Max Headroom
A cyberpunk satire about television, broadcast on television, twenty minutes into the future.
Max Headroom opens with a main title sequence of 61 seconds.
It arrived on ABC in 1987, when One Life to Live, All My Children and The Bugs Bunny Show were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
61sThe series' opening. Earlier attempts returned the Cinemax talk show that shares the character instead.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 1980s
3 sequences
Star Trek: The Next Generation
The Enterprise-D passing the camera at warp while Patrick Stewart reads the mission statement. Stately, slow and completely confident — it takes almost a minute and a half before anything happens, and it never once feels the need to hurry.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Seasons 3–7
2 sequences
Quantum Leap
Narration explaining a premise too complicated to infer, over a theme by Mike Post — the anthology format's problem solved in sixty seconds every week.
- Season 1
- Season 4
1 sequenceWar of the Worlds
A sequel to the 1953 film in which the aliens were never defeated, only dormant.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Twilight Zone (1985)
The first revival, with the Grateful Dead re-recording Marius Constant's motif — the middle of three attempts at the same idea, all of which are now in this catalogue.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAlien Nation
The film continued as a series, with a buddy-cop format used to work through immigration and prejudice week by week.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAmazing Stories
John Williams scoring an animated history of storytelling — cave paintings to campfires to television — for Spielberg's anthology.
- Season 1