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.
The X-Files rebuilt its titles: five distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1–11, running between 44 and 59 seconds.
It arrived on Fox in 1993, when America's Most Wanted, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Married... with Children were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; The X-Files did so four times.
All 5 opening title sequences
Seasons 1–7
46sChris Carter asked for supernatural images and got them — a seed germinating in split screen, a face distorting, a hand pressed flat against light, all of it over Mark Snow's whistle. It won the series its first Emmy and was not touched for seven years.
Season 8
59sThe first revision. Robert Patrick joins, Duchovny is credited only in the episodes he actually appears in, and new images arrive to carry the season's plot — Scully's pregnancy, and Mulder's absence rendered as a figure falling into an eye.
Season 9
44sRebuilt again, this time around Doggett, Reyes and Skinner, with both original leads gone from the front of the show entirely.
Season 10
46sThe revival restores the 1993 sequence rather than modernising it — same images, same whistle, re-rendered. A deliberate refusal to update anything.
Season 11
The remastered 1993 sequence again, as in the tenth season, with new shots for the added cast. The closing card is doubled: THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE printed twice, one line beneath the other.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 1990s
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
2 sequences
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.
- Seasons 1–3
- Seasons 4–7
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
2 sequences
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
A title sequence that starts still and learns to move. The station hangs motionless in the early years; by the war it is surrounded by traffic, which is the whole arc of the show in ninety seconds.
- Seasons 1–3
- Seasons 4–7
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