The 9 Best Syfy Shows Ever

Need a lighter take on sci-fi? Eureka — we’ve found it! This comedy-drama starred Colin Ferguson as the new sheriff of the off-the-map town of Eureka, a community of scientists whose breakthroughs could change the world if they don’t destroy the world first. (Good thing the sheriff is grounded in reality.) Expect scientific misadventures, humorous culture clashes, and visual effects so numerous they may have gotten the show canceled.

MST3K pilloried bad cinema in good fun for years, including Season 7 through 9 on The Sci-Fi channel. Though Sci-Fi provided a relatively inhospitable home for this comedy series’ last years on cable, we can still thank the channel for bringing us the Satellite of Love crew’s commentary on B movies like The Final Sacrifice, Werewolf, The Pumaman, and Hobgoblins.

Described by Sci-Fi as part The X-Files, part Raiders of the Lost Ark and part Moonlighting, Warehouse 13 starred Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly and two federal agents assigned to a secret South Dakota facility housing every strange artifact the U.S. government has accrued over the centuries. Those artifacts have magical properties — Orville Wright’s spectacles, for example, steal someone’s brainpower, Ferdinand Magellan’s astrolabe turns back time — but come with devious and creative consequences.

In this adaptation of a book trilogy by Lev Grossman, grad student Quentin (Jason Ralph) realizes the magical land from his favorite children’s books is real, and he’s accepted into Brakebills University for Magical Pedagogy. His friend Julia (Stella Maeve) isn’t accepted, and she falls in with a different magical cadre. If you have outgrown Harry Potter (or feel burned by its creator), give this TV show a try.

The Beau Smith comic book series of the same name got a small-screen transfer with this entry in the Weird West genre. Melanie Scrofano plays a descendent of lawman Wyatt Earp, and she’s tasked sending the suddenly-undead outlaws once felled by Wyatt back to Hell. It’s a fun twist on familiar Western lore, but its positive queer representation during a #BuryYourGays era is what really puts it in another echelon.

A Hugo-nominated book series by James S. A. Corey became a Hugo-winning TV series, one in which humans have colonized the Solar System and the United Nations is just one of the oppressive powers at play. Amid that political tension, detective Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) and others start uncovering an interplanetary conspiracy. It’s a dense but rewarding story with impressive world-building and even more impressive visuals.

The winner of three back-to-back Saturn Awards for Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series, Farscape follows the fugitives, human and otherwise, aboard the (living) spacecraft Moya. With serialized storylines and puppets and prosthetics from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, Farscape elevated cable sci-fi, and fans followed the Moya gang into the wormhole.

It takes a stellar TV show to outshine a blockbuster film upon which it was based, but that’s the story with Stargate SG-1, which focused on a military team from Earth traveling through Stargates to find support and supplies to protect the planet from alien attackers. A TV Guide Magazine cover story declared that SG-1 had surpassed Star Trek as “sci-fi’s biggest hit,” and the show also brought Farscape’s Ben Browder and Claudia Black back to TV.

Stars of the original show might not agree, but the Battlestar franchise got a major upgrade with this reboot, a gritty and gripping story of survival and warfare following a robot uprising. With machines that look like flesh and blood, and humans acting inhumane, BSG showed it’s not always clear who’s good and bad in the Cylon-vs-Colonist conflict. Even if it didn’t have the War on Terror as a real-world analog, BSG would still be vital viewing, and there will never be another sci-fi series, let alone a Syfy series, like it.