Primeval
Anomalies in time opening across England and letting prehistory through, in ITV's answer to the revived Doctor Who.
Primeval kept one opening title sequence, 34 seconds long, across season 3.
At 34 seconds, it opens well under the 58-second median for sci-fi sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on ITV in 2007, when Thomas & Friends, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends and Birds of a Feather were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 3
34sFan upload of the third series' credits. Found by accident — it is what a search for the unrelated American Primeval returns.
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
1 sequence
Heroes
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
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