The Expanse
2015–2022SyfyAmazon Prime VideoSci-Fi
Orbital mechanics as graphic design — stations, ships and the Belt drawn as engineering schematics rather than spectacle.
The Expanse opens with a main title sequence of 62 seconds.
It arrived on Syfy in 2015, when Lost Girl, Haven and The Magicians were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
62sThe first season's long version. The show also ran a heavily shortened cut, so the sequence exists at two lengths.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 2010s
1 sequence
Stranger Things
Red letters assembling out of the dark in ITC Benguiat, glowing at the edges like a paperback cover left in the sun. An argument that a title sequence can be nothing but type and still do all the work.
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1 sequence
3%
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For All Mankind
Archive footage of the space race, doctored — real newsreel edited so that the alternate history it depicts appears to have actually been filmed.
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3 sequences
Dark
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- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
1 sequence
The Man in the High Castle
Dick's occupied America, opened by newsreel light thrown across a map that has the wrong flags on it.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Black Mirror
A screen cracking, and that is the whole thing. Eighteen seconds of glitch and a fracture spreading across black glass — an anthology refusing to introduce anything, because each episode is a different show.
- Seasons 1–7