Sci-Fi · 1990s

44 shows65 sequences

The X-Files

1993–2002, 2016–2018FoxSci-Fi

One sequence held untouched for seven years, then rebuilt twice as the cast turned over. The card at the end is the real trick: it reads 'The Truth Is Out There' most weeks, and something else entirely more than twenty times.

Seasons 1–7
Season 8
Season 9
and 2 more

Stargate SG-1

1997–2007Showtime / Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

The gate opening, every week, for ten years — David Arnold's film theme rearranged for television and a sequence that never stopped being about one piece of hardware.

Season 1
Season 6
Season 9
and 1 more

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

1993–1996Fox KidsSci-Fi

Japanese Super Sentai footage cut against American actors, and the biggest thing on children's television for three years.

Season 1

Star Trek: Voyager

1995–2001UPNSci-Fi

The most purely beautiful of the Trek openings — Voyager skimming a comet, threading a nebula and sliding past a gas giant while Jerry Goldsmith writes the loneliest theme in the franchise. Nothing about it is in a hurry to get home.

Seasons 1–3
Seasons 4–7

Babylon 5

1993–1998Syndication / TNTSci-Fi

Five seasons, five openings, and each one changes who is allowed to speak. The monologue passes from the station's first commander to his successor to his second-in-command, then splinters across the whole cast, then stops being a monologue at all.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
and 2 more

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

1993–1999SyndicationSci-Fi

A title sequence that starts still and learns to move. The station hangs motionless in the early years; by the war it is surrounded by traffic, which is the whole arc of the show in ninety seconds.

Seasons 1–3
Seasons 4–7

Farscape

1999–2003Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

A Henson creature workshop pointed at space opera, and an opening that halves in ambition halfway through the run — the narrated version explaining the premise gives way to one that assumes you already know it.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
and 1 more

Sliders

1995–2000Fox / Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

A wormhole opening in a San Francisco street, and four people falling into it — the same shot every week for a show about never seeing the same world twice.

Season 2

Roswell

1999–2002The WB / UPNSci-Fi

Dido over a New Mexico desert, for a series that treats an alien conspiracy as primarily a problem of adolescence.

Season 1

seaQuest DSV

1993–1996NBCSci-Fi

A submarine, an orchestral fanfare and a narrated mission statement — Spielberg's answer to Star Trek, set downwards.

Season 1

The Outer Limits (1995)

1995–2002Showtime / Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

The revival, which keeps the control-voice conceit and rebuilds the imagery around nineties computer graphics.

Season 1

Lexx

1997–2002Citytv / Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

A living insect-shaped ship the size of a planet, introduced with the seriousness of an opera and the budget of a regional theatre. Rebuilt every season, and stranger each time.

Season 2
Season 3
Season 4

The Secret World of Alex Mack

1994–1998NickelodeonSci-Fi

A girl doused in a chemical spill who can turn into a puddle of silver.

Season 1

Big Bad Beetleborgs

1996–1998Fox KidsSci-Fi

Three children granted the powers of their favourite comic by a phasm they let out of a haunted house.

Season 1
Season 2

Space: Above and Beyond

1995–1996FoxSci-Fi

Marines fighting an interstellar war, written by two X-Files producers and cancelled after the one season they had planned five of.

Season 1

Earth: Final Conflict

1997–2002SyndicationSci-Fi

Developed from Gene Roddenberry's notes after his death, and it shows in the titles: benign-looking aliens, civic architecture and a great deal of blue, all arranged to look like a press release rather than an invasion.

Season 1
Season 3
Season 5

VR Troopers

1994–1996Fox KidsSci-Fi

The Power Rangers formula applied to virtual reality, using footage from three different Japanese series at once.

Season 1

Bibleman

1995–2010TBNSci-Fi

A superhero with a lightsaber and scripture, made straight to video and then broadcast.

Season 1

The Worst Witch

1998–2001ITVSci-Fi

Jill Murphy's boarding school for witches, filmed a year before the first Harry Potter book was published in America.

Season 1

The Sentinel

1996–1999UPNSci-Fi

A detective whose five senses were permanently heightened by eighteen months alone in the jungle.

Season 1

Crusade

1999TNTSci-Fi

The Babylon 5 sequel, cancelled after thirteen episodes before any of them aired in order.

Season 1

Space Cases

1996–1997NickelodeonSci-Fi

Children lost on an alien ship, co-created by Peter David and Bill Mumy of Lost in Space.

Season 1

Nowhere Man

1995–1996UPNSci-Fi

A photojournalist whose entire identity is erased between courses of a dinner, over one photograph.

Season 1

Seven Days

1998–2001UPNSci-Fi

A government project that can send one man back exactly seven days, once, to undo a disaster.

Season 1

Total Recall 2070

1999Showtime / SpaceSci-Fi

A Canadian series taking more from Blade Runner than from the film it is named after.

Season 1

The Demon Headmaster

1996–1998BBC OneSci-Fi

A headmaster who hypnotises through his spectacles, from the Gillian Cross books, and the most frightening thing CBBC put out in the 1990s.

Season 1

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

1993–1994FoxSci-Fi

A bounty hunter in 1893 chasing a device from the future, cancelled after one season and quoted ever since.

Season 1

Animorphs

1998–2000NickelodeonSci-Fi

Children who can turn into any animal they touch, from the books that sold sixty million copies.

Season 1

Earth 2

1994–1995NBCSci-Fi

Colonists on a planet that turns out to be alive, cancelled on a cliffhanger after twenty-one episodes.

Season 1

Highlander: The Series

1992–1998SyndicationSci-Fi

Queen's 'Princes of the Universe' over swordplay and lightning, and a narration explaining immortality every week for six years.

Season 1

The Journey of Allen Strange

1997–2000NickelodeonSci-Fi

An alien stranded on Earth and taken in by the family who find him.

Season 1

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

1993–1997ABCSci-Fi

Superman rewritten as a workplace romance, on the principle that Clark is the real man and the cape is the costume.

Season 1

Masked Rider

1995–1996Fox KidsSci-Fi

Kamen Rider adapted for American television as a family sitcom with a monster in it.

Season 1

Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers

1996Fox KidsSci-Fi

Ten episodes bridging two seasons, with the regular cast turned into children and rangers from another planet standing in.

Season 1

Mortal Kombat: Conquest

1998–1999SyndicationSci-Fi

The games' tournament set six hundred years earlier, made for syndication and cancelled on a cliffhanger.

Season 1

Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog

1998–1999Fox KidsSci-Fi

Irish myth given the Power Rangers treatment, shot in Ireland with armour instead of spandex.

Season 1

Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation

1997–1998Fox KidsSci-Fi

The live-action Turtles made by the Power Rangers producers, and the one that added a fifth.

Season 1

Power Rangers in Space

1998Fox KidsSci-Fi

The season written as an ending, which rated well enough that the franchise carried on for decades.

Season 1

Power Rangers Lost Galaxy

1999Fox KidsSci-Fi

The first season to break the format and start again with a wholly separate cast and setting.

Season 1

Power Rangers Turbo

1997Fox KidsSci-Fi

The season that started with a feature film and handed four of the five suits to a new cast mid-run.

Season 1

Power Rangers Zeo

1996Fox KidsSci-Fi

The season straight after Mighty Morphin, remade from Chouriki Sentai Ohranger.

Season 1

So Weird

1999–2001Disney ChannelSci-Fi

A girl touring with her mother's band and investigating what she finds on the road, made darker than the channel usually allowed.

Season 1

Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad

1994–1995SyndicationSci-Fi

A garage band's keyboard player digitised into a computer to fight what lives there, adapted from Denkou Choujin Gridman.

Season 1

Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills

1994–1995USA NetworkSci-Fi

Four teenagers given powers by an alien tattoo, in a title that explains the whole programme.

Season 1