The Most Perfect Sci-Fi TV Show Themes Of All Time, Ranked Joshua Tyler Fri, November 7, 2025 at 6:30 PM UTC 15 min read More than any other type of television programming, science fiction shows are most often defined by their opening credits. In part, it’s because these shows are usually complex and require some sort of setup to explain the plot, define a setting, or at least establish the tone of what you’re about to watch. In larger part, I suspect it’s because making a great, bombastic, silly, catchy, rock and roll show opens is a lot of fun. It’s even more fun when you’re playing with outer space, aliens, time travelers, or sword-wielding immortals. Which space sci-fi show intros are the best? I’ve spent the last thirty years of my life writing about and thinking about science fiction. I put that knowledge and experience to use in coming up with a definitive list of the best sci-fi show intros of all time. Watch All The Best Sci-Fi Show Intros Or read about them in the full, ranked list below. 24. Airwolf Season 1 Intro In the 90s, Airwolf was like Knight Rider’s edgier, more grown-up cousin. Everything about it was cool, sleek, and deadly. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The vehicle didn’t talk, because that was for kids. Our hero wasn’t very friendly; he was brooding and unfriendly. The tech wasn’t just fun, it was deadly. All of that is represented in Airwolf’s opening credits sequence, which, like Knight Rider, is the coolest thing about an already cool show. It’s the song, it’s the startup sequence, it’s everything you want in a show about a high-tech killing machine. Fear the howl. 23. The Orville Opening Credits The Orville is the most Star Trek thing since Star Trek. And so were the show’s opening credits. The Orville’s opening credits and its Star Trek-like melody are a perfect setup for what’s about to follow. Importantly, the show’s opening introduces the ship we’re about to spend all our time on. 22. Doctor Who, Series 2 Intro When the new version of Doctor Who launched in 2005, one of the most interesting things about the show was the way they managed to take the previous series’ iconic yet sort of annoying theme song and not only make it palatable, but kind of fun. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement They didn’t change much, just made it feel better inside your ears, and that, combined with the motion of the TARDIS flying through the time vorte,x gives the whole thing a sense of excitement and motion which is completely in keeping with the personality of The Doctor himself, without ever actually showing us really much of anything. They started updating it slightly for Series 5, and since then, it has undergone further changes. The golden version is from series 2 with David Tennant , and I prefer it to any of the other openings, which are still pretty good. 21. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds There will be other Star Trek shows on this list, but this one deserves special mention for doing something different from the standard Trek, such as the ship swooping past the camera intro. It did something different and made it good. Past attempts at departing from the Trek norm led to disasters, such as the opening credits of Star Trek: Enterprise. I still don’t have faith of the heart and neither did anyone watching the show. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The Strange New Worlds opening music gets better the more times you hear it. My mention of it just now likely got it stuck in your head. I can hear you humming. 20. Lexx, Seasons 3 & 4 Opening Credits Lexx song Lexx was the weirdest, most confusing, freakishly sex-obsessed series in the history of television. The show’s opening credits are also weird and confusing, featuring the show’s ugly, bug-eyed ship and a big jumble of images. In Season 3, they added the Brunnen G fight song (used elsewhere in previous seasons) as their opening music, and that changed everything. It’s haunting and beautiful. The images still aren’t great, but the sound of those voices singing their way into battle is so good it almost doesn’t matter. Sing along: Yo A O, Hom Var Ray. Yo A Ra, Jerhume Brunnen G… 19. The Jetsons The Jetsons’ vision of the future was a swinging ’60s thing, but the music stands the test of time. So does all that crazy futuristic design where people live above the clouds and ride around in bubble cars. There’s never been anything else quite like it. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The closing credits, in which George gets stuck on the treadmill and screams “Jane stop this crazy thing!” are probably even more iconic, but The Jetsons intro, which sets up all the members of the Jetsons family and leaves George settled in at work where he’s sure to get yelled at by Spacely, is nearly as good. 18. Battlestar Galactica, 1978 Intro The original opening used for classic Battlestar Galactica, when it debuted in 1978, came complete with that insanely cool narration that attempts to hint that what you’re about to watch could really be happening out there somewhere. The music’s one of the best television scores of all time. The images, unfortunately, don’t quite live up to the rest, but only because they chose to wrap them in a bubble. Considering the time period, the original Battlestar Galactica opening is unbelievably epic. Life here began out there… 17. Mystery Science Theater 3000 | Seasons 1 -5 In theory, Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a show about watching other shows, but for me, the highlight of any episode was the bits they did between movies, with the hosts engaging in shenanigans. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The series’ open embodies the fun of those segments while also containing information important to your enjoyment of the show. These are primarily things like, if you’re wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts, then repeat to yourself, it’s just a show, you should really just relax. In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D… 16. Sliders, Season 1 Opening Credits Though they eventually ruined the show in subsequent seasons, for the first year it was on the air in 1995, Sliders was an insanely cool sci-fi show with a pretty cool opening sequence to match. The intro sets up the series’ premise of multiple Earths and, though parallel worlds are a familiar thing to sci-fi fans, for a lot of people this was the first they’d ever heard of the concept. Sliders explains it perfectly in a few seconds. “Same Earth, different dimension”. The season 1 opening is as fun as the show itself was, for a few brief years on Fox. My favorite part of the intro is the last two seconds or so, when the show’s title appears and pulses as a voice whispers the name: Sliders… 15. Red Dwarf The Red Dwarf opening credits were almost respectable when it debuted back in 1988. The show opened with a guy painting the ship, and then pulled back for a big reveal of the entire, massive vessel. But Red Dwarf is not a respectable show (and we wouldn’t have it any other way), so eventually they got it right in season 3 by speeding up the tempo of the music and adding a bunch of utterly ridiculous, completely stupid, totally fun clips to it which as it turns out were the perfect setup to a show involving a self-loathing hologram of a dead crewman and a robot who really likes to iron. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement I’m particularly fond of the shot of Smeghead Rimmer hammering himself, used in Season 8. Give it up for the boys from the Dwarf! 14. The Six Million Dollar Man Television’s top bionic man didn’t have much of a theme song, but everything else about The Six Million Dollar Man’s opening credits is insanely cool. How many other shows start by showing you both a plane crash and a dangerous surgical procedure each and every week? Steve Austin. Astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster… 13. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Back when it first aired, Deep Space Nine was the Star Trek show everyone overlooked. That has since changed, and in retrospect, it has earned respect. Utterly different from every other Trek series in nearly every possible way, the show’s opening reflects that. The beautiful them music is more bombastic than adventurous, and gone is the narration. It still contains shots of stars, but instead of exciting flybys, it takes you on a grand tour around this place, stuck in one spot in space. DS9 takes Trek and credits sequences in a different direction. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The show and the opening actually got even better in later seasons with the addition of a great little starship called the Defiant. Like the show, this opening has weight. It’s grand. 12. Battlestar Galactica, 2006 Opening The Battlestar Galactica opening credits underwent a lot of alterations during its time on the air. In 2004, when the show debuted, for instance, the opening didn’t feature any of the text we became used to, counting down the number of survivor left and telling us of their search for a new home, called Earth. The BSG credits didn’t even air at the start of the show most of the time. Usually, the show kicked off with a 30-second “and they have a plan” intro, telling us what the Cylons have been up to, and it wasn’t until 8 minutes in that the actual title sequence would show up. 11. Knight Rider The show may have been cheesy, but the opening credits were a cut above. The music is, of course, iconic, but what’s pretty underrated about the opening to Knight Rider back in 1982 is the stylistic approach they took to it. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement It starts out with a weird, almost purple shot of KITT blasting through the desert, which, in a dark and edgy kind of way, matches up to the fantastic voiceover from Richard Baseheart. That intro, more than anything that happened in the show, gave Knight Rider an underground, outlaw feel that few other shows have captured. A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man… who does not exist 10. Star Blazers Originally released in Japan as Space Battleship Yamato, this animated show was heavily re-edited and renamed as Star Blazers for consumption in the United States. Most of the changes made to Americanize the show for its 1979 airing weren’t particularly good, but the one that absolutely works is the Star Blazers opening credits. It helps that the images they use are quite arresting, but mostly, it’s the theme song that sets the tone for everything that’s about to happen perfectly. Listening to it is like preparing for battle every week, and the words tend to stick in your head. The Earth will survive with… our… Star… Blazers! 9. Quantum Leap, Season 4 Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The Quantum Leap opening credits are a perfect blend of gripping narration, a fantastic theme song, and tons of interesting images. The narration changed a little throughout the years, in season one, for instance, Sam Beckett narrated it and blamed what was happening to him on an experiment that went a little “caca”. I think the Season 4 version is the best, featuring a female narrator who recounts his journey with just a hint of sadness, and incorporating clips from all the best moments of the previous seasons. Watch as Dr. Sam Beckett steps into the quantum leap accelerator and vanishes. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home. 8. The Twilight Zone The theme music is iconic. You probably hear it in your head every time someone mentions the show’s name. Rod Serling’s narration is epic. It’s the kind of thing that haunts your dreams. Advertisement Source: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/most-perfect-sci-fi-tv-183013542.html