The sci-fi genre has produced some great TV series, but it’s rare for a show to achieve the perfect score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Given how many reviewers there are and how many opportunities a show has to drop the ball, it’s truly miraculous that any television series manages to be “perfect” in the eyes of an aggregate system.
That said, we’ve found 7 sci-fi shows that beat all odds and are still sitting on Rotten Tomatoes with perfect scores – in some cases, years after they were airing. If there are any entries on this list you haven’t watched yet, do so immediately. What better endorsement could you need than perfection?
Honorable Mention: Cowboy Bebop
Sunrise
That’s right, the godfather of modern anime is very much a sci-fi show, and it still holds its perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The series follows Spike Spiegel, an elite former hitman who has been exiled from his syndicate after falling out with his former partner over a lover. The show followed Spike and his misfit found-family, including former cop Jet Black, con artist Faye Valentine, hacker Edward Wong, and their hyper-intelligent genetically-engineered dog, Ein. While they group episodically take on bounty hunting missions, the larger lore of the show, and its culture-shifting style of swave cool and jazz music are what have made it iconic.
7) Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi/Underworld
Lucasfilm/Disney+
For all the debates about whether or not Star Wars has fallen off in terms of quality, not enough fans are talking about the one piece of content from the franchise that is getting the highest marks with critics.
Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi and the more recent Tales of the Underworld are animated anthologies that each focus on a pair of supporting characters from the franchise. Each character gets three shorts set in different periods of their lives, or encompassing a mini-story arc about a pivotal moment in their development. The show has featured Ahsoka Tano, Asajj Ventress, Count Dooku, Cad Bane, The Mandalorian’s Morgan Elsbeth, and others who occupy interesting places within the franchise canon. It reminds fans just how many good stories Star Wars still has to tell, which is important to do right about now.
6) Utopia
CHannel 4/kudos
The 2013-2014 British TV series Utopia followed a group of comic book fans who bond on an online forum. One day, a member shares an unpublished graphic novel with the group, called The Utopia Experiments, which seemed to predict disastrous events of the past. Written by a madman who also recorded his visions of future disasters, the group tries to unravel the mystery of Utopia before a clandestine network of powerful elites and their henchmen (“The Network”) get to them first. A US remake of the show was produced by Amazon in 2020, but only the UK version enjoys a perfect score.
Looking back now, Utopia walked so that shows like Severance, Pluribus, and Mr. Robot could run with the idea of high-concept sci-fi crossing over with espionage-thrillers. The cast includes talent like Emilia Jones (Task), Fiona O’Shaughnessy (Halo), Alexandra Roach (Lazarus), and Ruth Gemmell (Bridgerton), who have all gone on to be mauch bigger names in the industry during the 2020s.
5) Clone High
MTV
Before Christopher Miller and Phil Lord became the acclaimed talents behind the 21 Jump Street reboot or Sony’s Spider-Verse animated films, they teamed with Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence and made a cult-hit TV show. Clone High ran on MTV in the early 2000s, and followed a high school whose students were clones of famous figures from throughout history, raised from infancy and corralled at the school by the US military.
Main characters include the clones of Abe Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, JFK, and Gandhi. It mixed historical facts with historical fantasy, set against a coming-of-age teen angst sitcom. It was a hilariously strange brew, and had such lasting presence that HBO Max gave it a revival seasons between 2023-2024.
4) Travelers
Netflix
Travelers was a Canadian TV series that eventually got scooped up by Netflix. Running from 2016-2018, the show was set in a dystopian future where operatives known as “travelers” are sent back in time to try to avert the world’s collapse before it can happen. A “traveler” is sent back in time through a process beams their consciousness back through time to occupy the body of a person from the present who is in the process of dying.
That scientific feat requires precise data, from researching a target host’s life through social media and public records to properly maintain the “cover” identity, to coordinating their efforts thorugh an AI quantum computer called the “Director,” that helps them map out the necessary changes needed to secure the future. If you want a time travel causality story that also invokes a lot of human emotion and drama in a thought-provoking way, this is it.
3) Counterpart
Starz
People know that J.K. Simmons is one-of-one when it comes to talented character actors; however, not enough people tuned in to see just how good Simmons was leading a high-concept sci-fi show. Airing on Starz from 2017-2019, Counterpart did everything with mulitversal storytelling that modern franchises like Marvel only wish they could.
The show’s premise follows Howard Silk (Simmons), a quiet, boring, office worker at the fictional UN agency, the “Office of Interchange.” It’s revealed that the “OI” is a key beachhead in the fragile peace between two parallel Earths, “Earth Alpha” and “Earth Prime.” About 40 years prior, an Alpha world scientist who existed in both worlds made the breakthrough of meeting his Prime world counterpart. However, the balance between world forever shifted when the Prime Earth suffered a pandemic that set stunted its technological development, but forced people to focus more on life sciences, art, and the like. However, a conspiracy theory that Alpha was responsible for unleashing the virus onto Prime (as a pre-emptive strike), sparking a cold war that is being fought in the shadows, between operatives from both worlds. Howard Silk’s life changes when he meets his Prime variant, who is the cunning and ruthless spy that Howard Alpha never let himself become. Through their interactions (and conflict), the two Howards began to uncover a conspricacy that extends across both worlds, and involves people near and dear to each of them.
Counterpart was canceled with a massive dangling cliffhanger at the end of Season 2. It was ended tragically too early: a year after cancelation, the COVID-19 pandemic would disrupt the real world, and have people feeling like the world shifted to a different reality; multiversal stories would also become all the rage in pop-culture. Haivng a double-dose of J.K. Simmons at the center fo a brilliant sci-fi spy-thriller is a gem that should have been valued more.
2) Scavengers Reign
HBO Max
One of biggest breakout hit animated series of the last few years, HBO Max’s Scavengers Reign follows the survivors of interstellar ship that gets marooned on the alien planet of Vesta. The survivors break into three groups and explore the planet, learning that the world’s exotic plants and animals have extraordinary connections and complexity.
Those alien aesthetics (and the deeper truths revealed through exploring them) are the real selling point of Scavengers Reign, with an animation style that captivated sci-fi fans with its creativity and imagination of how alien life could function in ways completely different from the lifecycle concepts we understand.
1) The Lazarus Project
Netflix
Before he was cast as the new Severus Snape in HBO’s Harry Potter TV series, Paapa Essiedu starred in The Lazarus Project, a British TV sci-fi series that aired for two seasons from 2022-2023. The series took Deja Vu to a whole other level with its story of a man named George (Essiedu), who wakes up on July 1st, only to realize it is the same day that occured six months prior. After the reset happens a secon time, Geroge is approached by clandestine “Lazarus Project,” which informs him he has a mutant anamoly that makes him immune to a time reset device that affects the rest of the world. After joining the organization, George learns that Lazarus’ mission is to study calamitous events and then roll back the clock, giving them time to prevent dark fates.
What makes Lazarus Project great sci-fi is when Geore has to begin to weigh his own selfish desires for life (or a different life) against the needs and safety of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of others. The cause-and-effect nautre of the time travel also created labyrinthian puzzles to solve, on strict ticking clock. You’ll never look at July 1st the same way again.
What sci-fi shows with perfect scores are your favorite? Which shows do you think deserve to have perfect scores? Let us know on the ComicBook Forum!