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TVTitles

The Prisoner

1967–1968ITVSci-Fi

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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.

One opening sequence is catalogued for The Prisoner, covering season 1.

It arrived on ITV in 1967, when The Sooty Show, World of Sport and Ivor the Engine were also on the network.

1 sequence17th most looked up of 99 in the 1960sIMDb ↗
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The opening titles

Season 1

One sequence for a single seventeen-episode run, and it does the work an entire pilot usually does — by the time the titles finish, the resignation, the abduction and the terms of captivity have all been established. Four episodes depart from it, one of them restaging the whole thing as a Western with McGoohan as a sheriff, which is a liberty a show can only take once its titles are this fixed.

More sci-fi opening titles from the 1960s

Still from the opening titles of Doctor Who10 sequences

Doctor Who

1963–1989BBC OneSci-Fi

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
Still from the opening titles of Star Trek2 sequences

Star Trek

1966–1969NBCSci-Fi

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
Still from the opening titles of Thunderbirds1 sequence

Thunderbirds

1965–1966ITVSci-Fi

Five, four, three, two, one — the countdown, the launch bays, and Barry Gray's march. Probably the most quoted title sequence Britain has produced.

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Still from the opening titles of Lost in Space1 sequence

Lost in Space

1965–1968CBSSci-Fi

John Williams, decades before anyone was calling him that, writing a fanfare for a family stranded in a jelly-mould spaceship.

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Still from the opening titles of The Outer Limits1 sequence

The Outer Limits

1963–1965ABCSci-Fi

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
Still from the opening titles of The Invaders1 sequence

The Invaders

1967–1968ABCSci-Fi

A Quinn Martin series about one man who knows and cannot prove it, narrated in the second person.

  • Season 1