The 15 Best Sci-Fi Shows of All Time

Science fiction on TV splits into two traditions: shows about ships and shows about ideas. The best do both, which is why The Expanse sits at #1 — it's the genre's most rigorous political thriller that just happens to obey orbital mechanics, rescued by fans after cancellation because they knew exactly what they had. Battlestar Galactica runs it closest; no series has wrung more dread and theology out of the question "what counts as human?" From there the list spans six decades, from the original Twilight Zone — still the densest concentration of ideas per minute TV has produced — to Severance, which turned an office floor into the decade's best sci-fi premise. Dark is the highest-ranked non-English entry on merit, Firefly remains the genre's great hypothetical, and Andor earns its spot by proving a Star Wars show could be about labor, prisons, and the price of resistance. Calibrate your nerd credentials with the matching sci-fi trivia quiz.