The best sci-fi to stream this summer

Much like last year, the hot summer months of 2024 are turning out to be an excellent time for sci-fi fans. There are several sci-fi series that have either just ended, are in the middle of a season, or are scheduled to premiere soon. Perfect for ignoring the heat of the outdoors and enjoying the substantially colder worlds of space and the future. And this is a list that could potentially grow even longer, as Apple has been hinting at the return of both. Breaking off and Silo Coming soon. In the meantime, plan your next few months of streaming accordingly with this list.

This animated series premiered on Max last year, but it hit Netflix on May 31. It’s unlike anything you’ve seen before—it’s a mix of hard sci-fi with stunning art, set in a harsh, unforgiving, and truly alien world. And really, the real highlight is the planet itself, a place inspired by everything from artists like Hayao Miyazaki and Jean “Moebius” Giraud to nature itself. (You can read more about the inspirations behind the series here.) If you missed it on Max, now’s a great time to catch up.

Apple has been in a serious race with science fiction shows, and Dark matter is just the latest example. Based on Blake Crouch's novel of the same name, the series follows a physicist who is kidnapped… by himself… and taken to a parallel world. Somehow, it manages to do something interesting in the increasingly crowded space of multiverse stories, and since the first season has already ended, you can watch it in full right now.

The last season of Doctor Who is notable for several reasons. It marked the start of Ncuti Gatwa's career as the Doctor, and was also the first to stream globally on Disney Plus. Across eight episodes, it struck a careful balance between Doctor WhoThe origins of and the bigger budget that comes with being at Disney, with fun riffs on everything from Black mirror to BridgertonAs showrunner Russell T. Davies said The edge“We’ve gotten a little bit more money for effects, but in this first episode, we didn’t spend it on 1,000 spaceships; we spent it on talking babies, you know?” All episodes are streaming now.

We are already well into it Star Wars' streaming era, but even with a glut of existing shows, The Acolyte manages to feel different. And that's largely due to its setting: it's the first live-action show set during the High Republic era, which takes place a century before The Phantom Menace. This means that there are many Star Wars Basic elements that aren't present, which has given the show the freedom to tell some interesting stories. It also has some, sorry, deadly lightsaber battles that we're looking forward to.

Based on the novel The Dark Manual by Colin O'Sullivan, Sunny is a mixed bag: It's part murder mystery, part comedy, and part retrofuturistic story about clumsy robots that serve as personal assistants. It seems like a potentially difficult trio to balance, but early trailers are promising and Rashida Jones seems like an ideal star to handle the load. Even better? The show looks to be packed with plenty of interesting gadgets.

Apple TV Plus' sci-fi lineup doesn't have much family-friendly content, making it a… Bandits of time Interesting. A remake of a 1981 Terry Gilliam film of the same name, the show is described as a “high-stakes journey through time and space featuring a ragtag group of thieves and their newest recruit: an 11-year-old history nerd.”

The show that refuses to die is back for its 12th season, which once again promises to explore modern technology from the perspective of the future. Obviously, that includes artificial intelligence, but also a much more widespread phenomenon: “the true five-million-year story behind the consciousness-altering substance known as coffee.”

The first animated installment of the franchise, Terminator zero The film changes the setting to Tokyo in the 1990s, but will apparently treat all of the live-action films as canon. At the very least, it looks amazing, with animation from famed anime studio Production IG and the promise of sci-fi sword fights.