5 Sci-Fi Series With A Female Lead That Are Perfect From Beginning To End

Science-fiction television is having a huge moment, with high-profile shows like “Silo,” “Foundation,” “Severance,” “Paradise,” “Murderbot,” “For All Mankind,” “Pluribus,” the continuation of “Star Trek,” and now “Star City” serving as some of the best must-see series currently airing. Perhaps it’s because our own existence has become too dystopian to process without the safe distance of genre conventions to keep us from fully spiraling out into an existential nightmare, or it’s a desire to see cinematic spectacle blending with social commentary, but sci-fi is more popular than ever.

And all the most-watched sci-fi shows draw inspiration from what came before, including the decision to center a show on a fascinating female character. Some of the best sci-fi shows of all time feature a memorable female lead, and today we’re here to honor them. Here are five sci-fi series with a female lead that are perfect from beginning to end, and equally deserving of being added to your watchlist.

What is there to say about “Battlestar Galactica” that hasn’t already been said? The gritty, grounded 21st-century reboot of the campy single-season series of the same name from the 1970s sprawled across 76 episodes, four seasons, and two movies, becoming an essential science-fiction series and the definitive space opera of our time. It took the sci-fi groundwork laid by legacy shows like “Star Trek” and blended it with the serious tone popularized by the then-booming prestige television era, exemplified by “The Sopranos” and “The West Wing.” This was a science-fiction series that used the genre to hold a mirror up to society and was unafraid to peel back the layers and expose just how ugly existence can often be.

The show followed the remnants of human civilization after a race of sentient machines known as the Cylons devastated their homeworlds, all seeking refuge on the titular Battlestar warship in the hopes of finding the Earth colony. “Battlestar Galactica” boasted a bevy of incredible women characters (shout out to Mary McDonnell as President Laura Roslin), but the show was arguably anchored by the character arc of Katee Sackhoff’s Kara Thrace (callsign “Starbuck”). The skilled hotshot Viper pilot of the Galactica, Starbuck has all the makings of an untouchable hero (rebellious, great at combat, the center of a supernatural destiny), but her intense history and complex relationships with those around her made for one of the most interesting female characters in not just science-fiction history, but in all of TV regardless of genre.

One of Canada’s finest entertainment exports, the pulpy science-fiction mystery series “Orphan Black” debuted in 2013, and unwrapped over five seasons into one of the best sci-fi shows of all time. The series centered on Sarah Manning, the lead character and one of the four main protagonists of the series — all played by Tatiana Maslany. Manning is a street-smart grifter, but her life is upended after she witnesses a woman who looks identical to her step in front of a train. When she attempts to assume the dead doppelganger’s identity in an attempt to access her finances, Sarah learns that she is one of many human clones — including Alison Hendrix, Cosima Niehaus, Helena, Rachel Duncan, and several others — as part of something called Project Leda. All of the clones are unknowingly connected across North America and Europe, and it’s up to Sarah and her clones to discover the origins of their existence.

Of course, asking too many questions is sure to draw negative attention, and “Orphan Black” reveals shadowy organizations, powerful secret institutions, and a cult of religious extremists for good measure. The result is a genre-blending show that explores themes of identity, autonomy, corporate quests for power, and the ethics of scientific discovery. The writing is compelling enough on its own, but it’s Maslany — who would later become the titular She-Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — that holds the key to the show’s success. By playing multiple clones with distinct personalities, interior lives, and dialects, she embodies them all with such precision that you’re bound to forget they’re all played by the same woman. “Orphan Black” continually reinvented itself, evolving from a mystery-box thriller into a sprawling conspiracy saga without ever losing sight of its characters.

“The X-Files” was and continues to be one of the most influential sci-fi dramas in television history, paving the way for the supernaturally-tinged shows of our current era. Blending standard crime procedurals with the impossible, FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) stop at nothing to prove that “the truth is out there,” and get to the bottom of the government’s most mind-bending cases. Mulder and Scully serve as individual protagonists as well as a unit, but most critics (and the show creator alike) believe that Scully is the show’s true protagonist. Her perspective as a rational skeptic provides the audience with a lens through which to observe their mysterious cases, and the more she learns to suspend her disbelief, the more the viewers become believers themselves.

Many of the best episodes of “The X-Files” centered on Dana Scully, and she was the only female STEM character on a primetime series throughout much of the 1990s. Anderson’s portrayal inspired countless women to pursue careers in STEM, so much so that it’s known as “The Scully Effect.” Among those familiar with her character, 91% classified her as a positive role model for young women. Beyond “The X-Files” being one of the best sci-fi shows of all time, Scully as a character gave us someone to truly believe in.

Before adult animation found its ground in mainstream pop culture, MTV’s “Liquid Television” was an experimental playground for underground art. The showcase series aired from 1991 to 1995 and introduced audiences to adult animation that wasn’t beholden to the comedic sitcom tropes of the then-new phenomenon “The Simpsons.” Much of the animated segments featured on the show were created specifically for the series, but a handful of previously produced segments were sought out after successful festival runs, helping amplify the work to the masses.

One of the show’s greatest success stories was “Æon Flux,” the avant-garde science-fiction adventure television series created by Peter Chung, that remains one of the most singular works in television animation. The series was first released as a six-part serial, followed by five individual short episodes and later by a season of 10 half-hour episodes. Set in a surreal, dystopian German Expressionist-style future of mutants, clones, and robots, the titular Æon Flux is a dominatrix spy from the individualist, anarchist city-state of Monica who infiltrates and sabotages installations in the Orwellian, totalitarian neighboring city-state of Bregna. Her sworn enemy (and sometimes lover), Trevor Goodchild, is a technocratic dictator of Bregna, and the duo are trapped in a seemingly never-ending war for ideological supremacy.

Overshadowed today by its ill-fated 2005 film adaptation starring Charlize Theron, “Æon Flux” was a groundbreaking work of animated sci-fi storytelling and provided one of science-fiction’s greatest female heroes … even if she did (intentionally) die all the time.

The HBO Max original series “Made for Love” is a darkly comedic sci-fi story about a woman named Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti) who attempts to escape her suffocating 10-year marriage with tech billionaire husband Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen) on a hermetically sealed, virtual-reality compound known as “The Hub.” It’s a dangerous decision because her husband is one of the richest and most powerful men on the planet, but he’s also secretly implanted her with a revolutionary microchip that allows him to track her moves, see what she sees, and monitor her “emotional data.” In an attempt to stay off the grid, she reunites with her estranged father Herbert (Ray Romano) in Twin Sands, the desert town where she grew up, but her father has since become obsessed with his synthetic companion, Diane.

/Film’s Jacob Hall rightfully called the show “outstanding,” but after two seasons, it was unceremoniously canceled. To add insult to injury, it was one of the shows HBO Max purged from their library in 2022 as a tax write-off. It’s a grave injustice as “Made For Love” was sincerely great television, and housed one of Milioti’s career-best performances (and arguably, Romano’s very best performances). The show is currently not available to legally stream or purchase on any digital platforms in the United States, but if HBO Max had any sense, they’d find a way to re-release it worldwide. It’s what the people want and what the show deserves.