10 Most Universally Loved Sci-Fi Shows Of All Time, Ranked

Published Nov 7, 2026, 4:01 PM EST Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel. These ten science fiction series are the ten most universally beloved in the large canon of TV shows. I'm going to sit at my desk and tell you I know what makes a TV show universally loved. If I knew, I would be working as a producer at HBO or Netflix. It's really hard to tell what's going to get a wide audience stirred up. It's not hard to spot after the fact, however, and there are some shows that are clearly universally beloved. To be sure, this isn't a list of the best sci-fi shows ever; in fact, a few of them are quite divisive with critics. These are the sci-fi shows that, if you ask anyone about them, they're more than likely going to have good things to say about them. 10 The Mandalorian (2019-2023) The Mandalorian is the first live-action TV show in the Star Wars franchise and the first original series made for the new, at the time, Disney+ streaming service. Its massive success and following may have made a promise of quality that Disney+ and Star Wars did not end up keeping, but that doesn't mean it's not one of the best things the Star Wars franchise has produced since Return of the Jedi. The three-season series is set five years after Return of the Jedi and follows a Mandalorian bounty hunter named Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), who is hired by the remainder of the Empire to acquire an alien child named Grogu. Instead, Din takes Grogu with him, protecting him as he continues on with his missions. 9 Stranger Things (2016-2025) Stranger Things was a phenomenon for the nine years that it was airing, and even big breaks between seasons, actors aging past their characters, and slightly repetitive storylines could not stop the final season from being one of the most viewed TV shows on Netflix. The series is set in the 1980s, taking cues from Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, and follows the inhabitants of Hawkins, Indiana, a standard town in standard middle America. The arrival of a psychic young girl portends an otherworldly threat that the children of Hawkins need to face if they hope to save the people they love. 8 Black Mirror (2011-Present) Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror is the best spin on The Twilight Zone since the original series. This speculative science fiction series tells a new story each episode, usually set in some very near future where technological advancements are the cause of as much strife as they do solutions. Using technology, Black Mirror investigates contemporary societal, cultural, and political issues, often drawing unnerving conclusions about the direction we are heading. It's a sharply written series, with some amazingly creative ideas and plots pulled together. It's not strictly a horror show, but the episodes may induce some nightmares. 7 Rick And Morty (2013-Present) Rick and Morty has entered rarefied air in the animation space. Like Family Guy, South Park, and The Simpsons, the rising and falling quality of an individual season of the science fiction comedy no longer seems to matter. The longevity of the show and its massive success have basically given it a free pass to be universally beloved. The series is an absurd, dark, funny adventure that centers on a young boy named Morty and his genius Grandfather, Rick. The pair travel all across the multiverse, finding adventures and danger, often looking for a solution to their family's survival as often as they are looking for a specific hallucinogen that Rick feels like trying that day. 6 The X-Files (1993-2018) The X-Files is synonymous with science fiction storytelling on TV, and in the same way that if you ask a sample of people to name a horror TV show, they'll probably say "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", if you ask them to name a science fiction show, they'll likely say The X-Files, the Fox procedural. The series centers on FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who are responsible for the department's "X-Files", overlooked cases that may or may not involve paranormal phenomena. Every episode is an exciting whodunnit, with some heavier ideas and themes than were common on network TV at the time. 5 Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007) ©MGM Television/Courtesy: Everett Collection Stargate SG-1 is based on the 1994 Stargate film and expands the lore of the story to make 10 seasons' worth of some of the best science fiction TV you can find anywhere. The series follows SG-1, a military unit that ventures to alien planets through the use of "Stargates", wormholes the U.S. secretly houses. SG-1's mission is to search for alien tech and allies in order to help defend Earth. Despite the military conceit and the political themes of the series, Stargate SG-1 is a fun and breezy series. It has a fantastic sense of humor and never takes itself too seriously. It is more interested in the excitement of space travel than it is in analyzing its implications. 4 Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) Image via MovieStillsDB Battlestar Galactica is the darker, serious sibling to Stargate SG-1. The 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica is not the first version of the show in the franchise. It started as a series in 1979, then was rebooted a year later in 1980. It wasn't until 2003 that the most popular version of Battlestar Galactica came to screens. This Sci-Fi Channel series is set far into the future and follows the crew of the Battlestar Galactica, an old ship in humanity's fleet and the last military spacecraft they have after an alien attack nearly wipes out the species and their homeworlds. Battlestar Galactica brings together a range of ideas, from religious fanaticism to political strife, and weaves everything together for an engaging adventure. 3 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-1999) Image courtesy of MovieStillsDb Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is usually ranked among the top three best Star Trek shows ever. Usually, Star Trek: The Next Generation edges it out, critically, but because TNG introduces Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, fans of the series will always be involved in a bitter argument between them and those who consider William Shatner's Captain Kirk the best Star Trek captain. DS9 has no such schism, and is the most universally loved of all the series, even if its highs don't quite reach the same level as TNG or The Original Series. DS9 is set on the titular spaceship, which sits at the entrance of a wormhole, offering visitors and quests for the DS9 crew to meet and go on. 2 Andor (2022-2025) ©Disney+/Lucasfilm /Courtesy Everett Collection The Mandalorian would probably be the unanimous pick for the best live-action Star Wars TV show if Andor did not come around a few years late. Andor is unlike almost any other Star Wars property. Its maturity is on a level that other Star Wars shows and movies simply do not deal in. You might think this would upset long-time fans of the franchise, but the series is so compelling, so intricately woven, and still beholden to key parts of the Star Wars lore, that just about everyone who sees it has to admit its quality. It's what happens when you combine science fiction with the Oscar-nominated talent of Tony Gilroy. 1 The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) The original science fiction TV show, Rod Serling's anthology series, The Twilight Zone, is a thought-provoking, curious, often scary journey into a world that looks a little like ours save for some key differences. The series has been rebooted three times, but the first one stands head and shoulders above the rest of the franchise. Each episode of The Twilight Zone is a standalone story that follows a person or a group of people experiencing unusual events, often disturbing ones; there are few happy episodes in The Twilight Zone. Spooky and surreal, The Twilight Zone has an episode for every type of sci-fi viewer.