Altered Carbon
Bodies printed, sleeved and discarded in fluid — the show's premise, that a person is software and flesh is hardware, shown rather than explained.
Altered Carbon opens with a main title sequence of 98 seconds.
At 98 seconds, it opens well above the 58-second median for sci-fi sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on Netflix in 2018, when Mystery Science Theater 3000, Arrested Development and Top Boy were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
98sThe first season's sequence.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 2010s
1 sequence
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Red letters assembling out of the dark in ITC Benguiat, glowing at the edges like a paperback cover left in the sun. An argument that a title sequence can be nothing but type and still do all the work.
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3%
Netflix's first Brazilian original: a selection process that lets three in a hundred cross to the other side.
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For All Mankind
Archive footage of the space race, doctored — real newsreel edited so that the alternate history it depicts appears to have actually been filmed.
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- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
1 sequenceThe Man in the High Castle
Dick's occupied America, opened by newsreel light thrown across a map that has the wrong flags on it.
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1 sequence
Black Mirror
A screen cracking, and that is the whole thing. Eighteen seconds of glitch and a fracture spreading across black glass — an anthology refusing to introduce anything, because each episode is a different show.
- Seasons 1–7