If there’s one genre that can get away with being built on rules so complex and intricate that it takes a good, long while for audiences to fully understand them, it’s science fiction. Since its birth in early 19th-century literature, and particularly as it has evolved to grow even more layered, the sci-fi genre has been all about building an internal consistency in its rules, since its worlds most often don’t operate under the laws of reality.
The importance of rules, of course, extends to science fiction television. Sometimes, those rules are pretty easy to quickly pick up; and other times, you can find full enjoyment in a sci-fi series even if you don’t fully understand how its world works. However, there are other shows, from hard sci-fi masterpieces like The Expanse to soft sci-fi gems like Doctor Who, that get better once you fully understand their rules.
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‘Devs’ (2020)
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Alex Garland began his career as a novelist, and later made the jump to Hollywood screenwriting. Soon enough, he was directing his own movies as well. Going into the late 2010s, however, he was growing more ambitious. So, he created, wrote, and directed Devs, a thriller miniseries about a young software engineer investigating the secretive quantum computing division of her Silicon Valley employer.
It’s one of the greatest hidden-gem miniseries of the last decade, composed of eight of the best (and most easily bingeable) episodes of sci-fi television that the small screen has seen in recent memory. At first, it can feel like a deliberately eerie, mysterious techno-thriller. However, once the full technical scope of the narrative’s central quantum system becomes clear, the viewer’s experience becomes all the more well-rounded.
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‘Pantheon’ (2022–2023)
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There are plenty of people who look down on animation as a lesser form of science fiction, and those people have clearly never watched Pantheon. Based on a series of short stories by Ken Liu, it follows a grieving teenager placing herself at the center of a global conspiracy brought about by rapidly evolving technology. All in all, it’s one of those perfect sci-fi shows worth watching over and over again.
The show is immensely entertaining, and at only two seasons and 16 episodes long, it’s perfectly possible (and quite tempting) to binge-watch the whole thing in just a couple of sittings. This is philosophically profound hard sci-fi based on the concept of the singularity, a hypothetical event where technology accelerates beyond human control. Once one understands its rules on digital consciousness, it becomes instantly irresistible to rewatch the whole thing.
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‘3 Body Problem’ (2024–Present)
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The Remembrance of Earth’s Past book series by former computer engineer Liu Cixin has long been among the most highly praised hard sci-fi novel series of the 21st century, and as such, expectations for its Netflix adaptation 3 Body Problem were through the roof. Thankfully, the show delivered. In it, a message sent to deep space in 1960s China triggers an alien civilization’s invasion plan.
What ensues is one of the most near-perfect hard sci-fi shows on Netflix, boosted by an incredible cast and some excellent writing by Game of Thrones co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. The show is based on complicated rules of physics and theoretical frameworks like cosmic sociology, and though growing to understand those ideas takes some time, it multiplies one’s enjoyment of 3 Body Problem.
7
‘Travelers’ (2016–2018)
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One of the best Canadian-American co-productions in modern television history, Travelers is one of those sci-fi sleeper hits that got so much better after Season 1. In it, operatives from a post-apocalyptic future send their consciousnesses back in time to overwrite people in the 21st century at the exact moment of their deaths, working in secret teams to alter the path of humanity’s history and prevent extinction.
It’s one of the best time travel TV shows in history, precisely because its rules of time travel—which so often are the pitfall of lesser series with much flimsier writing—are so strict, logical, and internally sound. Once one grows to understand the exact parameters under which the future and time travel operate, the show transforms from a fun procedural thriller into a hard-hitting study of fate and human hubris.
6
‘Foundation’ (2021–Present)
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Rarely has history seen a science fiction author more important or foundational than Isaac Asimov, and rarely have we seen a series of sci-fi novels more massively influential than his Foundation series. The Apple TV adaptation had big shoes to fill, and so far, it has succeeded. In it, a visionary mathematician predicts the inevitable collapse of a vast Galactic Empire, creating a secret colony of exiles to preserve human knowledge.
Based on some of the most ambitious sci-fi books of all time, it’s no surprise that Foundation is also one of the most ambitious sci-fi shows of all time. At first glance, the series may seem like a space opera so sprawling that it can occasionally even be confusing. However, once you understand the rules of things like Psychohistory, the Genetic Dynasty, and the Seldon Plan, Foundation only seems to grow vaster and richer.
- The Wachowskis’ 1999 film won four Academy Awards, including Visual Effects and Film
Editing. - Bullet time was shot with a rig of roughly 120 still cameras firing in sequence around the
actors. - Keanu Reeves trained in martial arts for about four months before a frame was shot,
recovering from neck surgery the whole time. - It opened the same year as Fight Club and eXistenZ, in a run of films about not trusting the
world in front of you.
- Mad Max: Fury Road won six Academy Awards in 2016, more than any other film that year.
- George Miller storyboarded the entire film as roughly 3,500 panels before there was a
script. - The chase was shot almost entirely practical in the Namib Desert, with real vehicles and
real stunt performers. - Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth carried the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in 2024.
- Blade Runner 2049 won Roger Deakins his first Oscar for cinematography, on his fourteenth
nomination. - The film also took Best Visual Effects, 35 years after Ridley Scott’s 1982 original.
- Villeneuve shot it on large-format film and kept the fog and rain practical on set wherever
he could. - Three short films by Luke Scott and Shinichiro Watanabe bridge the 30-year gap between the
two movies.
- Denis Villeneuve’s Dune won six Academy Awards in 2022, including Cinematography and
Original Score. - Hans Zimmer turned down Christopher Nolan’s Tenet so he could score Dune instead.
- Dune: Part Two arrived in 2024 and brought in Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Christopher
Walken. - David Lynch’s 1984 version and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unmade one are both their
own legends by now.
- The 1977 original won six Academy Awards plus a special achievement award for sound effects.
- John Williams’ score was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and became the
best-selling symphonic film soundtrack ever. - Andor took the galaxy somewhere colder and earned Emmy nominations for drama series in both
seasons. - The saga now runs across eleven feature films and a growing shelf of series on Disney+.
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‘Doctor Who’ (1963–Present)
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Image via BBCOne of the most timeless and iconic sci-fi shows in history, Doctor Who is one of those long-running sci-fi series that have made one brilliant idea last for years. That idea is that The Doctor, the time-and-space-traveling alien protagonist of the show, is capable of regenerating into a new body (and personality) after death. With that simple premise, Doctor Who has become the longest-running sci-fi series of all time.
It’s soft science fiction through and through, so it rarely relies on scientifically plausible internal rules; but like any long-running sci-fi show with this level of ambition, its narrative relies on several rules that have shifted and evolved over the course of the decades. These are the rules that the story’s time travel, alien biologies, and many technological complexities are bound by, and understanding them makes it far easier to lose oneself in the show’s myriad of entertaining stories.
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’12 Monkeys’ (2015–2018)
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Back in 1995, Terry Gilliam‘s Twelve Monkeys (itself based on the 1962 short film La Jetée by Chris Marker) almost instantly became one of the biggest sci-fi cult classics of the ’90s. Twenty years later came Syfy’s 12 Monkeys, a time travel thriller adaptation where a time traveler from a post-apocalyptic 2043 goes to the present day, partnering with a virologist to stop an organization from releasing a world-ending plague.
Much in the same vein as its source material, it’s one of those mega-intense sci-fi shows you need to watch twice to fully understand. Much like masterpieces like Travelers, 12 Monkeys relies on internal rules of time travel that are immensely complex yet entirely logical. As such, it takes quite a while to get a full grasp of its every nuance, but doing so reveals whole aspects of the narrative that may not have been all that apparent before.
3
‘The Expanse’ (2015–2022)
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Based on the book series of the same name by James S. A. Corey, the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, The Expanse is one of those 2010s sci-fi shows that are perfect from start to finish. Set in a 23rd-century solar system on the brink of an intergalactic war, it follows a rogue ship’s crew stumbling upon a vast, alien conspiracy.
The Expanse has long been regarded by many as the sci-fi show most closely committed to scientific and technological realism in recent memory, and those efforts shine through in the many internal rules that glue the narrative together. Whether it’s rules related to Newtonian physics, to the alien Protomolecule, or even to the show’s many geopolitical intricacies, fully understanding them is key to getting the full Expanse experience.
2
‘Severance’ (2022–Present)
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Though they jumped aboard the streaming train relatively late into the game, Apple TV has already firmly established themselves as kings in a particular niche: original sci-fi shows as exceptional as Severance. In it, a team of office workers is revealed to have undergone a surgical procedure that splits their memories between their work selves and their personal selves. As they unravel the mystery, they start to discover the dark truth about their jobs.
The premise alone would already be more than enough to make this one of the best sci-fi shows of the last 50 years, but it’s the brilliant execution of the premise that really makes Severance a masterpiece. Since it’s still ongoing and it has thus far offered far more mysteries than answers, there are still plenty of rules that fans don’t fully understand; but as they grow to get a better grasp of them, Severance gets even more enjoyable.
1
‘Dark’ (2017–2020)
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Fans of Netflix’s Dark would most likely agree that it’s a show so complex and intellectually challenging that it’s almost necessary to keep a notebook by one’s side when watching, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. The story is set in a small German town, where the disappearance of a child sets off a frantic search that unearths a sinister, multi-generational time-travel conspiracy.
A Netflix thriller with no bad seasons, Dark was so meticulously plotted and planned out right off the bat that not a single second of its three-season run feels like filler. Its time travel, time loop, and parallel universe elements are bound by such complicated rules that it can even take more than one rewatch to truly and fully understand them, but it’s oh so worth it. Once you understand its inner machinations, Dark becomes one of the best shows of the 21st century.
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