tame in that movie compared to the dystopian-bizarre plots that make up the anthology series’ episodes. A tech-focused modern Twilight Zone, the show acts as a cautionary tale about what those black screens on phones and laptops could ultimately do to society.
Black Mirror is at its best when it mixes horror and social commentary, allowing viewers to explore fears about the future. It may not always produce gems, but when it does, it sticks in the mind long after whatever black mirror the episode has been watched on gets turned off.
Gravity Falls – 8.9
A throwback to a time when children’s TV shows catered to adults in ways different from how they catered to children, Gravity Falls had an all-ages appeal to it that led nearly 100,000 IMDb users, most of whom are likely teens or adults, to give it such high ratings.
Gravity Falls contains timeless jokes alongside a healthy sense of how to play into the weirdness that the titular town’s paranormal elements can provide. It doesn’t pander to children, has an engaging voice cast, and writing that made it one of the smartest shows the Disney Channel ever created. Although only two seasons long, the 40 episodes that were produced are enough to sustain the fandom for a long time.
Cowboy Bebop – 8.9
A bounty-hunting crew chasing contracts on behalf of an interplanetary government might sound familiar to Star Wars fans, especially those who love Boba Fett’s part of that world. But two decades before The Book of Boba Fett, the anime Cowboy Bebop was based on the concept.
While bounty-hunting across the Solar System is the Bebop ship crew’s focus, the stand-out aspect of the show is what happens between the characters on the ship, with the bounty-hunting more of a backdrop for deep character exploration. Plenty of great anime have been made over the years, but the ones with relatable characters still come out on top.
Batman: The Animated Series – 9.0
Influenced heavily by Tim Burton’s two Batman movies, as well as contemporary developments in the comics, Batman: The Animated Series took a serious tone with the Caped Crusader’s adventures. This was an innovative step for both Batman in animation as well as animated superhero shows in general.
The best animated series DC Comics produced, Batman debuted arguably the best versions of Batman and Joker, voiced respectively by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, with those renditions become a staple for childhoods over the next two decades. The show also wasn’t afraid to feature quieter, character-focused episodes, like “Almost Got ‘im.”
Firefly – 9.0
If space is the new final frontier, as Star Trek‘s opening narration said more than half a century ago, then Firefly‘s incorporation of the Western aesthetic to its science-fiction setting takes that idea to a nearly-literal level, with cattle and saloons as prominent as spaceships and futuristic guns.
By focusing on the everyday people of this sci-fi world, and by setting it in frontier locations and the spaceship Serenity, the show stood out from almost everything else on TV… and was ahead of its time, since despite its now-devoted fanbase it was canceled after only a single season. Thankfully a movie, Serenity, as well as an ongoing comic-book series have allowed the story to continue.
The Twilight Zone – 9.1
One of the best-written TV shows ever, The Twilight Zone was the perfect mix of ghost story, sci-fi, and supernatural; just like the Black Mirror series it inspired, it used many episodes to explore anxieties of its era, especially those related to the Cold War.
The show may have inspired three revivals, the most recent in 2019, but even though those all tried to modernize its premise, they ended up being less impactful than the original 1960s iteration. The missing ingredient? Showrunner Rod Serling, who passed away in 1975. He acted as the show’s lead narrative voice and host, and he was always willing to tackle difficult and controversial subject matter, which engaged viewers.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood – 9.1
2009’s Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood follows two brothers skilled in alchemy on a journey to uncover who they are. One of the best examples of a manga-to-anime adaptation of all time, the show is incredibly faithful to the manga’s themes and general storyline, while also not so wedded to it that it fails to tell the story in the way best suited to its medium.
Of course, Brotherhood had an advantage: a previous series in 2003 also attempted an adaptation, and, while successful, was criticized exactly because of how much it deviated from the source material. Sometimes second chances really do make all the difference.
Arcane – 9.1
Adapting characters from the League of Legends universe, Arcane escaped the trend of video-game adaptations being anywhere from a let-down to awful. In doing so, it managed to produce an incredibly-gripping single season that guaranteed Netflix would renew it for a second.
Handling trauma, family separation, and the depiction of a very vertical society split between the haves and have-nots, Arcane somehow manages to do justice to all of those elements. The core relationship between sisters Vi and Jinx is heartwarmingly honest and for a sci-fi fantasy show, quite realistic.
Rick and Morty – 9.2
No sci-fi show has had as much love from IMDb users as Rick and Morty has, and between the clever writing and exploration of complicated concepts, it’s earned that love. What at first appears to be a Back to the Future knockoff is instead a show that, in between the heavy science in its fiction, explores what it means to be human.
Sure, it may give a few fans the impression that watching it somehow means the viewer is inherently smarter than average, but the intelligence on display isn’t just about science, which is often comically stretched for effect. It’s a smart show because, in between the laughs and the vulgarity are two likable characters each (often but not always) trying to do their best in a crazy world. That’s relatable.
