How the Sci-Fi TV Shows bracket works
Rank sci-fi shows without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Stranger Things or Black Mirror? The Expanse or Westworld? — and after 23 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. The awkward pairings are the point: they are the calls a drag-and-drop tier list quietly lets you avoid.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 24-slot size (Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 24 shows in the field. 24 is not a power of two, so 8 of them draw a first-round bye — spread evenly across the draw rather than handed to whoever happens to land at the top of it. The field is reshuffled on every play, so the same show can meet a different opponent in round one and finish somewhere else entirely. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
23 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 248 matchups
- Round of 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-3 minutes start to finish.
All 24 entrants
All 24 entrants are listed below, including Stranger Things, Black Mirror, The Expanse and Westworld.
Stranger Things
2016-2025
Black Mirror
2011-present
The Expanse
2015-2022
Westworld
2016-2022
Star Trek: The Next Generation
1987-1994
Battlestar Galactica
2004-2009
Doctor Who
1963-present
The Mandalorian
2019-present
Lost
2004-2010
The X-Files
1993-2018
Fringe
2008-2013
Dark
2017-2020
Foundation
2021-present
The Twilight Zone
1959-1964
Severance
2022-present
Firefly
2002
Altered Carbon
2018-2020
The 100
2014-2020
Stargate SG-1
1997-2007
Star Trek
1966-1969
The Boys
2019-present
Andor
2022-present
Devs
2020
3 Body Problem
2024-present
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 24 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 4 completed Sci-Fi TV Shows brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
The Boys
6W - 2L · won 1 bracket
75%
win rate
- 2
Doctor Who
5W - 2L · won 1 bracket
71%
win rate
- 3
Firefly
6W - 3L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 4
Dark
4W - 2L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 5
Severance
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 6
Battlestar Galactica
4W - 3L
57%
win rate
- 7
Star Trek: The Next Generation
4W - 4L
50%
win rate
- 8
Andor
4W - 4L
50%
win rate
- 9
The Expanse
3W - 3L
50%
win rate
- 10
The Mandalorian
3W - 3L
50%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Judge the whole run, not just the best season, or every prestige show wins by default.
- 2The default run puts all 24 shows in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Undo exists for a reason: an early-round mistake propagates all the way to the final, and there is no shame in taking it back.
Sci-Fi TV Shows bracket FAQ
How many shows are in the Sci-Fi TV Shows bracket?
The pool holds 24 shows. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 23 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. 8 entrants start with a first-round bye, spread evenly through the draw. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 24 slots.
Which shows are included?
Stranger Things, Black Mirror, The Expanse, Westworld, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, The Mandalorian, Lost, The X-Files, Fringe and Dark, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank sci-fi shows take?
About 2-3 minutes — 23 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. There is no sign-up and nothing is stored until you reach the final.
Is this a sci-fi tv shows tier list or a ranking?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other show grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 23 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two shows that never met. If you would rather place the shows into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 24 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Is there a community sci-fi tv shows ranking?
Every completed bracket feeds the Sci-Fi TV Shows community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 24 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
Can I change which shows are included?
Use the bracket maker: add your own shows, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 24 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.