The Rise of Sci-Fi Television in the 90s: Top 10 Series

Dark Skies only aired for one season from 1996 to 1997, but I was all in on this show! This was a show that was clearly created in order to capitalize on the popularity of The X-Files, but I felt that it stood on its own and was a fantastic sci-fi series. The fact that it had Jeri Ryan in it did not hurt either.

Dark Skies is an alien conspiracy type of show, with the idea being that aliens have been among us for years and have been manipulating world events.

One of the most fun things about Dark Skies was the way it played with history, putting aliens into many important historical events from the 60s, which was when the show was set. While it got canned due to low ratings, they at the very least had an ending that does work as an ending, but I would have loved to have seen this carry on as they revealed some great ideas for further seasons!

Next up we have a change of pace with 3^rd Rock From The Sun, which ran for six seasons starting in 1996 and ended its run in 2001. This is a sitcom, but it does have a sci-fi twist. A group of aliens from a far off galaxy have come to Earth in order to take part in a research mission. They need to blend in and find out as much as they can about the humans. This is fantastic and very funny stuff and seeing the way the aliens get confused by many human customs is a major part of the show.

3^rd Rock From The Sun has a fantastic cast with John Lithgow, Kristen Johnson, French Stewart, and a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the role of the Solomon family, who are the aliens. This is a silly and wacky kind of show, but the few sci-fi elements that it does have always got a kick out of me.

Screenshot: Steven (MechaGozi11a) Youtube

I have to say that Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles only just made it onto my list of the best sci-fi shows of the 90s! Not because it’s bad, but because it only ran for one season from 1999 to 2000. I loved – and I mean loved – Starship Troopers the film and I was desperate for anything else from that universe. A few years after the movie I would get it in the form of this CGI animated series.

This still had humanity’s battle against the bugs, but the season was split into different campaigns. Our group of heroes embarked on different missions to stop the bugs from taking over the universe and destroying the human race! It’s a real shame that this one got canceled, as they had plans for further episodes. Still, what we did get was a lot of fun and I knew that I had to have this on my list as I think it is an underappreciated gem of a sci-fi TV show!

Not the 1980s movie, but the 90s TV series is what we’re talking about here! Instead of the gorgeous Kelly LeBrock, we get the equally gorgeous Vanessa Angel playing the role of Lisa, the beautiful woman who is brought to life by nerds Wyatt and Gary so that they can practice being good with the ladies! Look, it’s near impossible to compare this to the awesome movie, but the Weird Science TV show is a lot of fun. It ran from 1994 until 1997 and it had the same kind of quirky humor that the movie had. 

Each episode usually revolves around Wyatt and Gary getting into some kind of trouble or learning some kind of life lesson. While I loved Bill Paxton as Wyatt’s abusive older brother in the movie, I have to say that Lee Tergsen also does a great job playing Chet here. He is even more over the top, kind of like a classic 80s bully. This is a fun time and one of the best teen sci-fi shows of the 90s for sure!

By the time the first season of Sliders aired in 1995, I was a full-on sci-fi geek and this was the perfect show at the perfect time. Sliders would run for six seasons, lasting all the way until 1999 or 2000, depending on where you live in the world! This is such a fun show about these people who have the technology to travel between different universes. They get into a bit of trouble and they end up losing their way to get back home, meaning that each time they “slide” to a new parallel universe, they are never sure where they will end up.

It does have a kind of Quantum Leap thing going on where they are trying to get back on track, but instead of one leap at a time, it’s one slide at a time. Each new universe they end up in has its own theme or gimmick, and they usually end up in some kind of trouble that they need to get out of before they can slide to a new universe. This is certainly one of the best sci-fi shows of the 90s and a show I have watched more than once!

You could argue that out of all the shows on this list, Red Dwarf is the one that I am cheating the most with. This started in 1988 and would run until 1999, but there were often years between seasons! Then in 2016, Red Dwarf was brought back, and had its most recent season ended in 2020. This show had what I consider to be its glory years in the 90s and that is why it’s on this list. Well, that and the fact it is freaking hilarious and one of the greatest sci-fi comedy shows of all time. This is a British show, but it gained a following all over the world. 

Set on an old mining spaceship, the plot of Red Dwarf features Dave Lister, a low ranking member of the crew who is the last human alive after a radiation leak kills everyone on board. The ship’s Artificial Intelligence, called Holly, keeps him in suspended animation for three million years! Upon waking, he is joined by Rimmer, a hologram of his old boss, and Cat, a new species that has evolved over the passing three million years! Eventually, the android Kryten joins the team and each episode features them on some kind of wacky adventure. For me, it’s the hilarious character interactions that make this show so great!

We had to have a Star Trek series on this list of the best sci-fi shows of the 90s, and after much deliberation, I decided that Star Trek: Voyager gets my vote. Now, Star Trek: The Next Generation did run for part of the early ’90s, but I consider the movies to be more of a ’90s thing there. Star Trek: Voyager, on the other hand, ran from 1995 until 2001 so I have always associated that more with the 90s. Ok, with my warped logic out of the way, Star Trek: Voyager is actually a fantastic show and when it aired it was absolute appointment television for me. 

Set on the USS Voyager, the crew of the Federation must work with a few interesting others in order to try and find their way home after becoming stranded on the far side of the galaxy. While there were many overarching plot points during Star Trek: Voyager’s seven season run, I feel that this series had some of the best single episodes of any Star Trek series. At the end of the day, The Next Generation or Deep Space 9 could have easily made this list, but if I could only have one Star Trek representation, I had to go for Voyager.

The original Outer Limits was a popular sci-fi series that ran for a couple of seasons in the 60s. It had been attempted to be brought back before, but this would not come to fruition until 1995. The Outer Limits was another one of those mid-90s shows that was really riding high on the popularity of The X-Files. This was another show that I would eagerly wait for each week, and throughout its seven-season run, which went from 1995 until 2002, there were so many amazing episodes. 

This is an anthology style show where each episode is its own contained story. A huge part of the fun for me and many others was purposely not looking in the TV guide to see what that week’s episode was going to be about! That way each week you were given a real surprise. This is fun stuff and one of the best sci-fi anthology series of all time. Actually, while I would say that sci-fi is most certainly the genre most of the episodes fit into, The Outer Limits does dabble and have fun with other genres too.

Running from 1989 until 1993, Quantum Leap is an absolute classic and one of the most popular sci-fi series of the 90s! Actually, scratch that, Quantum Leap is one of the most popular sci-fi series of all time. Dr. Sam Beckett has a brilliant mind and is doing time travel research! A failed experiment results in Sam “leaping” through time where he takes over the body of someone else. 

Each episode is about Sam along with his hologram friend, Al, and their handheld Artificial Intelligence Ziggy needing to “put right what once went wrong” as they try to fix mistakes that were made that could screw up history. Each episode sees Sam ending up in a new body with the famous “oh boy” as Sam realizes that he has another job to do! Sam is hoping that one of these leaps will finally bring him back home! This is such a great show, although, I felt that they could have gone on longer than they did, I especially loved the Evil Leapers stuff and wish that they did more with that.

Never mind the 90s, I consider The X-Files to be the greatest sci-fi show of all time and in my own personal greatest TV shows of all time list, this could very well take that top spot. Running for nine seasons, The X-Files had its premiere all the way back in 1993, running until 2002. There was a movie released in 1998 and there was a spin off with The Lone Gunmen in 2001.  A new movie was made in 2008 and the show was also brought back in 2016. During the 90s, I remember the VHS releases of The X-Files being a huge deal and I collected them all! I even got that special big collector box to put them in. 

The show follows two FBI agents, Mulder and Scully, who are forced together to deal with the “weird” cases that the FBI has locked away in the “x-files” – their code for unexplained or possibly even paranormal cases. From aliens, monsters, ghosts, and more, each episode adds more and more lore to the world of The X-Files and we get to feel and connect with Mulder and Scully. There are many overarching plots that run throughout the seasons, but there are many great standalone “Monster of the Week” episodes as well. One extra thing I want to mention is seasons 8 and 9. Many people hated these, but I thought that Doggett and Reyes were a great pairing and if anything, the show could have continued without Scully for a further season in my opinion.