5 Genuinely Perfect Sci-Fi Miniseries, Ranked

I get suspicious whenever a scientist in a science-fiction show promises to eliminate human suffering. Wonderful. Congratulations. You’ve invented something that will almost certainly make everybody miserable in a completely new way. The worst part is that I understand the temptation. Give me one chance to undo a terrible mistake or see somebody I’ve lost, and I’m not entirely confident I’d listen to my own warnings.

That’s the wonderful cruelty of science fiction. It can introduce an impossible idea and make you recognize something painfully familiar inside it. I love the enormous concepts, the strange worlds, the technology that makes your head hurt. But I get attached to the frightened, stubborn, sometimes remarkably foolish people trying to live with those things. And when a story can make its wildest invention feel inseparable from an ordinary human need, I’m completely sold.

5

‘Devs’ (2020)

Image via FX

Devs takes an apparent corporate conspiracy and transforms it into a deeply unsettling argument about whether human beings possess free will. A software engineer named Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno) becomes suspicious after her boyfriend Sergei dies shortly after joining a secret research division at the technology company Amaya. Her investigation draws her toward its enigmatic CEO, Forest (Nick Offerman), and an extraordinary quantum computer capable of challenging everything she believes about reality.

I find Forest fascinating because his enormous intellectual ambition comes from something heartbreakingly ordinary. He’s a grieving father who cannot accept that his daughter is gone. Alex Garland, who wrote and directed all eight episodes, makes the company’s beautiful, isolated research facility feel almost religious. Forest believes the universe operates according to predetermined rules, yet Lily stubbornly refuses to accept that her choices are meaningless. Their philosophical conflict becomes intensely personal. I love how the series can make somebody walking across a room feel consequential when an entire theory of existence depends upon what happens next.

4

‘11.22.63’ (2016)

Image via Hulu

Imagine somebody telling you there’s a doorway inside a diner that leads to 1960, and your responsibility is to prevent President John F. Kennedy‘s assassination. That’s the astonishing proposition facing English teacher Jake Epping (James Franco) when his friend Al Templeton (Chris Cooper) introduces him to time travel. Based on Stephen King‘s novel, 11.22.63 follows Jake into the past, where his investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald becomes complicated by the disturbing discovery that history actively resists being changed.

But then Jake meets school librarian Sadie Dunhill (Sarah Gadon), and suddenly the assassination isn’t the only thing I’m worried about. Their romance is lovely because Jake begins enjoying an ordinary life he was never supposed to have. He’s teaching, making friends, falling in love. Every additional day creates another reason to abandon his mission. Bridget Carpenter developed the miniseries, giving King’s enormous premise an unexpectedly intimate emotional center. I adore the way time travel eventually becomes an argument about love. Saving millions of strangers is an extraordinary ambition. Walking away from the person you love can feel considerably more difficult.

3

‘Maniac’ (2018)

Image via Netflix

There’s a computer in Maniac that becomes emotionally unstable, and somehow that isn’t even the strangest thing about the show. Annie Landsberg (Emma Stone) and Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill) are two deeply troubled strangers who volunteer for an experimental pharmaceutical trial promising to cure psychological suffering. The treatment places them inside elaborate simulated experiences, forcing them to confront memories and relationships they would much rather escape.

I could watch Stone and Hill inhabit those bizarre imagined worlds for hours. One adventure involves a stolen lemur, while others plunge them into crime stories and elaborate fantasies. Cary Joji Fukunaga directed the miniseries, giving each imagined reality its own wonderfully eccentric personality. Yet the emotional consistency is remarkable. Annie is devastated by the loss of her sister, and Owen feels painfully disconnected from his family and the world around him. Even when their identities change inside the experiment, their longing for connection persists. I particularly love that their growing friendship offers something the expensive technology cannot guarantee. Two people finally recognize each other’s pain and decide that neither should face it alone.

s

2

‘Station Eleven’ (2021–2022)

Image via HBO Max

A devastating influenza pandemic brings civilization to its knees, leaving young actress Kirsten Raymonde (Matilda Lawler) dependent upon the unexpected kindness of Jeevan Chaudhary (Himesh Patel), a stranger who takes responsibility for her safety. Twenty years later, an adult Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis) travels with a theatrical company performing Shakespeare for communities scattered across the surviving world. Station Eleven moves between these periods, gradually connecting people through memories, art, and an obscure science-fiction comic book.

I would defend the apartment episode, “Goodbye My Damaged Home,” against practically anything. Jeevan, Kirsten, and his brother Frank (Nabhaan Rizwan) are sheltering together while the world outside is collapsing. Then Frank starts rapping along to A Tribe Called Quest, and for a few beautiful minutes, they’re simply three people enjoying themselves. That memory becomes devastating when we understand what the apartment meant to Kirsten. Patrick Somerville‘s adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel‘s novel has such extraordinary affection for its characters. The story contains violence, grief, and terrible separations, yet refuses to treat kindness as foolish. When people who’ve spent years believing somebody is lost finally find each other again, I can barely hold myself together. Few post-apocalyptic stories have made me so grateful that human beings can still love one another.

1

‘Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries’ (2003)

Image via Syfy

The Galactica is supposed to be retired. Its old-fashioned systems are practically museum exhibits, and Commander William Adama (Edward James Olmos) is preparing to leave the aging warship behind. Then the Cylons launch a devastating attack against humanity’s Twelve Colonies, destroying entire populations and crippling the military’s technologically advanced defenses. Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries follows the surviving fleet as Adama attempts to protect what remains of humanity, while former education secretary Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) unexpectedly becomes president.

I cannot overstate how magnificent the relationship between Adama and Roslin is from the beginning. He’s a military commander who initially wants to fight back. She’s a civilian confronting the horrifying responsibility of keeping as many survivors alive as possible. Neither possesses a comfortable answer, and their disagreements immediately establish the moral pressure that would define the subsequent television series. Ronald D. Moore wrote this reinvention, directed by Michael Rymer, with an extraordinary understanding of how catastrophic decisions affect ordinary people. I particularly love the terrible irony that Galactica survives partly because its outdated systems cannot be compromised like the newer ships. Suddenly, yesterday’s obsolete warship becomes humanity’s greatest hope.