Warehouse 13
Artefacts on shelves, filmed like a museum inventory that has started moving on its own.
Warehouse 13 opens with a main title sequence of 42 seconds.
At 42 seconds, it opens well under the 58-second median for sci-fi sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on Syfy in 2009, when Sanctuary and Stargate Universe were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
42sThe first season's titles.
More sci-fi opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequence
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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.
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1 sequence
Heroes
An eclipse and a card, in twelve seconds. The restraint is the point — a superhero show refusing to open like one.
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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