Sci-Fi · 2000s

52 shows68 sequences

Smallville

2001–2011The WB / The CWSci-Fi

Remy Zero's 'Save Me' over a cast that changed almost completely across ten years, with the credits rebuilt around each departure.

Season 1

1 sequence

Firefly

2002FoxSci-Fi

A slide guitar and a weary blues vocal over a spaceship. Sonny Rhodes sings words the show's creator wrote, and the argument of the whole series — that this is a western that happens to be in orbit — is settled before a line of dialogue is spoken.

Season 1

1 sequence

Heroes

2006–2010NBCSci-Fi

An eclipse and a card, in twelve seconds. The restraint is the point — a superhero show refusing to open like one.

Season 1

3 sequences

Fringe

2008–2013FoxSci-Fi

Pseudo-scientific terms floating in coloured fog — and the colour is the plot: the palette changes to tell you which universe or era the episode is set in.

Season 1
Season 4
Season 5

2 sequences

Star Trek: Enterprise

2001–2005UPNSci-Fi

The franchise's most argued-over opening: no orchestra, no starfield, but a montage of real human exploration — sailing ships, biplanes, spacesuits — under a soft-rock ballad. Half the audience never forgave it, which is its own kind of achievement.

Seasons 1–2
Seasons 3–4

4 sequences

Stargate Atlantis

2004–2009Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

The same franchise moved to another galaxy, and the titles say so — a city rather than a gate, rising out of water instead of standing in a mountain.

Season 1
Seasons 2–3
Season 4
and 1 more

1 sequence

Misfits

2009–2013E4Sci-Fi

Community-service orange and a storm, with superpowers treated as one more thing happening to people who already had enough going on.

Season 1

1 sequence

Life on Mars

2006–2007BBC OneSci-Fi

A Manchester detective wakes in 1973 and cannot establish whether he is mad, in a coma, or back in time — the show's own summary, delivered as narration.

Season 1

1 sequence

Torchwood

2006–2011BBC Three / BBC OneSci-Fi

The Doctor Who spinoff that wanted to be taken seriously, opening with Cardiff, a rift and a great deal of blue light.

Season 1

1 sequence

Warehouse 13

2009–2014SyfySci-Fi

Artefacts on shelves, filmed like a museum inventory that has started moving on its own.

Season 1

1 sequence

Stargate Universe

2009–2011SyfySci-Fi

The franchise's darkest entry, and its plainest opening — no fanfare, no gate, just a ship going somewhere nobody chose.

Season 1

1 sequence

Dark Angel

2000–2002FoxSci-Fi

Post-collapse Seattle in thirty-five seconds, from James Cameron's only substantial television project.

Season 1

2 sequences

Andromeda

2000–2005SyndicationSci-Fi

Another posthumous Roddenberry premise, opened with a ship, a collapsed republic and a great deal of lens flare.

Season 1
Season 3

1 sequence

Primeval

2007–2011ITVSci-Fi

Anomalies in time opening across England and letting prehistory through, in ITV's answer to the revived Doctor Who.

Season 3

1 sequence

Dollhouse

2009–2010FoxSci-Fi

Bodies wiped and rewritten, shown as blank figures being dressed — a premise stated without a word.

Season 1

1 sequence

The 4400

2004–2007USA NetworkSci-Fi

Four thousand four hundred missing people returned at once, introduced through the photographs of who they were.

Season 1

1 sequence

Eureka

2006–2012Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

Twelve seconds of small-town Americana with the physics quietly wrong in the background.

Season 1

1 sequence

Kyle XY

2006–2009ABC FamilySci-Fi

A teenager found in the woods with no memory and no navel, which is the whole first episode's mystery in one detail.

Season 1

1 sequence

Sanctuary

2008–2011SyfySci-Fi

A refuge for cryptids run by a 150-year-old doctor, shot almost entirely on green screen.

Season 1

1 sequence

Phil of the Future

2004–2006Disney ChannelSci-Fi

A family from 2121 stranded in the present when their time machine breaks.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Sarah Jane Adventures

2007–2011CBBCSci-Fi

The Doctor Who spin-off built for children, giving a companion from 1973 her own series thirty-four years later.

Season 1

8 sequences

Doctor Who (2005)

2005–BBC OneSci-Fi

The revival kept the tunnel and the logo and threw out everything else, then carried on rebuilding — clouds, fire, clockwork — with a new arrangement of the same 1963 melody every few years.

Season 1
Seasons 2–4
Seasons 5–6
and 5 more

1 sequence

The Dead Zone

2002–2007USA NetworkSci-Fi

The Stephen King adaptation as a weekly series, with a man who reads futures by touch.

Season 1

1 sequence

FlashForward

2009–2010ABCSci-Fi

Everyone on Earth blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds and sees the same day six months ahead.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Dresden Files

2007SyfySci-Fi

Jim Butcher's wizard private investigator in Chicago, cancelled after one season.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mutant X

2001–2004SyndicationSci-Fi

A Marvel-adjacent series made in Canada that Fox sued over for resembling the X-Men.

Season 1

1 sequence

Life on Mars (US)

2008–2009ABCSci-Fi

The American remake of the BBC series, opening on 1973 New York and the Bowie song both versions are named for.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Lost Room

2006Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

A motel room that stopped existing in 1961 and left its contents behind as objects with impossible properties.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tru Calling

2003–2005FoxSci-Fi

A morgue attendant who relives days, opened with the clock imagery the premise requires.

Season 1

1 sequence

Jeremiah

2002–2004ShowtimeSci-Fi

J. Michael Straczynski's series about a world where everyone over puberty died fifteen years ago.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cleopatra 2525

2000–2001SyndicationSci-Fi

Half-hour science fiction from the Hercules and Xena producers, paired with Jack of All Trades in one hour.

Season 1

1 sequence

Threshold

2005–2006CBSSci-Fi

Geometric contact imagery and a rising tone, from one of three first-contact series the American networks launched in the same season.

Season 1

1 sequence

Odyssey 5

2002ShowtimeSci-Fi

Five astronauts sent back five years to prevent the destruction of Earth, cancelled after one season.

Season 1

1 sequence

Witchblade

2001–2002TNTSci-Fi

A New York detective bonded to a sentient gauntlet, from the Top Cow comic.

Season 1

1 sequence

Jake 2.0

2003–2004UPNSci-Fi

An NSA computer technician infused with nanites in an accident, and made a field agent because of it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Special Unit 2

2001–2002UPNSci-Fi

A Chicago police unit whose caseload is entirely mythological, and which nobody else in the department believes exists.

Season 1

1 sequence

The 10th Kingdom

2000NBCSci-Fi

Ten hours of fairy tale in which Manhattan and the Nine Kingdoms turn out to share a mirror.

Season 1

3 sequences

Battlestar Galactica

2004–2009Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

The only title sequence on this site that reports the plot. Under the Gayatri Mantra and the Cylon text, the American version ends on a count of the surviving human population — a figure recalculated for each episode, so the titles get worse as the show goes on.