Netflix's 10/10 Sci-Fi Show Only Needed 26 Episodes To Be Considered A Masterpiece

Published Aug 11, 2026, 5:59 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. While Netflix has many great sci-fi shows in the streaming service’s stable, one complex time-travel thriller needed only 26 episodes to tell one of the genre’s most memorable small screen stories. There has never been a better time to be a fan of sci-fi TV. Apple TV’s The Expanse replacement Foundation is setting a new high standard for space opera shows, while Silo, the multiverse thriller Dark Matter, Severance, and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters all prove the series is far from the only great sci-fi show on the streaming service. Meanwhile, the upcoming Firefly revival promises to bring back one of the small screen’s most iconic original sci-fi shows, while the upcoming cyberpunk shows Blade Runner 2099 and Neuromancer ensure that the sci-fi subgenre will be home to some of 2027’s buzziest streaming releases. Even though the streaming service did start strong with the boundary-pushing 2010s releases Sense8 and Altered Carbon, Netflix is comparatively underrepresented in the genre. However, while Netflix’s upcoming slate of sci-fi releases might have a hard time outdoing Apple TV and Prime Video when it comes to highly hyped big-budget offerings, the streamer does have some incredible history in the genre, as noted above. Not only is Netflix home to the global sensation Stranger Things, but the streaming service also released one of the best time travel shows ever, Dark, back in 2017. A small-town mystery/sci-fi series, Dark needed a mere 26 episodes to tell one of the genre’s most unforgettable stories. Dark’s Time Travel Storyline Was Perfectly Executed After a child goes missing in a small town, the subsequent search uncovers a mysterious cave that allows anyone who enters it to travel through time. Dark’s story of a missing child in a small town, its sci-fi twist, and its sprawling, multi-generational cast of characters earned the series a lot of comparisons to Stranger Things season 1 when the series first arrived in 2017. However, with a pre-planned three-season arc, Dark was able to tell a smoother, more self-contained story than its more chaotic competitor, and ended up becoming one of the sci-fi genre’s most celebrated titles of the last decade as a result. Where Stranger Things added more new characters with each season and consistently expanded the size of its story, Dark balanced numerous intersecting storylines that were often tragic, but always felt true to the show’s tone. Dark May Still Be Netflix’s Greatest Sci-Fi Show To Date In 2026 With a gripping plot that moved seamlessly between one group of characters and the next, Dark had the scale and ambition of Twin Peaks but the precision of Lost in its best episodes. The series was a rare show that took the premise of time travel seriously, complete with all its potential complicated ramifications, and the result was a series where even the most emotionally devastating moments always felt earned and grounded. There was a poignant sense of inevitability to the story of Dark, a feeling that the series was barreling toward a predetermined ending no matter how many changes the heroes made to their reality. As a meditation on fate, predetermination, and free will, Dark was enthralling, but the show also excelled as a straightforward thriller full of unpredictable plot twists and surprising revelations. Although its three-season run only included 26 episodes, viewers should not assume that Dark’s story was cut short solely due to this brevity. Rather, it was this same brevity that ensured the show’s story worked perfectly. While many major small screen sci-fi franchises, from The X-Files franchise to Dark’s most obvious inspiration, Lost, to Stranger Things itself, eventually outstayed their welcome, Dark instead took its limited screen time and used it to the show’s advantage, crafting an all-time great sci-fi story in the process. Release Date 2017 - 2020-00-00 Network Netflix Showrunner Jantje Friese Cast Louis Hofmann Jonas Kahnwald Lisa Vicari Martha Nielsen Directors Baran bo Odar Writers Marc O. Seng, Martin Behnke, Ronny Schalk Creator(s) Baran bo Odar, Jantje Friese