Star Trek: Voyager
The most purely beautiful of the Trek openings — Voyager skimming a comet, threading a nebula and sliding past a gas giant while Jerry Goldsmith writes the loneliest theme in the franchise. Nothing about it is in a hurry to get home.
Star Trek: Voyager rebuilt its titles: two distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1–7, running between 104 and 106 seconds.
At 106 seconds at its longest, it opens well above the 58-second median for sci-fi sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on UPN in 1995, when Sweet Valley High and Nowhere Man were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; Star Trek: Voyager did so once.
All 2 opening title sequences
Seasons 1–3
104sThe original cast cards, with Jennifer Lien as Kes. The CGI flythrough and Goldsmith's theme are set from the first episode and never altered.
Seasons 4–7
106sIdentical visuals and score — the change is the crew. Jeri Ryan's name replaces Jennifer Lien's in the main titles from the fourth season on.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 1990s
5 sequences
The X-Files
One sequence held untouched for seven years, then rebuilt twice as the cast turned over. The card at the end is the real trick: it reads 'The Truth Is Out There' most weeks, and something else entirely more than twenty times.
- Seasons 1–7
- Season 8
- Season 9
- and 2 more
4 sequences
Stargate SG-1
The gate opening, every week, for ten years — David Arnold's film theme rearranged for television and a sequence that never stopped being about one piece of hardware.
- Season 1
- Season 6
- Season 9
- and 1 more
1 sequence
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
Japanese Super Sentai footage cut against American actors, and the biggest thing on children's television for three years.
- Season 1
5 sequences
Babylon 5
Five seasons, five openings, and each one changes who is allowed to speak. The monologue passes from the station's first commander to his successor to his second-in-command, then splinters across the whole cast, then stops being a monologue at all.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 2 more
4 sequences
Farscape
A Henson creature workshop pointed at space opera, and an opening that halves in ambition halfway through the run — the narrated version explaining the premise gives way to one that assumes you already know it.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 1 more
1 sequenceSliders
A wormhole opening in a San Francisco street, and four people falling into it — the same shot every week for a show about never seeing the same world twice.
- Season 2