The 6 Best Sci-Fi Shows Released Since 2010, Ranked

Image via Apple TV Published Aug 22, 2026, 1:55 PM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Sci-fi on TV used to mean a guy in a rubber suit or a spaceship set built out of leftover parts from another show, and a lot of that reputation stuck around. The last fifteen years or so quietly fixed that, mostly by changing the sci-fi ideas as something more in depth and valuable. None of these six lean on the action sequences to do hit the audience. They're all built around real horrifying questions, like what happens if you split a person's memory in half, what happens if the Soviets beat America to the moon, and then they spend however many seasons they get actually answering it. 6 'Severance' (2022– ) Image via Apple TV Mark Scout (Adam Scott) works a job where he's surgically split into two separate people, one who only exists inside the office and remembers nothing about his life outside it, and one who has no idea what happens at work all day. Lumon Industries, the company running this, does not look like an employer but a cult that happens to also process spreadsheets. Ben Stiller directs a lot of this, and the retro corporate aesthetic, beige carpets, ancient computer monitors, is touching in a way that's hard to pin down exactly. The show has turned into the kind of thing people build entire theory threads around between seasons, and it earns that obsession by never once explaining more than it has to. 5 'Silo' (2023– ) Image via Apple TV Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) is a mechanical engineer living in an underground silo, one of the last places left where people can survive, generations after whatever wiped out the surface world. Nobody's allowed to ask too many questions about what's actually out there, and the people in charge control history itself through a single locked-away document called the Pact. The production actually built physical silo sets to match the scale described in Hugh Howey's original novellas, spiraling stairwells and all. The really disturbing thing here isn't the wasteland outside. It's realizing how much of what everyone believes was written by whoever happened to be in charge at the time. 4 'The Expanse' (2015–2022) Image via Amazon Ships in this show actually behave like real physics would demand, characters strap into crash couches and take drugs called "the juice" just to survive high-gravity burns, and combat in zero gravity looks the way it probably would in reality. Most films show it like a submarine battle with lasers, and thankfully it did not happen here. James Holden (Steven Strait) gets pulled into a political conflict between Earth, Mars, and the working-class Belter colonies out past the asteroid belt. Syfy canceled this after three seasons, and Amazon picked it up after an unusually loud fan campaign that included actual NASA astronauts publicly asking for it to be saved. Real scientists have praised the show for years for getting the physics right, which is a rare compliment for anything with spaceships in it. 3 'Dark' (2017–2020) Image via Netflix Four generations of the same handful of families keep showing up across six different timelines, 1888, 1921, 1953, 1986, 2019, and 2052, and Netflix eventually had to release an official family tree chart just so viewers could keep everyone straight. Jonas (Louis Hofmann) is trying to find his missing father, and the deeper he digs, the more the show reveals itself to be one closed, inescapable time loop instead of a straightforward mystery. Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese built something so tightly plotted that a single missed detail in an early episode can completely change what a later one means. It gets genuinely disturbing in places, since time loops this close tend to create some deeply uncomfortable family connections, and the show never once flinches away from following that logic all the way through. Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you'd actually make it out of alive. 💊The Matrix 🔥Mad Max 🌧️Blade Runner 🏜️Dune 🚀Star Wars TEST YOUR SURVIVAL → 01 You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one. APull on every thread until I understand the system — then figure out how to break it. BStop asking questions and start stockpiling — food, fuel, weapons. Questions don't keep you alive. CKeep my head down, observe carefully, and trust no one until I know who's pulling the strings. DStudy the patterns. Every system has a rhythm — learn it, and you learn how to survive it. EFind the people fighting back and join them. You can't fix a broken galaxy alone. NEXT QUESTION → 02 In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires. AKnowledge. If you understand the system, you don't need resources — you can generate them. BFuel. Everything else — movement, power, escape — runs on it. CTrust. In a world of fakes and informants, a truly reliable ally is rarer than any commodity. DWater. And after water, information — the two things empires are truly built on. EShips and credits. The galaxy is big — you survive it by being able to move through it freely. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you're honest about what you're actually afraid of. AThat reality itself is a lie — that everything I experience has been constructed to keep me compliant. BA raid. No warning, no mercy — just the roar of engines and then nothing left. CBeing identified. Once someone with power decides you're a problem, you're already out of time. DBeing outmanoeuvred — losing a political game I didn't even know I was playing. EThe Empire tightening its grip until there's nowhere left to run. NEXT QUESTION → 04 How do you deal with authority you don't trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything. ASubvert it from the inside — learn its rules well enough to weaponise them against it. BIgnore it and stay out of its reach. The further from any power structure, the better. CAppear to comply while doing exactly what I need to do. Visibility is the enemy. DManoeuvre within it carefully. You can't beat a system you refuse to understand. EResist openly when I have to. Some things are worth the risk of being seen. NEXT QUESTION → 05 Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn't just tactical — it's physical, psychological, and very much about where you are. AUnderground bunkers and server rooms — cramped, artificial, but with access to everything that matters. BOpen wasteland — brutal sun, no shelter, constant movement. At least the threat is honest. CA dense, rain-soaked city where you can disappear into the crowd and nobody asks questions. DMerciless desert — extreme heat, no water, and something enormous living beneath the sand. EThe fringe — backwater planets and busy spaceports where the Empire's attention rarely reaches. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are. AA tight crew of believers who've seen behind the curtain and have nothing left to lose. BOne or two people I'd trust with my life. Any more than that and someone talks. CNobody, ideally. Alliances are liabilities. I work alone unless I have no choice. DA community bound by shared hardship and mutual survival — people who need each other to last. EA ragtag team with wildly different skills and total commitment when it counts. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they're actually made of. AI won't harm the innocent — even the ones who'd report me without hesitation. BI do what I have to to protect the people I've chosen. Everything else is negotiable. CThe line shifts depending on who's asking and what's at stake. DI draw a long-term line — nothing that compromises my people's future, even if it'd help now. ESome lines, once crossed, can't be uncrossed. I know which ones they are. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another. AWaking others up — dismantling the illusion so no one else has to live inside it. BFinding somewhere — or someone — worth protecting. A reason to keep moving. CAnswers. Understanding what I am, what any of this means, before time runs out. DLegacy — shaping the future in a way that outlasts me by generations. EFreedom — for myself, for others, for every world still living under someone else's boot. REVEAL MY WORLD → Your Fate Has Been Calculated You'd Survive In…Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for. The MatrixYou took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You're a systems thinker who can't help but notice the seams in things. You're drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it. You'd find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines' worst nightmare. You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it. The Matrix built an airtight prison. You'd be the one probing the walls for the door. Mad MaxThe wasteland doesn't reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That's you. You don't need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon. You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you're good at all three. You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider. In the wasteland, that distinction is everything. Blade RunnerYou'd survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely. You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer. In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional. You're not a hero. But you're not lost, either. In Blade Runner's world, that distinction is everything. DuneArrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards. Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they're survival tools. You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory. Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You'd learn its logic and earn its respect. In time, you wouldn't just survive Arrakis — you'd begin to reshape it. Star WarsThe galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn't have it any other way. You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion. You'd gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire's grip can be broken. You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn't something you're capable of. In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 2 'For All Mankind' (2019– ) Image via Apple TV+ This show starts from one small change to history, the Soviets landing on the moon first instead of the Americans, and then just follows what actually would have happened next, decade after decade, season after season. Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) is one of the astronauts caught in a space race that never actually ended the way ours did. Because losing the moon race becomes such a national panic in this version of America, women and astronauts of color end up getting real opportunities in the space program years earlier than they did in reality. Ronald D. Moore built something genuinely rare in prestige sci-fi here. It is a show that's actually hopeful about what people can do together instead of assuming everything eventually falls apart. 1 'Andor' (2022–2025) Image via Disney+ There's almost no Force, no lightsabers, and barely a Jedi in sight anywhere in this show, which is an insane choice for a Star Wars project and also exactly why it works as well as it does. Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) gets pulled slowly into a rebellion that Tony Gilroy treats as a real, messy political insurgency. Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) gets one of the best monologues in the entire franchise, something about burning his life away just to make a sunrise he'll never actually see. Critics who don't even like Star Wars have called this one of the best things the franchise has ever produced, and it earns that by treating rebellion, and the real cost of it, like something worth taking seriously. Andor Release Date 2022 - 2025-00-00 Network Disney+