Lost in Space
John Williams, decades before anyone was calling him that, writing a fanfare for a family stranded in a jelly-mould spaceship.
Lost in Space opens with a main title sequence of 54 seconds.
It arrived on CBS in 1965, when Candid Camera, Guiding Light and As the World Turns were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
54sThe first season's opening, in black and white.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 1960s
10 sequences
Doctor Who
Rebuilt for almost every Doctor, and each rebuild invented its own technique — a camera filming its own monitor, light photographed through moving slots, and finally the first computer-generated titles on British television.
- Seasons 1–3
- Seasons 4–6
- Seasons 7–10
- and 7 more
2 sequences
Star Trek
The one that set the shape of every space-opera opening since: a ship crossing the frame, a captain narrating a mission statement, and a melody built to be hummed. Alexander Courage wrote it as a fanfare and a lounge tune at the same time.
- Season 1
- Seasons 2–3
1 sequenceThe Prisoner
Thunder, a Lotus Seven driven hard past Parliament, a resignation letter slammed onto a desk, and then gas under the door of a man's own flat. Two minutes that explain the entire premise without a narrator, and end with the only line the show ever needed: I am not a number.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThunderbirds
Five, four, three, two, one — the countdown, the launch bays, and Barry Gray's march. Probably the most quoted title sequence Britain has produced.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Outer Limits
The control-voice narration that takes over your television set — a premise so effective that the sequence is better remembered than most of the episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Invaders
A Quinn Martin series about one man who knows and cannot prove it, narrated in the second person.
- Season 1