Heroes
An eclipse and a card, in twelve seconds. The restraint is the point — a superhero show refusing to open like one.
Heroes opens with a main title sequence of 12 seconds.
At 12 seconds, it opens well under the 58-second median for sci-fi sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on NBC in 2006, when Mad About You, Will & Grace and Late Night with Conan O'Brien were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
12sThe card.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequence
Smallville
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
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
3 sequences
Fringe
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
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
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
Community-service orange and a storm, with superpowers treated as one more thing happening to people who already had enough going on.
- Season 1